Springtime Off-ice Hockey Training

As mentioned elsewhere, I've spent a goodly amount of time this spring in my "bunker", researching new training ideas and then planning a course of action for my junior high school and high school players to follow through the coming off-season months. I'll tell you more about my specific findings and my plans soon. But for now, let's just think about helping our kids be better in a few areas -- hoping they're far more capable next fall than they were when they finished their past hockey seasons. Now, my kids will be coming into The MOTION Lab next week. However, even if you don't have a special indoor training facility, I think anyone can improve his or her skills in an off-ice atmosphere. (Frankly, I've always felt I could improve hockey skills in a dawgoned closet, and I want you to take-on that same attitude. After all, it isn't the fancy gear or beautiful surroundings that make a player better. Actually, you should have seen the awful conditions I observed in the old Soviet Union. It didn't matter though, because those players still got pretty good!) I tend to approach my off-season outline just as I've broken down the game under the Highlight Reel Skills area -- into general skills, skating, puckhandling, passing, receiving, and shooting. (Oh, we'll have some tactical sessions over the summer -- like under our Thinking the Game section, so I'll be sure to let you know more on that in a future post.) Anyway, here's a rough idea of what I plan for my teams over the next few months:

• Our "general skills" work this spring and summer will include things aimed at making my kids more athletic, more agile, a little more explosive, and a little quicker. Rope skipping, agility ladders, some low impact plyometrics and some sprint training will surely help, and I'm going to be showing you some great ideas for these in my June and July posts. By the way... We don't have the time or enough equipment to hold strength training sessions as a team. So I'm going to point my kids (and their parents) towards the special CoachChic.com section for great advice and guidance, and recommend that the older players undertake a strength program on their own.
• The skating drills I suggested to Megan will be a big part of what we'll be doing this spring. Those drills are excellent, and they're sure to help any player be more powerful and more efficient in their skating.
• I've already advised my players to start following my Incredible Stickhandling course. Then, when we meet -- in the Lab, at our later in-line sessions and in our summer on-ice skills sessions -- we'll continue to do those very same moves as puck-drills.
• I find that passing is almost always one of our least polished skills. So I'm going to begin very early with the Russian Half-sticks this year, and I'm also going to begin at Square One in the skill's progressions. If you get my drift, I think starting now -- in the spring, is going to pay huge dividends come next fall.
• I do have some fancy gear to enhance the shooting motion. However, the StickWags I described elsewhere will put umph into anybody's shot. And so will just firing away in the driveway. I'm going to ask my kids to make that a regular routine this off-season -- firing those pucks off-ice, I mean.

Not that the above is all we'll do this spring and summer. Still, parents and coaches and older players should have a pretty good idea about ways to improve hockey skills over the coming months. And, perhaps the best part is that it should cost little or nothing to do most of these things! Now, there's nothing to it but to do it!