Most youth hockey programs get 1-2 hours a week for off-ice training. In the last two articles Ie gone over dynamic warm-ups and core training, the most important two forms of training that every hockey player should be doing. Taken together, the warm-up and core training generally takes the first 15 minutes of each session. That doesn leave much time for everything else. This makes it that much more important that hockey players don waste their time with garbage training.
While speed, agility, and quickness training and conditioning are generally viewed as separate entities, they can be combined in the interest of saving time. The key is to really understand the demands of hockey. Speed is one of the most important skills of the game, but top speed is rarely reached and when it is, it almost never maintained for very long before a player will need to change direction. As a result, the abilities to start explosively, stop quickly, and change direction rapidly are much more desirable than simply being fast in a straight line. To be overly simplistic, hockey-specific speed is really just well-designed agility training.
When designing hockey-specific agility drills, youl want to:
1) Include what I refer to as proactive and reactive drills. Proactive means that the path and direction changes are pre-determined. The player must move through the drill as quickly as possible. Reactive means the player movement is NHL Jerseys Wholesale in response to some other stimulus, usually in the form of a partner (mirror drills) or coach (command drills).
2) Include movement changes specific to hockey. Hockey players often have to transition between forward, backward, diagonal and lateral Hockey Team Jerseys movements. Agility drills should reflect these movement changes. For instance, you could design a circuit of agility drills that involve a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the diagonal forward Hockey Jerseys direction (45 turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in a lateral direction (90 turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the backward diagonal direction (135 turn); etc. You could also mix in shuffling, crossover steps, and different starting positions (forward, backward, lateral, push-up position) to maximize the on-ice carryover.
3) Include speed changes specific to hockey. While I made it a point to acknowledge that top speed isn maintained for long, it important to understand that many of the direction changes in hockey occur at near-top speeds. Also, many max effort sprints don begin from a stationary position. Your off-ice training should reflect this. Include longer range accelerations (20-30 yards) with a quick deceleration and direction change (similar to a pattern a wide receiver may run). Include agility circuits that start with a speed build-up. This allows the athlete to practice accelerating from a moving position, which is usually the way it happens on the ice.
incorporating a well-designed dynamic warm-up and core training program, you can drastically improve on-ice performance in less than two hours a week. Now with all the tools, the only missing ingredient in the success formula is your unparalleled determination to outwork your opponent. Keep working hard.