This summer I had the privilage of working with Alex Kurtz Hockey coaching the off-ice speed and agility sessions. 8 weeks of getting athletes faster and more agile on grass so they can tear it up on the ice. Here's how it went and everything I learned:
My plan was to laser test their 10yd sprint (1yd build) and 5-10-5 on week 1. Those would be my baseline numbers that I would use to compare to when I re-tested them at the end of the program. I use the VALD timing system and one of the biggest issues I experience is the bluetooth not working. When this happens the gates don't connect to my phone and actually do what they're supposed to do. Luckyily I was able to test every athlete's 10yd sprint, but when I switched to the 5-10-5 the gates stopped working so I had to hand time those. The other issue testing the 5-10-5 was that we were on the grass and kids were slipping. I quickly realized those times would be inaccurate and decided to not use it as a bench marker. Going forward, I'll do all testing on a hard surface (like the parking lot) to decrease the amount of slips.
There were two "different* groups I was working with: Mon-Wed and Tue-Thur. I say *different* because there were a lot of athletes that came every day, and actually only a handful that came 2x/week. I structured the week so that the M/W and T/TH groups were doing the same training because I didn't want one group to progress faster than the other, and I wanted to ensure they both were covering the same coaching points. The athletes that came every day knew what we were doing before I even gave them the rundown, and they had another opportunity to practice the skill we learned the day before. Some took advantage of that and others just went through the motions. I'm not sure how I would combat that in the future or even if I would want to. The more reps an athlete gets, the better in this scenario.
Day 1 was more drill focused and day 2 was more game/race focused. This allowed the kids to work on the isolated technique one day, then put that technique into practice the next. Each week there was a different theme: acceleration, deceleration, max velocity, change of direction, etc. There are a lot of components to getting athletes faster, and that's why I chose weekly themes. This amount of variety kept the campers, counselors, and myself, engaged and progressing the whole summer. It can be boring for everyone to do the same thing week after week. Not to mention there needs to be some sort of progression or else you're just doing drills for the sake of doing drills. Even the most elite athletes get bored of that, and excitement drives results. That's a big thing for me. I think about what physical attribute am I trying to improve, then I select the drills and games that train that quality at the athlete's ability level . I liked this format, it worked well, and will use it again next summer.
Counselors. I've never had an assistant coach or needed to use counselors, so this was new territory for me. Every day I had 2-3 counselors there to help me setup drills and coach. At first, I didn't know how to properly utalize them and they didn't know how to help me. As the summer went on, I got more compfortable explaining what I needed from them and what to look for, and they got more comfortable coaching sprint technique and asking me what they could do to help. In the future, I think it would be helpful to send a group text at the start of the week explaining what the theme is, the drills and games we're going to do, and the big coaching points I need them to lookout for and correct.
Overall it was a fantastic experience and almost every athlete got faster in their 10yd sprint! Speed training is extremely objective: did they improve or not? That part of my job is the easiest to show success/failure. Agility is a lot more subjective and is why small sided games are so important. The ability to move efficiently while reading and reacting to pictures is what separates good vs great athletes. This requires a lot of conversations between coaching staff. I'm always asking how their performance on the ice is doing and what skills they can work on off-ice to make them better hockey players. I'm also talking to the athletes and getting feedback from them. I'm wicked excited to take everything I learned from this summer and build next summer to be bigger and better!
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