It’s now early August, school will be starting soon, and football is underway. For we hockey players and families, this time of year also reminds that winter team tryouts are right around the corner!
And with that comes an important question: how are we tracking relative to our offseason training goals? Will we be ready for tryouts for the team we want to make?
Even the most avid of hockey players slack off a bit during the summer. That’s part of being a kid…you’re at the lake, playing other sports, maybe staying up late and eating more junk food. Fortunately, most youth players still have another 6-8 weeks (maybe longer) to dust off the cobwebs and finish their offseason strong.
Here’s our guide for the five steps to optimize your training between now until September 30 (7 weeks from now) so you can perform your best at tryouts.
1) Start with an honest self-assessment. Where do you stack up relative to the field? What feedback did you get from your coaches last year about how to reach the next level? Where do you need to make up the most ground? Skating speed? Stickhandling? Need to shed some weight, or build muscle? Whatever the answer, think about how you can tailor your training over the next 7 weeks to nail those goals.
2) Create your end-of-summer home training plan.
Shoot a lot of pucks at home. Like 1,000 a week, or 150 a day. Mix up the shot types (snap, slap, wristers, back hands), location (in-tight, 15 feet out, left vs right side) and moving vs stationary. 150 shots a day can be done in 15-20 minutes, and home training tools like a shooting tarp, backyard goal plus Rojo shooting targets to dial-in your accuracy as well.
Get 1,000 puck touches a day. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy, can be figure 8s, toe drags, quick hands. Stationary and moving. Dryland tiles or synthetic ice are perfect work great if you’re not on the ice enough. Stickhandling balls work great if you don’t have a surface suitable for pucks. Throw a stick weight on there and/or do a few reps with a muscle ball to help strength those “micro muscles” that are good for stickhandling.
Need inspiration for stickhandling drills? Sign up for onlinehockeytraining.com or check out some his content online. Coach Lance does a brilliant job of creating innovative, fun yet challenging stickhandling drills to help you develop your hands.
You should also consider doing some at-home shooting or stickhandling drills wearing skates. This can be done while training on synthetic ice, using a reliable skate guard product such as SKABOOTS, or even standing on old carpet or floor mats. Training while you wear skates will help build up ankle strength, and get more accustomed to performing the activities with your eyes higher off the ground and at the right contact points with your game stick, as compared to being on your shoes with either the same stick or shorter than your game stick.
3) Supplemental hockey and in-person drills. Most hockey communities have a plethora of extracurricular activities you could seek out in August and September at a nearby rink or training center.
Does a nearby dryland facility have a skating treadmill? Can you book individual sessions, or team up with 2-3 teammates to make more fun and cost-effective?
Many dryland training centers or individual instructors might also be available for shooting clinics, stickhandling clinics, or even individual lessons. The athlete will still want to put in the reps at home, but receiving some feedback from non-parent professionals can often times help correct some things so the at-home training can become even more effective.
4) Non-hockey strength and conditioning training. Invest time outside of hockey exercising to build up cardio and strength. Bike rides are great for both. Lunges and box jumps are excellent for leg strength. Planks and medicine ball throws for core.
For some ideas and inspiration for awesome at-home strength exercises that are specific for hockey players, we suggest Tony Greco (tonygrecotg on Instagram) or hockeytraining.com.
Athletes who are playing fall tennis, football, soccer, or other fall sports will also benefit from staying active with strength and conditioning.
5) Equipment checks! If you have a growing child (such as 10-14 year olds), now is a perfect time to double-check that their stick, skates, helmet, and other pads are still the right size! For some reason kids keep going through these growth spurts that you might not even notice, until you notice at the summer team practice that their stick doesn’t even reach their chin anymore.
Shopping for new stuff now has multiple benefits. First, you give your player a month to break-in their new skates or stick prior to putting them tryouts. Second, as you get closer to the season, stores start to get swamped and you run the risk that certain brands/products will be picked over! In contrast, if your local store doesn’t have what you need you still have time to buy online. Third, many hockey stores aren’t that busy in August, so you might even catch them offering a Labor Day sale or summer sale.
There are many more things to think about as tryouts day approaches, which we’ll cover in coming weeks. In the meantime, creating a gameplan for the time you have remaining, that has a set “start” and “stop” date (i.e. now to Sep 30) provides a realistic timeframe to get players motivated on finishing the offseason strong so they can be their best at tryouts.
