The Crucial First Step in Off-Season Training
As the final buzzer sounds, this signaling the end of another season, hockey players everywhere transition into the off-season. While it is important to take a period of time to relax and recuperate, athletes should understand that off-season is where championships are made ... in the sweat-soaked gyms & in the quiet rinks fine-tuning the details of their game.
Enter my KJPS off-season curriculum! This is a roadmap to success meticulously crafted through my expertise & experiences of nearly two decades training hockey players during the spring & summer months. In today's post we are going to address what I believe the be the most crucial step of summer training - STEP 1 : Sacrificing Speed for Accuracy. For most athletes, the first month of off-season training should focus on honing the bottom foundation blocks of the KJPS principle pyramid (more on this pyramid can be found in KJPS ON-DEMAND).
The cornerstone of this foundation is the 'Order of Practice'. It's about mechanics without motion, emphasizing the importance of developing proper alignment & stance. It's about technique & control, the body in motion discovering proper mechanics within each skating skill. It's about the path of movement on these skating skills, finding effective pushes & efficient recovery through what I call recovery & reflex. It's also about strength & power, which can be done on-ice & continuing the focus of building skating muscles off-ice as well.
Imagine a house built on a shaky foundation (yikes), it may stand for a while, but eventually it will crumble. Similarly, without mastering the KJPS 'Order of Practice', an athlete's performance may plateau, leaving them vulnerable to injury & most definitely this will catch up to them as we see many hockey players hitting a point underperformance, especially in the skating department.
Next in line on the KJPS Principle Pyramid is the 'Basic Skating Fundamentals'—a set of skills that form the backbone of a player's skating skill set. These include identifying basic edges, engaging in edgework drills, perfecting the stride, & mastering the foundation backward skating. Neglecting these 'boring' drills in favor of flashy skills is like building a castle on sand, it may turn out great at first but eventually will come tumbling down.