How to coach a great hockey practice

Coaching a great hockey practice starts and ends with you.

While there is no formula to running a truly great hockey practice, there are some considerations to make along the way. Every coach has his own style and preferred methodology, and you ultimately need to find what works best for you and your team. Depending on the strengths and weaknesses of your team, the skill level of your players, and the time of the season, your practices will differ. However, there are some principles you can follow to make sure the time you have on the ice with your team is not wasted.

Things You'll Need

• Whistle
• Coach's dry-erase board
• Dry erase markers

Instructions

Planning

1. Determine what the main focus of your practice is going to be. What do your players need to work on the most?

2. Run your players through various warm-up drills. You don't want your players to pull any muscles during practice so get their blood flowing with a few high-intensity skating, passing and shooting drills.

3. Conduct the drills that support your main focus from Step 1. This is the time when you teach your players the skills and techniques you decided they need the most help with.

4. If needed, execute several conditioning drills to finish off the practice. Depending on what you worked on during Step 3, your players may or may not need extra conditioning. If you did high-intensity drills during Step 3 you may decide not to further exhaust your players with conditioning drills. If, however, you worked on execution, you may decide that conditioning your players is a good idea.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the practice after it has ended. As a coach, it is your job to decide what went well in the practice as well as what needs to be improved. Now is the perfect time to begin planning for the next practice.

Tips & Warnings

• Vary the drills you do each practice to keep your players interested. Also, be sure to have a purpose for each drill, and have extra drills planned and ready to go in case one isn't working very well. Watch higher-level teams practice and adopt the drills they do.

References

• USA Hockey : Coaching Materials