For many years hockey coaches have focussed primarily on the technical development of a hockey player's skills. On-ice drills have been developed to assist in improving a player's skating ability, stick handling, passing, shooting and checking skills. Once a player has developed acceptable levels of individual skills, coaches can then progress to team oriented drills including offensive breakouts, defensive zone positioning, power play and penalty killing strategy. This is the development of skills that most coaches are able to offer players, as they see them only for one to two hours per week during practice throughout the hockey season. Unfortunately, coaches have often overlooked a very important component to the success of a young player's hockey experience simply because of the nature of practice scheduling during a season. It has been said that the role of a fitness trainer is to take a young person and make them an athlete. It is then the role of a hockey coach to take that athlete and make him a great hockey player. With the advent of increasing academic and professional opportunities for young hockey players, we have seen an increasing emphasis on more ice time for players, allowing for an even greater development of individual and team hockey skills. Unfortunately in most cases this also leads to an even higher financial cost to play the game, which is already a major barrier for participation for many families. Creative coaches in the future will look at inexpensive opportunities to develop their players from the standpoint of physical conditioning in order to augment their on-ice hockey skills. Like well developed hockey practices, dryland conditioning can be enjoyable experiences for both players and coaches where young athletes look forward to [...]
