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Tom MolloyComparison of Off Ice Programs from Around the Hockey World
Here are some links to material on this site concerning off- ice training. This site is called the ABC’s of International Hockey and the goal is to show how the game is coached around the world. These files give the coaches a chance to compare methods of training. We started off-ice training in the early 80’s in North America. I remember going to the Flames office in 1980 and talking with David Poile, who was the asst. GM then and saying to them that if the Flames would start training like the Europeans in the off season they could gain a big advantage on the other teams. He looked at me like I had just landed in a space ship and patronized me by saying something like ‘Tom maybe some day the NHL will start training like in other hockey nations but right now the players are on their own to get ready for training camp.
I ran the first off-ice training program in Calgary that summer. Jim Nill was the only pro that attended (he had experience off ice training with the Canadian National Team) and we used an old high school gym, outdoor fields and the Nautilus training equipment and did a lot of the things that I learned from the Ludek Bukac of Czechoslovakia and Verner Persson of Sweden along with my PE training. A few years later everyone was doing off ice.
Players started by training like Football line men and many got really bulky. Later the training turned to a lot of stationary biking and many players like Lanny McDonald got high groin pulls because they didn’t stretch. Then everyone started training like sprinters. So we have gone through many stages but I still don’t see programs that are as comprehensive as the ones in many European places, in other words combining the physical, with game understanding, split vision and concepts like the give and go using other games.
1. Craig Anderson has a program called Poliquin Performance and answers important questions about age appropriate training.
http://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/filemgmt_data/Training%20off%20ice.pdf
2. Article with diagrams by Vladimir Bogomolov from the Soviet era. The former communist world is far ahead of where we are today because they focus on both preparing the body but don’t forget they are training Hockey Players and athleticism and game understanding must also be prepared.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/downloads/
3. IIHF Manual – Many Sided Physical Training In Ice Hockey – Off Ice
Harri Hakkanrainen of Finland presented this at the 2003 International Coaching Symposium. The Finns are the current IIHF World Champions.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/downloads/
4. These are videos I did last summer in Jihlava, Czech Republic. I had the Czech coaches run the dryland because I wanted to see what they do for youth players with simple equipment. Speed, strength, power, agility, balance, reaction time, split vision, coordination are the focus. In the last two IIHF World Championships the Czechs have won a Gold and a Bronze.
a. Split vision
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-split-vision-game-of-soccer-and-basketball-czech/
b. Speed, agility, power.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-agility-circuit-race-czech-youth/
c. Speed, coordination, agility.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-dryland-agility-core-circuits-czech-republic/
d. Agility, coordination, reaction time.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-dryland-agility-coordination-reaction-time-czech-youth/
e. Agility coordination using sticks.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-agility-coordination-using-sticks-czech-youth/
5. This is a video of a Russian coach putting Swedish high school aged players through an intense hockey specific circuit using weights, the Russian skating board, gymnastics, plyo’s, balance and partner exercises. There is about a 30” delay with an old Soviet video and then it starts.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-swedish-players-train-with-russian-coach/
6. My college women doing plyo training for quickness, agility and anaerobic fitness.
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-core-strength-workout-for-hockey/
7. Moscow Dynamo training in the 70’s with Olympic lifts and then outdoors with games and weights.
Outdoors:
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/videos/watch/o-moscow-dynamo-dryland/
Olympic Lifts:
http://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/mediagallery/media.php?f=0&sort=0&s=20080727160048673
9. Czechoslovakia off ice program dictated to our hockey class by the national coach Ludek Bukac at a coaching seminar at the U of Calgary in the late 70’s. This program was designed at Charles University in Prague. They filmed 100 games and then broke the games down into how much of hockey is strength, then agility, etc. and these 72 workouts combining weights, running, games, plyo’s etc. are based on the numbers they came up with.
Do we do any research like this before designing programs now?
http://www.dailyhattrick.com/hockeycoachforums/uploads/forum2/Czech%20national%20dryland.PDF
So just some Food for Thought on what is the Ideal Program.
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