Hockey How To’s

Warming up before a game or practice is one of the most important things you can do in order to be ready when your skates hit the ice. Here is a how to video talking about different ways that you can warm up and be ready for the game or practice!

The body needs to be ready for your game or practice. Having a warm up routine will allow your body to be physically ready. This is also a great way to get you mentally focused on the competition and ready to go.

Here are some tips to help you warm up:

Dynamic Movement

1. Start with a jog and progressively move into A-Skips. It is important when doing the A-Skips that you are getting you knees up and arms moving.
2. Next, you will want to work on your rotation by jogging to the cone, turning and doing the A-Skips backwards.
3. After the A-skips, you want to get moving laterally. Start with a jog to the cone and turn sideways for a lateral shuffle. From there, we will incorporate a karaoke shuffle with a crossover. This move is really helping the hips loosen up.
4. Now the body is warming up, you are going to do a 70% run. Once you hit the cone, you are going to run at 70% of your max speed.
5. After the run, you are going to do some walking lunges. Really emphasize the arm movement in this exercise.

Ballistic Stretching

1. It is important to start with the dynamic movements before ballistic stretching because you don’t want to tear a muscle. You are going to want to start with a Frankenstein stretch. Swing your leg straight up and tough the toe with your opposite hand. (Left leg, right hand)
2. The next stretch is the inchworm followed by the scarecrow. Start by keeping your legs straight as possible and bring your hands down and slowly walk your hands out and come to a plank position. Once you are in the plank position, you are going to walk your hands back towards your feet and slowly reach up to the sky. Bring your arms to a 90 degree angle and bring the back so you are opening up your chest.
3. The next stretch is all about opening up the hips. Start in a push up position and bring one leg up and outside of your hands. From here, you want to take your inside hand, tuck under your other arm, and then bring it back through and reach for the sky. Do this a few times each side.
4. Lastly, you are going to want to do a walking knee pull. Bring your leg back and grab it at the ankle. Pull the leg back and lean forward, reaching out your opposite arm. You should feel this in you quads

Have you ever made a resolution that you didn’t keep? If you’re like me, the answer is probably yes. On this how to video, I will be sharing strategies that will help you keep those resolutions!

My New Years Resolution was to shoot 100 pucks a day. It is important to have a plan when setting a resolution for yourself. Here are the 4 steps I used to help me keep my resolution!

1. What is your new habit going to be?
   • Shoot 100 pucks a day
2. How do you anchor down this new habit?
   • Create a routine
3. How many pucks do we start with?
   • If you want to shoot 100 pucks a day, start off with baby steps and work your way up to your goal
4. Accountability
   • How are you going to hold yourself accountable to achieve this resolution? For me personally, I use a calendar and mark out my goals for each week.

Tying hockey skates is not as difficult as you might think, but if you want a comfortable fit so you can spend long hours on the ice without your feet blistering, then tying your hockey skates correctly is going to be very important.

5 Simple Steps To Tie Your Skates

1. Start by making sure your skates are loose enough to put on your foot. Loosen top two eyelets, pull the tongue back and put your foot in the skate.
2. Once the skates are on your foot, start from the toe and pull each lace a little so it’s not loose.
3. Go back to the top of the boot near the toe and grab each lace, and pull tight. To prevent each skate from becoming loose.
4. For younger skaters, wrap your laces around your hand and pull, using all your force to tighten your skates.
5. Time to tie them! With shorter laces, you don’t have to wrap around, tie like traditional sneakers in a double knot. If you have longer laces, people wrap them around skate to keep yourself from tripping on them on the ice.

Tips For Ensuring You Tied Your Skates Correctly

1. If you get out on the ice and are feeling like a bender, that means your skates are too loose around your ankles, so go re-tie them a little tighter.

2. If you get out on the ice and are feeling like your foot is no longer there and is getting numb, that means you tied it way too tight near your ankle and it needs to be a bit looser.

Taking Off Your Skates

When you’re done skating, you might feel too tired and cold and just want to take your skates off and leave ASAP. But if you don’t loosen your skates all the way, so your foot slips out with ease, you will kill your skate.

Yanking your foot out, or stepping on the heel will damage your skates. Respect the skate, take your time, and unlace the first few eyelets and then loosen the rest. Then, your foot should pop right out, and your skates will last longer.

Warming up before any physical activity helps with conditioning the muscles and ligaments and putting the central nervous system into exercise mode.

Since skating and stickhandling places stress on the muscles, insufficient pre-exercise conditioning can make a player vulnerable to injury and reduce his/her effectiveness during a practice session or game. For this reason, professional players spend considerable time warming up on and off the ice before every practice or game.

Watch our Hockey Hut How To video for steps on how to warm up before practice

Sadly, efficient warmups in youth hockey are not always the standard. Off-ice warm-ups are typically never utilized properly. 

Here’s a short list of excuses: late arrivals, suiting up your child in a 10×10 locker room together with the other 20 families, packed lobbies, and late practice starts.  This will not help to form good habits, although in most cases, the real reason for skipping a warm-up is in the lack of prioritization by the majority of parents. Ironically, most of these parents will make sure to warm up properly before their own workouts, otherwise “bad things will happen, and working days will be missed”. 

In the section below we will discuss several ideas of how to facilitate warmups for children of different ages, and we will review examples of routines.

For the off-ice warm-ups, possible answers to the “where?” question can be: 

• At home, if your commute to the rink isn’t long
• Availability to find open space at the rink – empty hallways, unused fitness studios, passthrough under the bleachers
• Parking lot, if it’s safe

Key points for the On-ice warm-ups: 

• Try to get your child on the ice as early as possible.  Encourage him to do the warm-up drills, so they ease into their skating, avoiding the potential to pull a muscle.
• Stickhandling, with or without a puck.
• Your coach should start the session with pre-practice games for younger kids and warm up drills for the older kids.

Young Children:

Younger kids who are just learning to skate will not put a lot of training stress on their bodies. Putting the gear on and off and just gliding around the ice is challenging enough for them, so all physical activities are conducted as games or friendly competitions, otherwise, a child might lose interest. Off-ice warm-ups will help to form the right habits before practice, and the on-ice drills will facilitate structure and discipline prior to more complicated drills. 

Example warm-up routine, ages 3-4

Off-Ice, 5 min

• Play a game that will include sitting/standing, jumping/pushing against the wall, swinging arms/legs and bending forward

On-ice, 10 min

• 2 min laps around the rink
• 2 min slalom between the tires
• 2 min inside edge pushes, alternate feet
• 2 min stickhandling, roll the wrists, no pucks
• 2 min tag game

Older kids

The game element is less essential here since the older kids are more self-motivated. The warm-up routine should include exercises targeting the full body or large muscle groups. The main difference between routines for different age groups is in the complexity of movement patterns and drill durations. 

Example warm-up routine, ages 5-9

Off-Ice without hockey gear, moderate pace, 5-10 min:

On-Ice, 10 min:

Example warm-up routine, ages 9 +

On-Ice, 12 min:

Recap: 

Warmups help to establish the correct training habits for smaller kids, and essential for older kids for optimal performance and injury prevention. For small kids, it’s more about keeping them active before the training session. For older kids, dedicating 15-20 min for the structured warm up prior to the main exercise block will improve performance and have long-term health benefits.

Private lessons are the perfect opportunity to work one-on-one to reach your desired goals. However, if you genuinely want to get the most out of your private lesson, it’s up to you to maximize your time on the ice. If you’re looking to maximize your lessons, build your confidence, and elevate your game, then follow these steps during your private lessons are the best way to reach that goal.

Come Prepared 

When you walk into your lesson, know what you want to work on, or need to improve on. If your coach asks you what you need to work on, probably the last thing he or she wants to hear in response is, “everything.” And this response is not consistent with the idea of owning your training anyway. Be proactive by bringing a list of some skills or areas you’d like to focus on.

Positive Attitude

You’ve made a special effort to arrange a time with your coach and benefit from their expertise. Be happy about it! Use this time for collaboration, enthusiasm, respect, and engagement. Your coach might ask you to try new things – posture, drills, techniques. If your coach offers a suggestion, be open to it! Some things might work, and some might not, but having a positive attitude and a willingness to try keeps you open to learning and developing as a player.

Listen to Your Coach

It can be hard to let go of control or think you know best when you get on the ice for a private lesson. During your lesson, be intentional about listening to your coach and trust that there’s a reason why they are asking you to run those drills, practice your shot, or repeat a specific technique several times. Put all of your energy into executing the skills to the best of your ability, and let your instructor do the rest. You came to them for a private lesson for a reason!

Bring a Friend

A great way to get the most out of what you learn in your lessons is to have someone else in the lesson with you (not just your coach!). When you have a friend or teammate join your lesson, your coach can show techniques on the other person so you can see the details, and then you can do the same so the coach can watch and make corrections. You can work together to learn and refine your skills during the lesson, and afterward as well.

Take Notes

Whether you still use a pen and paper or your “notebook” is your phone, bring something where you can jot notes. Some instructors even allow you to film techniques during your lesson. However you take notes, take them so you can reference them later. If you don’t, you’re bound to forget a lot of the material by the time you find time to practice later on. It’s also helpful to go back to these notes weeks and months and even years from now when you want to brush up on a particular topic.

Ask For More

You’ve taken the time to train with a coach, but you want to continue working and developing your skills after the lesson ends. Whether it’s new skills to review, conditioning recommendations, or additional practice suggestions, ask your coach for clarity. Knowing what your next focus is will help you reach your goals, one step at a time.

You’ve got ways to maximize your private lesson, but you might be wondering, Is it worth it? We want to help you understand the value of your private lesson experience. Download your free guide below!

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