Jack Blatherwick
Two completely different games
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- Last Updated on Thursday, 12 July 2012 18:58
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
The NHL is on a mission to prove that behaviorism works – that by enforcing or not enforcing the rules, they can promote skills or bury them.
Eight years ago, the league decided to call all stick penalties and interference just as written, but forgotten, for a century. This was an attempt to bring more scoring into the game, so empty seats would be filled by people who preferred highlight goals and creative playmaking over a smash-mouth, defensive brawl.
It worked. Beyond filling seats, this decision changed the culture of the NHL. GMs, coaches and scouts changed their strategy.
Coaches: Empower young players. Turn them loose to compete
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- Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 July 2012 20:16
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
There is a great lesson unfolding in soccer right now – a story about a maverick amateur team that is defeating, no, embarrassing the pros of Major League Soccer (Mark Ziegler, June 3, 2012. The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC).
Eric Wynalda, was a three-time World Cup player who has not been hired as a coach in the MLS because of radical ideas like trusting his players to make spontaneous decisions during games. So he started his own amateur team in California, a recycled bunch of cast-offs who were cut from pro teams and now work regular day jobs. They built a team that is beating MLS teams that practice more, condition by the hour and follow the current trend toward robotic systems.
Read more: Coaches: Empower young players. Turn them loose to compete
Empower your creative instincts this summer
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- Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
“Empower your players. They have to make instantaneous decisions on the field. We coaches can’t make those decisions for them in games … and we shouldn’t. We must let them make mistakes and learn. Brain scientists tell us that the more we correct players and tell them what NOT to do, the more we lose creativity. Development depends on how well they learn to read the game. Make suggestions later. Encourage players to try new attacks, but don’t tell them what NOT to do.”
— Jürgen Klinsmann, U.S. Soccer Coach on developing ‘field sense.’
Rink sense, vision, read-react decisions, creativity, confidence, poise: These are the highest priorities for success in hockey – more than skating, shooting, stickhandling, passing, receiving, strength, speed or acceleration. Of course the secondary list is important, but training for instantaneous mental skills is under-coached – and negatively impacted by over-emphasis on systems featuring mistake-free, rigid, defense-minded game plans.
A lesson from Bubba on creativity
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- Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 July 2012 20:19
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
For anyone who watched the 2012 Masters Golf Tournament, it was obvious with every swing that Bubba Watson has never been coached. His father just gave him a golf club at a young age and said, “Figure it out.” No one does it in a more unorthodox manner, and as Nick Faldo remarked, “With every swing, Bubba eliminates another page of (conventional) golf instruction.”
Bubba’s swing resembles a mighty blow from an axe, aimed at a log too big for most humans to split. Beyond that, it seems he is trying to bend every shot around a huge Redwood tree that doesn’t exist. Even on tee shots with wide-open fairways, Bubba visualizes a big banana curve ball, sometimes a wild hook, sometimes a slice, whatever fits his creative imagination.
Acceleration: Don’t be confused by power or force
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- Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
‘Quickness’ and ‘agility’ should be among your highest priorities for offseason training on the ice and off. These are most easily characterized by the word ‘acceleration’ from physics, because it is defined as a change in the magnitude or direction of velocity (speed).
Previously we discussed ‘force,’ and how it can mislead when we are planning a training program for acceleration, even though the word ‘force’ is used correctly. Force = mass x acceleration. If the majority of our training is with great mass (heavy weights), that would mean we are minimizing acceleration as we train.
Read more: Acceleration: Don’t be confused by power or force
