Hockey Drills E-Book

Mal Alexander

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Hockey Drills is a collection of activities and practices designed to enliven and improve coaching sessions at all levels of the game. The drills are organized into chapters according to a particular skill or phase of the game; from the warm up and cool down through ball carrying and receiving, defending and attacking to goal scoring and goal-keeping. A vital section on pre-season fitness drills is also included. Each chapter starts with a basic analysis of the types of skill needed for that particular aspect of the game, before progressing to a series of activities to develop them. Each exercise is supported by clear diagrams that show the moves of the individual players. Aimed at players and coaches at all levels of the game and fully illustrated with 74 colour photographs and 160 diagrams.

Leseprobe

HOCKEY DRILLS

SESSION IDEAS AND DRILLS FOR THE COACH

MAL ALEXANDER

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

This e-book first published in 2017

www.crowood.com

© Mal Alexander 2017

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 323 3

Dedication

Dedicated to Marina, Robyn and the Wapping HC Ladies 4th team – where it all began…

In memory of Ravi S. K. Ghowry

Contents

Introduction

Session Design

Chapter 1: Pre-Season Fitness Drills

Chapter 2: The Warm-Up/Cool Down

Chapter 3: Ball Carrying

Chapter 4: Passing/Receiving

Chapter 5: Defending

Chapter 6: Attacking/Goal Scoring

Chapter 7: Goalkeeping

Chapter 8: Penalty Corners/Short Corners

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Index

Introduction

The late, trumpet-loving Roy Castle once told us, through the miracle of song, that to be the best, all you needed was dedication.

That, of course, was a lie. When Roy pulled on his dancing shoes and tippy-tapped his way to various world records, there were many more factors than dedication alone helping him to achieve those stunning feats.

Talent, confidence, physical ability, training environments, self-discipline, a support network of close friends and family, detailed plans of how to meet specific and achievable goals, a winning mentality, experience, and many other things, all had their part to play during the course of his incredible career.

Above all else though, those who achieve their goals will have been inspired and directed by a coach – a role model, instilling in them a love for the activity they take part in, passing on their knowledge, enabling others to make the most of the opportunities and abilities available to them.

Whether the players you coach go on to play at the Olympics or simply enjoy their sport at a lower level we, as coaches, have the ability to inspire those around us. We have the ability to change lives for the better, bringing fun and learning together in an environment that so many use to escape their everyday lives, at all levels of the sport.

Your own coaching style will be unique and constantly evolving – shaped by your personality, experience and criteria for success. Whether you demand excellence and self-direction from elite players, motivate your team to work towards a specific vision or goal, or attempt to develop players for the long term, you will employ a mixture of strategic and functional planning in the hope of getting the results you desire. A good coach will, by this rationale, be one who prepares players to perform at a consistently high level in the matches that they play.

A truly great coach also understands the need to inspire the person, and not just the player. A coach who recognizes that by encouraging someone to be the very best that they can be away from the hockey pitch, will be preparing them to become the best athlete that they can be and, in turn, mean that during the very limited number of on-pitch hours they will spend together, the coach will be preparing an athlete to become the best hockey player that they can be.

The purpose of this book, however, is not to act as a guide to how you coach – each of you will find your own path in this respect. Rather, I hope you will find something here that will inspire the way you approach the planning and content of your hockey sessions by providing you with a helpful framework of themed activities and ideas for your school and club sessions, whether you or your players are new to hockey, returning to the sport or already have some experience.

I hope what you find here will provoke further thought and discussion in your approach to coaching this fantastic game.

Session Design

The obvious place to start with your planning is online – and the internet can often be a wonderful thing, with more valuable information than you ever thought possible immediately to hand, on any subject about which you care to think. The downside is that it’s also rammed to the rafters with more utterly useless information, YouTube clips and drills, all extolled by self-proclaimed experts, than you can shake an angry hockey stick at …

So, once the head scratching is out of the way, where do you begin as a coach? How do you create a drill or, indeed, a session?

Firstly, it is important to understand that the drills given here are just a guide. They have been put together as part of themed session ideas that you may use some of, or all of, split into more than one session, refer to or simply use as inspiration for the creation of your own drills and sessions according to your own players’ needs and abilities.

Secondly, while you will, of course, find a sprinkling of technical shaping drills to aid those new to hockey in getting to grips with the basics, I have taken a largely gamesbased, player-centred approach to the activities within this book.

Whatever your methodology though, there is always one overriding principle to the planning of your session: what are you trying to achieve?

Once you have set your objective, there are then two key codependent considerations you should have before you begin to put pen to paper, and continue to bear in mind throughout the planning process:

How does the activity itself encourage the (ideally, contextualized) techniques you are hoping to elicit, and how can this be further developed?

How and when will you interact with your players, so as to aid their learning within your training environment?

Setting your Objective

Be specific. By focusing on an explicit outcome and rewarding the behaviours and actions of your players in achieving that outcome you are encouraging it to be recreated in similar match play scenarios.

To begin focusing on an objective, I find it helpful to break the game down into three distinct areas before homing in on something specific within that theme.

What do you want your team to do to create a goal?

What do you want your team to do to prevent a goal?

What do you want your team to do when you win or lose possession of the ball?

These areas can be looked at from a team or individual perspective, but I would argue that, however you approach the game, the gaining or losing of possession and your team’s reaction within that five- to ten-second transition period is likely to be a key factor in winning or losing games, regardless of where it happens on the pitch. I would therefore encourage you to try to incorporate this aspect of the game throughout your drills – making sure that both attack and defence have a target for success wherever possible – e.g. when winning possession, the defending team in some way gain the right to attack but also, that the team or individual losing possession have or has the opportunity to win the ball back again.

Methodology: Technical Shaping v Game Play

What type of drill will you create to meet your objective? Personally, I hate cones. I hated running around them as a player, and I hate to see players running around them as a coach.

In my experience, players who acquire technical skills implicitly, while working towards an explicit outcome, in game-rich environments are likely to be more fluent in their movement, more creative and able to make quicker and arguably better decisions on the use of those skills via game pattern recognition than players who learn by standing in line, waiting patiently for their one shot to execute a skill in isolation every few minutes. We, as coaches, also learn more about our players in game play situations than we do in isolated skills exercises.

Not forgetting, of course, that learning in a game play environment is a whole lot more fun and stress free!

That isn’t to say that technical shaping drills don’t have their place. They do, and they can be particularly useful – as I mentioned, you will find them in this book too. What I would say, however, is it is best to make sure they are used to attain a specific outcome and, when imparting technical knowledge, I have found that using analogy is a much more effective learning tool than explicit instruction, particularly with younger players. Indeed, players in general seem to respond more receptively when they understand how it might feel to perform an action than when they are given the ins and outs of things such as distance, angles and hand position.

For example, when coaching the technique for performing an aerial pass, I would be more likely to describe the action, ‘Imagine the stick being an extension of your arm, the hook of the stick being your fingertips. Now, keeping your palm flat, imagine flicking the ball with your fingertips up a flight of stairs.’ I would progress from there and let players explore the action themselves, only correcting technique when absolutely necessary.

Of course, it is important for us as coaches to have knowledge of those common technical aspects that we are intending our players to learn and, as such, at the beginning of each chapter you will find coaching points to be used as a guide to key techniques.

Rather than torturing your players with the in-depth biomechanics of performing an action, the intention is for these to be used by yourself as a coaching reference tool.

In game play activities it is worth considering the following:

Rules/constraints: With your objective in mind, what rules might you add to your drill that will help to elicit a situation in which players will have the maximum number of opportunities to execute your intended objective?

Resources: What equipment will you use/do you have available to you that will help to achieve your objective? How might this have an impact on your activity? Can you be innovative with the resources you have – for example, could different coloured balls mean different points or rules?

Players: How many players will be involved in the activity? Will you use fewer players so as to give each individual more touches of the ball and, thereby, more decision-making opportunities? Will you change those numbers as the drill progresses, perhaps creating overloads or by allowing players rest periods as rotating teams or individual substitutes? If players are resting, can they still be involved in the game?

Playing area: When considering the constraints, resources, intensity and numbers involved in the exercise, what impact will the size and shape of the playing area have? What shape, restrictions or changes will apply and will they alter at all during the activity?

Time: With rolling substitutions, hockey has become an incredibly intense game, where players may only be on the pitch for five to eight minutes at a time and working at a high intensity throughout. Reflect, perhaps, on how the level and ability/relative fitness of your players will influence this aspect of your session. When and how will you factor in rest periods, rotations, coaching points or even ball collections and setting up time between activities? Could the time you allocate increase/decrease the intensity or pressure on players to perform certain actions – e.g. a ten-second time limit to score following a turnover?

Winning/losing: What will you reward? How do players win the game? What is the consequence of winning/losing the game? Ideally, there should be a reason to win/lose each game – it incentivizes players and creates a competitive atmosphere that, ultimately, will be recreated in a match situation.

Player inclusion: Will you give players ownership and, if so, how? Are you willing to explain the desired outcome and let them add their own rules, create their own adaptations, consequences and ways to score? How will you advance learning objectives within the group as a whole and/or with players individually? Will you be player-led and open to debate, allowing team members to give their perspective on an activity, or will you demand explicit actions to achieve your objectives for the session?

Lastly … if it isn’t Working, Change it!

One of the hardest lessons I have learnt in coaching is that there are times when drills simply don’t work. That doesn’t make them bad drills, or that the players are doing something wrong. It doesn’t matter that they have worked before, with a different group of players.

What matters is that you recognize that there are issues, and that you are proactive in changing the activity to make sure that your original objective is being met rather than pressing ahead with your session plan regardless. Always be prepared to think on your feet!

Template created by Mark Robinson

Session Plan Template

Session plan templates are ten-a-penny, and all very similar. Indeed, it’s likely that you may already have something you’re comfortable using. Whether you scribble notes on a Post-it for ease of pitch-side use or produce reams of in-depth outlines, compare and contrast them with the example template here. It’s one I’ve found that works for me both on and off the pitch.

CHAPTER 1

Pre-Season Fitness Drills

‘I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”’

Muhammad Ali

Doubtless, your players will hate lung-busting, sinew-burning fitness training too. Once it is over, or at least when they’re consistently one step ahead of the opposition, however, they may well thank you. Just don’t bank on it …

For me, the key to fitness training is that it is measurable and that realistic goals, whether they be team or individual, are set from the start. The drills given here are measurable, with goals and/or the drills themselves adaptable by all manner of innovative means to best suit the players that you coach.

Of course, different players and different teams will have different motivations as to why and how they play or train. Whether you’re working with athletes who jump out of bed at 5am to get to an early morning gym session, dreaming of Olympic glory, or players who take to the turf for the enjoyment and social side of the game, it is important to find a way to engage them and to provide an environment that allows them to reach their potential.