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Townshend Hockey
PO Box 1231
Saco, Maine 04072
USA
http://www.townshendhockey.com/teaching_vs_drilling.pdf
Teaching versus Drilling
In the world of professional hockey
we pre-scout our competition in an effort to be prepared. I do the
same thing in the hockey school
world as well.
Throughout 24 years of operating
hockey schools I have personally observed competitors programs and
the glaring issue is the absence of
the camp’s expert.
I was recently in attendance at a
camp with a national presence and noticed yet again the absence of
the camp’s expert. I asked a
parent if this bothered her and she replied, “No, because she was informed
the staff was trained to teach his
system and as long as they teach his system, I am ok with it.”
I asked if I could watch the camp
with her and she agreed. The first drill required her son to shoot a
puck along the boards to a child
waiting behind the net. Her son skated along the boards to meet
another player who was told to
collect the shoot-in. Her son was told to “Battle” the player behind the
net who had now stopped the puck.
The player’s were told to “Battle” for the puck and try to take the
puck from behind the net and score.
The woman’s son was quite small
and the other player was much bigger. As her son approached the
larger player, I just knew what was
going to happen. Physics took over and her son was knocked to the
ice by the bigger player and the
bigger player stepped out from behind the net and scored an easy goal.
The group had 10 kids in it with one
coach (even though the camp advertised a 5:1 ratio). The other
eight player’s did the drill and
the original two player’s switched position’s and got to do the drill one
more time before it was time to move
onto the next drill. The woman’s son got knocked down again
and the bigger player scored another
easy goal.
This scenario was repeated at every
station and her son spent most of the next 50 minutes being
knocked down repeatedly. Not once
was he corrected and taught how to handle the situation he was
facing. Regardless of his size if
the staff had corrected his tactics he would have had more success in
executing the drill. After the
session I asked her what her son actually learned from the experience
except how to get up off the ice?
She had no answer.
I spoke with some of the coaches
after the session and asked them their names and credentials (this is
the same process I went through when
I used to send my son to hockey schools). The camp website
promoted the staff as current
professionals, etc. Only one guy had any “Pro” experience and that was in
the CHL (Central Hockey League).
Seeing I coached in that league, I was not surprised that these
coaches did not understand the
learning process and how important it is to break things down into more
digestible pieces.
Let me share with you why the “Battle
drills” were such a disaster. In the NHL we draft 18 year old
players and bring them to a
development camp 2 weeks after the draft. We put them through “Battle
drills” as well and every- single
one of them executes the drills incorrectly and we know why. They
spend most of their youth playing
80-100 games a year; most of these kids face “Battle” situations about
5 percent of the game. I know this
because I have actually placed a stopwatch on players and tabulated
how much time is actually spent in
“Battle” situations. Try it yourself, last year I placed a clock on an
NHL defenseman and he was in actual
1 on 1 battles for 2 minutes out of a game where he played 15
minutes. So because very little time
is actually spent in one on one battles, at the youth level especially,
because the puck is in transition
80% of the time (it’s constantly moving from one team to the next or
the best player is carrying it all
the time) and kids are not being “Taught” the fundamentals of “Battling”,
therefore they are unable to execute
in practice or games.
Once we have proven to them that
they lack the skills necessary to compete in our league, we teach
them the fundamentals and break
every step down into small parts until they execute correctly, then we
move onto the next drill. This is
the process with NHL draft picks yet at this camp the kids are not being
taught they are simply being placed
in situations where failure is prominent and there is no correction. I
am sure their parents thought they
saw improvement but it was not lasting as they were never “taught”,
they were just drilled and there was
no long-term retention.
In closing I would like to express
these two points…
1) It is important that the “expert”
be in attendance regardless of the staff’s qualifications. This
would ensure that the investment
that parents are making into their player’s development is a
valuable investment.
2) My intention is to express the
importance of proper execution and the value of constant
correction of fundamental skills and
their relationship to long-term retention of these skills.
Basically – a player should not
just be “put through” a drill and then moved onto the next lesson
the player should be taught the
drill properly and be required to execute the drill effectively
before moving onto the next lesson.
Quite often the next lesson is a continuation of the
previous lesson.
Thank you,
Graeme Townshend
