Skills are taught through demonstration, practice, and feedback.
Athletes enhance their performance by practicing the movements they use in a game. Skills are learned with the brain, nervous system, and muscles which when memorized, is called a motor program. This is motor learning, which is the acquisition of movement skills through study, experience, or teaching/coaching.
Do muscles really memorize movement?
Muscles do not have the ability to memorize movement.
Learning and improving hockey skills requires the brain and nervous system to learn when to activate the muscles to contract and relax, to perform a smooth coordinated movement. This is called motor learning, and is defined as set of movements aimed at learning and refining new/different skills by practicing them.
Developing a motor program is going from consciously competent (where the athlete has to think a lot about the movement or skill) to learning the skill and being unconsciously competent. When the athlete can perform the skill without thinking about it, he or she has developed a motor program.
What is the best way for hockey players to learn a skill?
It is always best to practice the way we play.
A coach must understand how players move during a game to develop drills that emulate the game-performance skills. When players practice the movements used during a game, their motor program is developed so that, eventually, they can “turn the program on” and do what was practiced.
This means coaches must watch high level hockey to see how skills are used during a game. This can help a coach see what is done in a game, and develop drills based on plays during the game.
Examples of game-performance skills and drills include:
- Design drills to get players to shoot while they are striding, gliding, and stationary.
- Use drills to pass, and receive a pass, while striding, gliding, and stationary.
- Have players skate like fast professional players do, with a wide stride and quick recovery.
The importance of teaching game-performance skills
When drills are designed using game-performance skating, shooting, passing, and puck-handling, the player can quickly and relatively easily, go from practice to game without having to think about what he or she needs to do. Practicing the way we play will give players a better opportunity to excel.
When a player practices different movements than are used in a game, he or she is learning movements that do not translate to better performance. This can be confusing to a young player because the brain, nerves, and muscles get used to practicing non-game skills, then in a game, the player is not used to doing what is needed, and it can adversely impact his or her performance.
The coaching model
Four components for demonstrating, creating an ideal learning environment, practicing game-performance skills, and giving great feedback.
Demonstration phase
This is where players learn what to do and how to do it.
Young players have a limited ability to understand verbal information, therefore keep words to a minimum when demonstrating/describing a drill/skill. The best way to learn a new skill is to watch the skill being demonstrated, get a general idea of the skill, then practice the skill. A coach must always demonstrate the skill, or get a highly skilled player to demonstrate.
Seeing a skill is better than “hearing” a skill. To help players understand the skill, use two or three teaching cues. Teaching cues are short sentences used to focus the players’ attention to the parts of the skill we want them to see, ie:
- “Watch my skates and see how wide apart they are”
- Watch my arms move side-to-side”
- “See how my knees are bent.”
We want to direct attention to specific aspects of the skill.
Practice phase
In this phase, players will be developing the motor program that controls game-performance movements. It is best to practice the actual skill and practice the whole skill. Anything less than a game-like situation can introduce unrelated situations which can confuse the player and hinder learning and performance.
Response phase
In this phase, we must create practice situations that are ideal for learning and performance.
It is important to eliminate fatigue at beginning of practice. The warm-up should be low intensity to prepare players for higher intensity drills, and conditioning is at the end of practice. This is important because fatigue inhibits fine muscle movements such as passing, receiving a pass, shooting, and puck-handling.
Never use exercise (like push-ups) as punishment. If we do this, we are telling the players: “You did something wrong, now you have to do something that’s good for you.”
In most cases, the best punishment is sitting on the bench or in the penalty box for inappropriate behaviour. To motivate players to perform better, give them goals and objectives on most drills, such as “I want you to hit the net three out of five shots.”
Feedback phase
The better the feedback, the better the learning and performance. All research agrees that feedback is the strongest and most important variable controlling learning and performance, and the ability to provide meaningful feedback is important for a coach.
Give immediate feedback, or as soon as possible. Give positive feedback. Tell the athlete what to do and avoid telling the athlete what not to do. Give feedback when a player is successful, not just when he/she is unsuccessful.
