With only a few slight modifications to your current weekly practice plan, you can have a faster team.

“Do I Have to Change Everything?”

It’s a weekday evening. You just finished streaming In the Crease on ESPN+ and you keep replaying the game changing moments all fueled by breakaways and winning 50/50 races to the puck. Quickly you realize what’s missing from your team: more speed.

Wisely, you go straight to The Coaches Site to find some answers, and with a growth mindset state, “I have to change everything.” The good news you find though, is that with only slight modifications to your current weekly practice plan, you can have a faster team. You don’t have to change everything!

Sprint Based Hockey

I have repeated it across all of my articles, but I am describing Sprint Based Hockey as a system. A system that slightly modifies classic practice layouts to prioritize fast and fresh over slow and tired.

A system is pretty difficult to write about in a 2,000 word article, so I’ve spread it out across the last three and will finish it up with article 4. I have introduced:

• The science of how to get fast
• A template for how to perform sprints across the week
• A template for the perfect hour of a hockey practice

In the final instalment of my introduction to Sprint Based Hockey as a system, the Perfect Week of Hockey Practice will be described here. My goal is to convince coaches to follow a scientific and physiological approach to their weekly practice planning. And how by doing so, it will lead to improved speeds come game day.

Why will Sprint Based Hockey lead to improved speeds come game day? First, because speed will be trained and treated as a skill. And second, practices will be set up in a way that honors players’ physiology and nervous system. In turn, players will get faster, because coaches are not making them slower.

I believe that an organization that adopts Sprint Based Hockey will be developing players for the next level or the higher level of the one they are currently at.

Want Fast Players? It Starts and Ends on the Ice, With You

One of the best ways to make a team faster is by not slowing them down. You cannot have your foot on the gas and brake. And the main driver of any team is the on-ice coaches. You are the biggest stakeholders.

That is why I’ve taken the last two articles I’ve written to focus on practice layouts, structures, and templates. At the end of the day the key stakeholder to player speed, besides the player, is the Coach. The Head, the Assistants, the people on the ice multiple times throughout the week with the players, truly have the largest impact.

The Perfect Week of Hockey Practice Template

The Perfect Week of Hockey Practice should change and look different every week, because of travel, easier vs harder games, overtimes, and other scheduling fluctuations. But the goal with this article, and my last three, is to present scientific principles and templates for coaches to make their own.

Many coaches did not take kinesiology or exercise science courses during College or University. I think my articles fill in those gaps. Most Coaches already do everything I am describing, just perhaps the order is wrong such as full ice 5v5 days out from the game and only performing small area games the day before a game.

Remember, across a week of practices:

• Body is less recovered from previous games to most recovered from previous game
• Want to go shorter distances to longer distances
• Smaller area of the ice to larger area of the ice
• Less game like (small areas only), to more game like (all 200 feet)
• Muscle and strength dominant to nervous system and speed dominant

Each day will receive its own section and more detailed template, but here are outlines to allow you to see things as a bigger picture.

Monday – 4 Days From Game Practice Template

During a Monday practice, players will be the least recovered from the games played on the weekend. If the games were away, they would be even less recovered. In the weight room, this would be a perfect day to work on strength only. The body’s nervous system could not efficiently adapt to high levels of speed training.

Taking these weight room neuromuscular principles and applying them to the ice, during practice a player’s nervous system should be the least stressed on Mondays.

How do you not overstress the nervous system? Great question. If you recall the short to long approach described in my A Weekly Template article, practice would involve the shortest sprints of the week and utilize small areas of the ice for drills.

This will mean the slowest speeds, because players can’t take many strides to get up to speed. And more body contact, which requires strength, because players are packed into a smaller area. But it also means the highest number of touches and repetitions because of the smaller area. Player’s still get plenty of work.

Table 1. Monday (4 days from game day) Template.

Video 1. 3v3 small area games. The small area restricts players ability to hit top end speeds, which requires a lot of nervous system. The stops and starts of small area games are more acceleration and therefore strength dominant. Lots of touches and the OODA Loop being utilized.

Video 2. College hockey skill stations. Short sprints, stationary passing, and a shooting drill. Notice the long rest in between sprints at that station.

Video 3. Youth hockey practice. Skill run by players. Goalie station run by Coach.

Tuesday – 3 Days From Game Practice Template

On Tuesday, players will be more recovered from the games played on the weekend. Yesterday, Monday, involved slower speeds and more collisions due to the nature of small area games. Therefore, the nervous system was stressed less and the muscles were stressed more. Muscles recover faster.

Today at practice the players will be fresher and ready to cover more areas of the ice, and therefore hit higher speeds.

Sprints will still be a little longer, but for less reps and more rest. And the dominant thought should still be smaller areas of the ice for drills. Therefore, more touches, more repetitions. Remember with the short to long approach you want to flow from less game like speeds to game like speeds throughout the week. Or, acceleration focused to top end speed focused.

Finally, in terms of practice length, this may be your longest practice of the week. The body should be recovered from games and it will have plenty of time to recover before upcoming games. In all of the templates, practice is only 1 hour. You may modify times such as 4, 20:00 sections. Just stick to the principles of the Perfect Hour of Hockey Practice where you mimic the demands of the game.

Table 2. Tuesday (3 days from game day) Template.

Video 4. College hockey blue to blue sprints. Timed, and Coach led.

Video 5. College hockey 3 skill stations.

Wednesday – 2 Days From Game Practice Template

The excitement starts to build as game day is approaching. Players will be ready to cover more areas of the ice and hit higher speeds in drills. Players should now be hitting top end speeds in practice.

Wednesday, or 2 days out, will look more like a hockey game. The mindset should also shift as preparation for the upcoming games is in full swing. Rather than emphasizing what went wrong last weekend, it will be what the team will do right this weekend, and drilling any modifications to systems needed for the upcoming opponent.

Table 3. Wednesday (2 days from game day) Template.

Video 6. College hockey 5v5 with a cycle to start.

Video 7. College hockey goal to blue line sprint station during skills.

Thursday – 1 Day From Game Practice Template

The day before a game, in my opinion, is one of the worst implemented days of the week. Thursday should be one of the shortest, fastest, and most intense practices. Not a slow walk through where players step on the ice game day and all they remember physiologically is moving slow and making slow decisions through the OODA Loop.

Keeping in mind it is the day before a game, each set of a drill may have plenty of rest in between. There is no need to rush through reps of drills. Coaches may take time in between to really make sure each player is ready for the upcoming game plan.

Table 4. Thursday (1 day from game day) Template.

Video 8. College hockey, day before an away game, small area game.

Video 9. College hockey, day before an away game, 5v5. Notice how long the drill lasts and the rest in between. High intensity, lots of rest.

Video 10. College hockey, day before a game, 5v5. Time is on the clock, score is being kept. Practice for the demands of the game, mimicking game like situations and pressures.

Further Details – Physiology Behind Lower Intensity Sections of Practice

If I were to guess the part of the practice templates that coaches would be the most confused about, it would be the long, intentional low intensity sections that mimic intermissions. Coaches may wonder how these low intensity periods help increase team speed?

The break in practice allows players to exert themselves and have high speeds during section 2 of practice. And then be recovered to hit high speeds in section 4. Without this low period, the speeds at the end of practice will fall below the 90% of maximum speed range – the range needed to elicit improvements in speed.

What is happening at the cellular level is the low intensity section is allowing the body to restore its phosphocreatine stores, the explosive burst energy system. It also is a time to clear out high intensity by products such as lactate (the burn you feel in the legs) and restore the blood to a normal acid level, which is needed for performance.

When recovered, players may then have 2 doses of high intensity speed. Versus making the entire back half of practice an acid bath or just a bland mediumish speed, because of fatigue. Practicing and moving at slow speeds will train the body to move at slow speeds – the opposite of what we want in Sprint Based Hockey.

One More Appeal – It Starts and Ends With You Coach

I am a weight room guy. I don’t skate out on the ice for practices and I don’t stand on the bench during games. However, I’ve spent years learning from experts around the world within the game of hockey and out of the game of hockey to learn how to truly develop speed. In that pursuit I have learned that speed is more destroyed than it is ‘not’ developed.

What I mean by that is coaches have improper practice layouts to develop speed. Throughout a season they make players slower. Every practice is a biological experiment, something I have learned from Cal Dietz of The University of Minnesota. And as the Coach, you must do everything properly to create the right formula for success. And I believe that Sprint Based Hockey, the system I have laid out across my articles, is the best way to do it.

Coach, take these templates, take these principles, and apply them. You are the key to developing or destroying your players speed.