Hockey season is kicking off in most parts of the world. Let's get dialed in!!

Two questions today to help you reflect on last month and set some goals for September:

1) What have you been doing a good job with lately within your hockey training?

2) What's one thing you need to work on or one goal you've got for September?

Let me know in the comments, and let's have an awesome month! 🙌🏼

 

Complete (at least) one of our Game Day Domination routines for 75%+ of your games (or tryouts/practices if you don't have games) during the month of September.

 

This includes our Stickhandling Prep, Edge Work Routines, or Game Day Domination Warm-Ups found in the new In-Season ‘21 Systems.

**If you don’t have access you can still participate by doing the following (or creating your own similar routines):

 

Stickhandling Prep
Edge Work Primer
Pre-Game Warm-Up 

 

 

Prepping your body before you hit the ice is almost like a “cheat code” that will allow you to step up your ability in an immediate sense giving you an extra pep-in-your-step for your game. While other players take a few minutes to “wake up” and get a feel for the puck, you’ll be flying around on the ice.

 

 

Complete (at least) one of our Game Day Domination routines for 100% of your games during the month of September!

 

 

Comment or like this post if you are committing to giving this September challenge a try!

 

Are you ready to be your absolute best on the ice, shock all of your teammates, and impress the fans in the crowd with your newfound ability?

With our 🔋 FRESH FACTOR™ 🔋 System, unstoppable speed, edgework, conditioning, and agility are all a reality for you this year.

Every summer, Coach Dan and I have multiple massive brainstorming sessions to develop new ways to improve on last year's system.

And this year, we've come up with several new upgrades, with the biggest being the new FRESH FACTOR™ system.

This is a combination of training sessions that you can do throughout the season to stay fresh both mentally and physically for all three periods, all season long.

Here's a look at what it includes:

Some other notable improvements include our Skills Sessions built right into the In-Season Programming with 11 different skills sessions you can do at home, an upgraded weekly planner, 30+ brand-new hockey-specific exercises, and our brand new Game Day Domination Package.

Go check it all out here:

https://www.hockeytraining.com/inseason/





For those of you with seasons starting in August or September, this is the most important month of the year to get prepared to dominate... let's go!

Two questions today to help you reflect on last month and set some goals for August:

1) What have you been doing a good job with lately within your hockey training?

2) What's one thing you need to work on or one goal you've got for August?

Let me know in the comments, and let's have an awesome month! 👍🏻

  

Complete 4 Hockey Hand-Eye training sessions (10-20 minutes) during the month of July.

  

This can include puck juggling with a stick, tennis ball juggling with hands, dribbling or bouncing and catching tennis balls, wall ball with a hockey stick. See below for drill ideas:



How Will This Help Me?

  

Hand-eye coordination training is great for all sports. In hockey, improving your hand-eye will help you with your reaction time on the ice, allow you to pick off saucer passes, settle bouncing pucks, and tip pucks in front of the net (a very underrated way to score goals).

  

  

Complete 8 Hockey Hand-Eye Sessions (10-20 mins) in the month of August!

  

  

Comment or like this post if you are committing to giving this August challenge a try!

  

It's summertime and the Hockey Training team is ready to get after it... let's go!

Two questions today to help you reflect on last month and set some goals for July:

1) What have you been doing a good job with lately within your hockey training?

2) What's one thing you need to work on or one goal you've got for July?

Let me know in the comments, and let's have an awesome month! 👍🏻

 

Perform at least 8 workouts during the month of July from the following list:

 

 

 

* Stick to your training system.  If you don’t have 8 speed/agility workouts scheduled for this month, simply add in the yoga sessions mentioned above.

* More is not always better with speed training. Your body needs to recover to get faster.

 

*If you aren’t following a HockeyTraining.com system with speed/agility training here are some speed workouts you can use. 

 

 

Training your hockey speed will help with your acceleration from a stopped position, your breakaway (or top) speed, and your quickness or agility on the ice.  All three combined make a dangerous hockey player!

 

 

In addition to the 8 speed workouts, perform full warm-ups and cool downs with every training session you do this month. Although it may not seem like it, they both help improve your speed!

 

 

Comment or like this post if you are committing to giving this July challenge a try!

 

*This is a guest post from Josh Mallory

Welcome to my inaugural Performance Hacks article for HockeyTraining.com!

In this post, I’m going to talk about the importance of hip and toecap orientation when it comes to shooting in hockey.

While traditional shooting mechanics still do and always will have their value in hockey, the best of the best at the NHL level are finding an advantage by cheating the system of shooting mechanics: pre-orienting their hips and toecaps to the net prior to receiving the puck rather than squaring to the net after the shot on their follow through.

I wrote a brief Twitter thread about the concept here ⤵️


Really good breakdown of the important roles hips and toecaps play in one-timers.

One way elite NHL goal-scorers gain an advantage is to *pre-orient* their hips and toecaps rather than squaring them *after* the shot

Example A: Matthews hips/toes to net *before* puck arrives https://t.co/sApF1ENlEW pic.twitter.com/pFFxUArsfI

— Josh Mallory (@JMallory9) June 5, 2021


Three players who utilize this mechanical adjustment with regularity are Auston Matthews, Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov.

Also known as stride leg shooting; planting your leg opposite your handiness (right leg for lefties and vice versa) allows you to pre-orient toecaps and hips to the net, build a more stable base around the puck, as well as implement more delay or potential deception into your release.

By pre-orienting your hips and toecaps to the net, players are able to blend pass reception to shot (what I call a loading frame) into one smooth motion which allows for more rapid shots that can catch goalies off guard.

Matthews shows it off with ease here, and he’ll often add a knee-drop to create even more downforce on his shot:





Having his hips and front toecap pre-oriented to the net allows him more flexibility as to where he can receive the pass, speeds up his loading frame, and really creates limitless potential in terms of where he can direct the puck:




Patrick Kane utilizes stride leg shooting often, especially in power play scenarios. As he tends to play his off-wing with the man-advantage, squaring his hips and front toecap to the net prior to receiving passes allows him to load, scan and shoot in a controlled yet powerful singular motion:





Nikita Kucherov gave us a ridiculous, world-class example of it in the 2021 playoffs against Carolina; he makes it look far easier from this distance than it actually is:





Because he’s able to blend his reception, load and release all into one motion all while staying square to the net, it makes it an incredibly difficult read for goaltenders:




Kucherov also utilizes the tactic to a startling degree of effectiveness on the power play. Like Kane, Kucherov also plays his off-wing on the power play. Kucherov has mastered squaring his hips and front toecap to the net, catching the puck off the back third of his stance and ‘sweeping’ it into the back of the net:





Because he blends the movement so effectively and quickly, Kucherov is then able to add deception to the movement and implement a pass out of the very same stance every few attempts, which will keep penalty killers constantly guessing whether he’s going to shoot or pass. A true dual-threat:





And finally, we circle back to Matthews. In strong side catch and release scenarios, Matthews has the exact same concept in mind. Here, notice how he squares his hips and toecaps to the net before receiving the pass rather than squaring after in order to allow for a smoother, stronger and quicker reception to release:





Or this catch and release in motion high in the zone against Colorado; he receives, squares, and fires away in his stride leg motion. Because he’s squared to the net, he’s in complete control. His base is strong, his eyes are up, and he can manipulate his release and target inside of movement:





So, while traditional shooting mechanics should still be the basis of how you learn to shoot the puck, adding stride leg shooting mechanics (as well as pre-orienting your hips and toecaps to the net in strong side catch and release scenarios) into your repertoire will help take your goal-scoring ability from good to great — no matter the level you play.

Josh Mallory is the Assistant Coach and Director of Analytics with the Brock University Women’s Hockey team. He is a current Master of Applied Health Sciences (Sport Management) candidate at Brock University and writes a hockey newsletter with over 350 email subscribers called Mallory’s Playbook. Josh also works as a Video/Crossover scout with McKeen’s Hockey covering 2021 NHL Draft-eligible prospects.

To check out Josh’s newsletter, click here.
You can also follow Josh on Twitter, here.

Many of you have been waiting for this...

Our Hockey Training "Reverse Retro" Jersey Drop is live.

Snag one here:  https://shop.hockeytraining.com/products/jerseys

We've got 3 sizes available with limited quantities available for each size. First come, first serve.

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