04/14/2017
Teaching Tools and Application of Methodology
With everything we teach, we put a very high value on the idea of fostering confidence in the individuals we teach. Without confidence to go after what they love and freely apply what they have learned, everything we teach may as well be pointless. This does not mean we promote sunshine and rainbows, trophies for all, or sheltering. On the contrary, we want to be honest in letting kids know that hard work and dedication to craft is extremely important. It is how we go about applying this, and interacting, that makes all the difference. First of all we believe in a strength based approach to skill, and player development. While you cannot have huge holes in your game, being mediocre at everything won’t do much for you either. We believe in maximizing strengths, then building out from there, by minimizing weaknesses.
In addition to the strength based approach, another way we foster confidence in players is, if possible, we jump on the opportunity to notice the good rep (per say), as opposed to pointing out all possible bad reps. What this does is, make the positive or advantageous technique more consistent, therefore making the bad technique less consistent. It has become common knowledge in psychology, that when you focus on something, whether it be a movement or another action, you are more likely to repeat the action that you are focusing on. With this knowledge, it seems safe to assume that if given the choice between noticing a bad rep or a good rep, you should pick the good one.
One of the key tools we use to make players aware of their movement patterns and decision making on the ice, is video. Whenever possible, we try to show the player video of themselves performing whatever we are explaining. We also use video as a crucial player analyzation tool for games, and a way to prep players for whatever skill we might be working on that session.
