Coaching

[HockeyDude1712 0]

hey I am helping coach a team of young kids (5-7 years) and I was just wondering if you guys had some decent drills for them. Some of them havent been skating that long so they cant be too complicated. thanks

[pldhockey4 0]

are you skating with them at practice?

if so, play follow the leader. it is a good skating drill and you can cover things like backwards skating, crossovers and the warm up skatings in a fun way.

[HockeyDude1712 0]

yes I am skating with them. I also play this game where I put my gloves down on the ice and try to hit them with it so its kinda like dodgeball becuase it helps them learn to get out of the way and skate hard.

[pldhockey4 0]

is this ice or roller?

i helped a elementary league roller team the past 2/3 seasons. they hated doing laps so we just did the follow the leader wich took their minds off all the skating.

another drill we did was the half moon shooting drill. kids love to shoot!

[lando_8 0]

Check out the USA Hockey site, they have all their manuals available for download in PDF format.

USA Hockey CEP Materials:

http://www.usahockey.com/coaching/cep_mate.../cep_materials/

I think based on the age of kids you'll want to check out the CEP Level 1 Skill Development Manuals. I'm in Canada we have the Initiation Program and our manuals are very similar. (Our manuals aren't available for download )

They are great for putting together good, fun practices for the kids..

Hope this helps!

[Shtrsdad 0]

HD1712 I am coaching both an Initiation team and a Peewee team (gotta learn when to sit on my hands!)

Check out Hockey Coach.com there is a couple of bulletin boards and a library of drills. Some of the drills are targeted at older kids, but they can be used for the young 'uns.

Last year I used a lot of patterns with the initiation kids, W's and even circles. Pylon weaves using different skills like glide turns or on one skate. For warm up we do different things while circling the ice... Superman dives at the blue... down on one knee, pencil rolls. As much as skating is critical perhaps recovery is equally or more imprtant cuz kids that are having trouble will have to recover as often as they fall.

We tried to end as many patterns as we could with a shot on net. After all scoring is the fun part!

We try to always include a game of some sort be it asteroids, cops and robbers, british bull dog (or when done carrying a puck, british puck hog) or freeze tag anything to raise the fun factor. We even did a relay last year where the kids had to push one of their team mates sitting on a folding chair around a plylon. It was a riot!

Let your imagination go wild and try to keep as many kids moving as possible. Their young minds don't have the greatest attention span so the more that are moving the less you have to worry about them being distracted and doing things you'd rather have them not do.

[biff44 0]

I would get a few of the parents to chip in and get a top figure skating instructor in to teach them for 5 lessons or so. Then keep doing the drills for 10 minutes each practice. At this age, any player that can skate well, is balanced, and can use his edges will be a scoring dynamo! Once they can effortlessly skate from point A to point B, then things like stickhandling, passing, and shooting get much easier.

[jason37 2]

Mite Training Manual (8U)

http://www.usahockey.com/servlets/FileServ...an%20Manual.pdf

Squirt Training Manual (10U)

http://www.usahockey.com/servlets/FileServ...an%20Manual.pdf

[HockeyDude1712 0]

ok thanks guys