Why is competition such a great teacher?
By Jack Blatherwick, 31 January 2013
“Players learn more from competition than from drills around cones,”
claimed Dave Peterson, former Minneapolis Southwest High School and U.S. Olympic Team coach. He was conducting a clinic in upstate New York and his 1988 Olympic team demonstrated a variety of scrimmage activities for 150 youth coaches. Peterson continued, “There are thousands of hockey decisions every shift, and those who make the right ones are better players, regardless of their skill level.”
Coach Pete was ‘old school.’ He had seen drill books with the cones clearly drawn, but he tossed them aside. His approach to development was simple: “Play.”
The logic is an important lesson for coaches who are encouraged to teach by a standardized model. “Passion and energy increase immediately when players know they are going to scrimmage,” he added. “Is there anything more important than passion?”
Old-school logic has recently been validated by technology in neuroscience.
Using new brain imaging techniques, a team of researchers from Bristol University in the UK found that subjects learned much from their competitors, not just from their own trial-and-error. Mirror neurons in the brain are highly active when the opponent attempts plays against us. Because these neurons are hard-wired into motor learning patterns, that opponent’s skill might become part of the observer’s own repertoire, even without a conscious decision to add it.
As we plan for long-term athletic development, we should never forget that competitive experience is invaluable. There is a popular trend toward over-emphasis of isolated skills in structured practices. Boring. Kids can practice skills on their own as they see the need.
Team practices are a golden opportunity to put it all together. Successful execution in games is not just a matter of isolated skills; it’s more about learning to fit those skills into the right competitive moment.
Anticipation is critical.
For example, after years of returning serves in tennis, the experienced pro knows where the ball is headed even before the server’s racket makes contact. A defensive back in the NFL learns to read the eyes (and mind) of an opposing quarterback. Wayne Gretzky put it this way, “I am always moving to where the puck is going to be next, not to where it is right now.”
So scrimmaging is important in learning to anticipate – clearly the most important skill in hockey.
However, it is also an environment for players to mimic others through mirror neurons. We have known for several years that these specialized neurons are active when a subject (even a monkey) observes a movement by another person, almost as if the subject himself had made that movement. It’s easy to see why the youngest players always learned from older ones in northern Minnesota scrimmages that included all ages.
On that day of Coach Peterson’s clinic, the team demonstrated scrimmages with different specific objectives: 4-on-4 scrimmage in which no one was allowed to control the puck for more than two seconds. This forced players to anticipate the next play like Gretzky: Those without the puck moved to get open, because their team-mate closer to the puck needed to pass as soon as he got to it. 6-on-6 or 7-on-7 scrimmage forced everyone to make plays in tight areas, much like scrimmaging on smaller ice sheets or cross-ice.
In another scrimmage, assistant coaches randomly inserted a ‘wild-card’ player or two in a different-colored jersey. The extra man played for the team with the puck, so everyone had to be aware of all the tools they had at their disposal.
Coach Pete concluded the clinic with this advice, “Keep the energy high in your practices; compete all the time. Use a variety of scrimmages. When we used to practice outside in minus 20 degree temperatures, if I had laid out cones for skill drills, and players were standing in line, they would have all gone out for basketball. Don’t let your players sleep-walk through practice.”
For a short review of the brain imaging study, go to www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/204582.php
Well-rounded athletes make the best hockey players
Posted by Dean Holden at May 16th, 2013
by Richard Monette, 17 April 2012
The best junior hockey players on the planet have gathered in Edmonton and Calgary to compete for the 2012 World Championships. Canadian players are rated at the top of this elite group. It may surprise you to learn that as kids, most of these rising stars played other sports in addition to hockey.
We had an opportunity to talk with some of the junior players on Team Canada. They told us that they played a variety of sports in their younger, formative years. Soccer, lacrosse, baseball and golf are some of the sports that were most often mentioned.
How can playing other sports contribute to their hockey game? The players said they learned other skills that made them better hockey players. And they gained extra confidence, which is key to hockey success. Without their experiences in other sports, many players feel they wouldn’t have become elite hockey players.
Two brothers on the team, Dougie and Freddie Hamilton, are a great example. Dougie told the Globe & Mail that their parents told them to just play the sports they loved. “They never pressured us into playing hockey,” he said. “We played pretty much every sport growing up.”
Their parents told TSN that they simply emphasized having fun and doing their best.
The fact that well-rounded athletes make better hockey players has been known for a long time. Gretzky, Orr, and many others all played a diversity of sports before specializing in hockey. In fact, Hockey Canada has made playing a broad range of sports a cornerstone of hockey player development.
“Hockey Canada believes that physical literacy for young boys and girls will lead to greater success and longevity in hockey and all sports,” Corey McNabb, who is charge of coaching and player development for Hockey Canada, told us.
McNabb also said that “the ability to learn agility, balance and coordination that comes from playing a variety of sports, builds a solid foundation for athletic success, physical fitness and more importantly, staying active for life.”
For Hockey Canada, the recipe is simple: ensure your son or daughter practices a diversity of sports during the off-season. They can begin specializing in hockey around the age of 12 or 13.
Parents who want to help their kid succeed in hockey can learn a lot from some of the best junior hockey players in the world as well as from a long list of hall-of-famers: Well-rounded athletes do make the best hockey players.
Welcome youth hockey parents, coaches and fans! Liberty Mutual Insurance is proud to partner with USA Hockey to bring the youth hockey community the Responsible Sports program. Whether you volunteer as a coach or root for your kids from the stands, Responsible Sports gives you the tools, resources, tips and advice you need to help kids experience the best that youth sports have to offer.
Learn more about USA Hockey
At Liberty Mutual Insurance, we believe kids can learn valuable life lessons when Responsible Sport Parents come together with Responsible Coaches to foster environments that promote and display responsibility.
We’ve partnered with the youth sports experts from Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) to create this Guide to provide resources, advice, tools and tips to help you – the youth sport parent – help your child get the most out of their youth sports experience.
In the following pages, you’ll learn more about how to help your child set goals for the season, how to foster a Mastery Approach rather than a focus on winning and losing, how to fill your athlete’s Emotional Tanks (even in tough situations) and how to teach your athletes to Honor The Game and represent the best of sportsmanship.
Learn More About Responsible Sport Parenting
We have created two ways in which you can learn about Responsible Sport Parenting. You have the option to learn the principles of Responsible Parenting by reading the guide in written format or you can watch a brief video. Afterwards, you can test your knowledge by taking a short 10-question quiz and help a youth sports team earn a $2,500 Community Grant!
Interested In Participating In Our Community Grant Program
At Liberty Mutual Insurance, we believe kids can learn valuable life lessons when Responsible Coaches create and foster environments that promote and display responsibility. We believe you have a unique role in our child’s lives to help kids learn how to win - both on and off the field.
We’ve partnered with the youth sports experts from Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) to create this Guide to provide resources, advice, tools and tips to help you – the youth sport coach – focus your athletes to achieve their best in practice, competition and in life.
In the following pages, you’ll learn more about how to help athletes set goals for the season, how to foster a Mastery Approach rather than a focus on winning and losing, how to fill your athlete’s Emotional Tanks to keep them motivated to work harder, how to create a positive relationship with parents, and how to teach your athletes to Honor The Game and represent the best of sportsmanship.
Learn More About Responsible Coaching
Interested In Participating In Our Community Grant Program?
We have created two ways in which you can learn about Responsible Coaching. You have the option to learn the principles of Responsible Coaching by reading the guide in written format or you can watch a brief video. Afterwards, you can test your knowledge by taking a short 10-question quiz and help a youth sports team earn a $2,500 Community Grant!
TEACHING LEADERSHIP IN YOUTH SPORTS
By Doug Abrams
Aristotle said that people “learn by doing,” and not simply by listening to instruction about what to do. Parents and coaches want sports to teach children leadership skills, yet we adults sometimes forget that youth leaguers (like the rest of us) learn how to be leaders best when they actually lead.
On too many teams, youth leaguers miss out on real leadership experience because their coaches make all the decisions. The players simply follow directions fed to them week after week.
Learning how to follow directions can be central to a youth leaguer’s education about the value of teamwork. By the age of nine or ten, however, players are also perfectly capable of making many constructive decisions for the team if their coaches would only let them.
On my high school teams and 9-10-year-old “squirt” teams, the coaches designed the practice agendas, made out the game lineups, and changed the lines on the bench. But the coaches also let the players on each team make many decisions that mattered throughout the season. Shared decisionmaking boosted morale because the players came to feel a greater stake in the team’s fortunes. The coaches stood ready to step in if the players seemed headed down the wrong path, but the players usually reached the right answers on their own.
When the high school team pulled comfortably ahead, for example, the players themselves decided whether to run up the score still further. Perhaps they sensed the choice the coaches wanted after hearing our approach to sportsmanship so often, and perhaps they did not. Either way, the players taught themselves lessons about respecting opponents when they chose to ease up and avoid a humiliating outcome. (Some opponents were not always so generous when we found ourselves on the short end of a lopsided score, but our players also learned lessons from being on the receiving end!)
The squirt team had different tri-captains each game, and rotating the captaincy throughout the season gave each player opportunities to be a leader. The game’s captains would help prepare their teammates in the locker room before the team hit the ice. After pregame warmup, the opposing team would huddle around its adult coaches at the bench moments before the opening faceoff, but our team would gather at the net for a last-minute pep talk from the 9-10-year-old tri-captains, outside the coaches’ earshot.
Trusting the players to make some team decisions can also work in sports other than hockey. When I jog in local parks on summer evenings, for example, I sometimes stop to watch an inning or two of youth baseball. It never ceases to amaze me why, in games involving 9-year-olds, the first base and third base coaches are invariably over 30.
Why not let the players coach on the base paths? Coaches stressing leadership could teach the players how to do it, and then let the players learn by doing. A 9-year-old base coach might make a split-second mistake by sending a runner to second or home at the wrong time, only to be thrown out. But so might a 35-year-old.
* * * *
Irish writer James Joyce said that “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” Joyce’s message — that mistakes are inevitable in decisionmaking but also essential to learning — is as valuable to children playing sports as it is to adults managing their own lives. As youth-league coaches teach leadership, their greatest challenges and rewards come from guiding players through the learning process, and not from avoiding it.
If the adults all dropped off the players at the field and then went home, the players would organize their own game and work through both their correct decisions and their occasional mistakes. Prior generations of kids did just that on sandlots all across America, before “organized” sports supervised by adults displaced choose-up games. Decisions that players can make without the adults, they can also make with the adults.
Our common enterprise is called “youth sports” for a reason. Letting the players – the youths — share in decisionmaking rarely affects the outcome of a game, but often affects their futures. Shared decisionmaking teaches players not only how to be better athletes, but also how to be better leaders. After their final game years later, the second lesson will prove much more valuable than the first.