How to structure your training
As a coach, it is very important to have a structured training session, and this is so that you-
1. Work on the areas that everyone needs to improve in both as individuals and the team as a whole
2. So that the players don't get bored and lose interest.
So how do we structure our hockey training session? What do we need to include?
Well, the first and most important thing that we must do as a coach is making sure that every training session we run as an objective or a goal if you will that we base the focus of the session on and use as a guide to what we want the team and the players to get from the training session. The objective/s can be something simple like, "Everyone will learn how to pass on the run," or something more complicated like, "As a team, we will become more proficient on our defensive press." Also, you are not limited to just one objective per training session you can have more, but I was a coach recommend you don't go beyond three maximum otherwise you will find the training session becomes lost in the objective,s and no one gets a great deal out of it.
You often hear this saying, " Failing to plan is planning to fail", and this is correct when it comes to Hockey Coaching. I believe as a Coach it is important to plan out-
1. The season: Preseason, the season, postseason
2. Every month of the season
3. Every training session throughout that season
As a coach, I like to use an old-fashioned yearly planner, and then I break this down into a monthly planner, which I then use as a guide to developing each training plan. Initially, as a coach I recommend that you write down your training plans, but as you get more comfortable and experienced you will find you don't have to do this as much.
To help you with this you can download the Monthly Planner and Training Planner below-
Monthly Planner
Fig 1: Monthly Training Plan
Training Session Plan
Fig 2- Training Session Plan