By Jeff Serowik, former Pittsburgh Penguin, owner/director
of Pro Ambitions Hockey, Inc.
The Hockey Magazine January 13, 2003
The best piece of hockey advice I believe that I have ever received was
given to me at age 10 by my coach Wayne Pecknold about the importance of
dry land training. He told me that if I want to succeed in hockey, “you
must hone your skills off the ice as well as on the ice. You must religiously
shoot five hundred pucks everyday at home to improve your shot accuracy
and speed.” He told this to an entire team of 10 year olds and whether
or not he literally meant to actually count to five hundred everyday or
just practice shooting is questionable. But, let me tell you there are
very few days from that day on that I missed shooting five hundred pucks.
Many broken garage windows later, my parents can attest to my dedication
and determination. I believe that this invaluable piece of advice I was
given about one aspect of off-ice conditioning helped pave my way to the
NHL.
I come across about 2000 young players per year through my hockey camps.
I stress the importance of dry land training and conditioning to players
as well as parents. I pass on this piece of advice of shooting five hundred
pucks every day to every camper. You must learn to shoot to score not
just shoot to shoot. Let me tell you, the ones that do it will succeed.
Shooting pucks also integrates stick handling, faking the shot, head
fakes and agility moves. There are a few players that god gave very special
hockey hands to like Jeremy Roenick and Wayne Gretzky. There are also
a lot of players like Jeff Serowik who worked for those hands! As parents
can fully attest to, hockey is an extremely expensive and all consuming
sport due to the nature of the expense and limited availability of ice
time. If your child is really dedicated to hockey there is much “hockey
homework” that can be done at home!
Young American hockey players should take a page from the book of the
young European players training regime. After playing with many of the
great European NHLers I found it very interesting to discuss with them
the emphasis on dry land skill development. Jaromir Jagr, Alexei Kovalev,
and Martin Straka told me that they were instructed to work on their
hands via stickhandling, shooting and plyometrics for hours daily. (Jaromir
Jagr for instance stickhandles daily after practice with a 45 lb. weight
at the bottom of his shaft of his stick.) Typically European hockey players
have the stereotype for being finesse players. This may ring true due
to the dedication and amount of off ice training that is expected of
them as young players.
Over the years I have come to realize that anything in life that is
good is hard. Most times hard efforts that are put into whatever endeavor
you are working on will eventually come back in rewards. I always tell
my campers this. Hard work will pay off. Motivation is the biggest key
to success when working off ice. If a player is not into it and works
at hockey half-heartedly he or she will not see results on the ice. Ice
time should be treated as a gift. Unlike other sports, one cannot just
jump on ice at will to practice. Do the little things right off the ice
and really make the most of your ice time.
(When I was playing I carried a wrist grip in my car and would work on
my hand and wrist strength while sitting in traffic.)
Rest, change of venue and nutrition are important the first month or
two after a hard and grueling hockey season. I played baseball on my
off-season as well as hitting the weights. Playing year round may lead
to burn out. Diversity is important for later on in life!
At my full day hockey camps I give a hockey homework packet to the kids.
It focuses on flexibility, quick feet drills, slideboard, running (long
and short distances), biking, wrist rolls, hand strength, shooting pucks,
stickhandling and rollerblading. Please check out my website for camp
info at www.proambitions.com or check out my new television show “ Building
a Solid Foundation for youth through sports” Which will be airing
Feb. 2004 on ESPN, ESPN2, and Fox Sports.
Jeff Serowik, President
Pro Ambitions Hockey, Inc.
PO Box 565 Dover, MA 02030
508 497-1089 www.proambitions.com
