By Jeff Serowik, former Pittsburgh Penguin, owner/director
of Pro Ambitions Hockey, Inc.
May 23, 2006
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 Off Ice 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 2500 young players per year
through my day/boarding 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.)
We skate 4 hours daily at our camps and now are
really focusing on stichkandling and dryland circuits
the remainining 2 hours of the camp. Other activities
you can focus on this summer at your home are:
flexibility (karate,boxing) quick feet drills,
running (long and short distances), biking, slideboard,
wrist rolls, hand strength, weight training (check
with your doctor first), dryland, plyos, raquetball,
tennis shooting pucks, stickhandling and rollerblading.
Good luck and have a safe and happy summer!
