Dealing With “Gross” Motor Skill Problems

Okay,  a while back we held a coaching “meetup” to analyze the skating of a Bantam-level hockey player.  Several of us probably spent a good 90-minutes on that, and especially on identifying the most glaring problems in the boy’s stride.

As we arrived near the end of that session, I explained to the volunteer coaches how important it is to hone in on the one skill that tends to most influence the given movement, or the one part of the skill we motor learning guys refer to as the “grossest” problem.

That might not be the prettiest of terms, but solving it does truly help a player — a lot.

Okay, let’s take a look at what we saw that night…

I’ll allow members to observe this GIF file for awhile.  Then, although it’s possible to find a lot of little problems — as we did, the most glaring — or the “grossest” we found — was the boy’s hands, arms and shoulders being quite a bit out of sync.   Again, don’t get me wrong, because there are other problems.  But, they’re nowhere near as troublesome to his overall stride as what we eventually arrived at as the major problem.

Now, in case this post is being seen long after the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21 — when most folks have been forced to stay home, and when most players have to do their training without access to their local rink, appreciate that our meetup group wanted to arrive at something that the boy could do at home to overcome the above described deficiency.  

Enter a drill I used in my old off-ice training facility a few years back…

Really, this movement could be done in a number of ways, beginning with a player just standing in one spot, rocking and then pumping the arms with no resistance.  As he gets comfortable with the arm pumps, he can then jump outward in the direction of those pumps.  

The most important part of this whole exercise is to smoothly and easily sync the hands and the legs as if taking a nice, relaxing skate.  

This movement could also be done on the move, with the skater loping down a straight-away for a brief time.

I’ve added some resistance in the exercises demonstrated above.  Actually, we’re using bicycle tire tubes for this. The valves have been cut out for safety, and then I’ve carefully knotted a few tubes together to achieve the needed length.  Moreover, to save us all a lawsuit, be sure to check the tubes frequently for safety.