No Detail Too Small To Study
That featured photo up there may have confused some of my long time readers but, I think you’ll soon understand its meaning…
Ya, I begin this entry with one of my favorite sayings, this one borrowed from the late, great Soviet hockey coach, Anatoli Tarasov.
As I recall, “The Father of Russian Hockey” was referring to his players taking pride in doing their jobs — whatever those jobs might be. What he did was quote someone famous in Russian theater, noting that:
“There are no small roles, only small actors.”
As you’ve probably come to know, something always seems to stir my hockey entries. (Oh, and as usual, this post isn’t really all about hockey, but more about a certain philosophy I feel has served me well over my many years of doing what I do.)
Anyway, what got me going was really just a simple question posed to me by one of my beginner clinic parents just prior to one of our on-ice sessions. Basically, a new hockey dad just wondered how he might know when or if his son’s skates needed to be resharpened. Again, just a simple question, but one that sent me off on a tear…
The short answer was that one can run a thumb-nail across each edge of a skate blade to test for its sharpness. If that results in some nail shavings, the blade is probably sharp enough. Actually, doing this at various times soon gives the tester a pretty good sense — more shavings meaning the blade is good and sharp, less shavings telling us the skates probably need to be done fairly soon.
Of course, I can never seem to stop at just that short answer (LOL). Naw, I then went into several other aspects of skate blade care I thought might also be helpful to a group of fairly new hockey parents…
I let them know that skates don’t come pre-sharpened from the manufacturer, so they always need to be done prior to a first-time skate.
As a matter of fact, I explained the entire skate sharpening process to them — in abbreviated form, obviously.
I also warned them about the damage done to the blades if the skates are used outdoors. I mean, outdoor ice is covered with microscopic grains of sand and other grit, and it’s also extremely hard compared to indoor ice (mainly because it’s frozen at extreme temperatures).
I then went into the shape of a typical hockey skate blade. Ya, you see, each of the different kinds of skate blades — figure skates to speed skates to hockey skates — are shaped in a way that helps with the demands of their specific sport. So, while we all know speed skates are long and flat — to accommodate long, (mostly) straight-ahead racing, figure skates have quite a curve in their design — this to aid in spinning, turning and so forth. Hockey skate blades, on the other hand, are shaped with a slightly flatter curve — because hockey skaters need to fly over straight-aways at times, while also needing to make quick cuts, pivots and spins.
I used the term “curved” in those earlier sentences just so you might understand better my description. However, in hockey jargon, we call the shape of the blade a “radius” (as if the hockey skate blade is cut from a large steel circle of a 9′ radius). Of course, you know I also went further into explaining the radius for my beginner parents.
So, one might ask why I’d need to know all that. Ya, why. And the next most obvious question might be: where in heck I ever gathered all that knowledge.
Well, as a skills teacher, it’s never hurt me that I’m the inquisitive type. No, not a bit. In fact, I sense that’s one of the things that has set me apart from others in this line of work. More than anything, though, this kind of knowledge helps me unbelievably in troubleshooting my players’ or students’ difficulties. (Honest to God, I have resolved some equipment problems that may have caused kids to otherwise quit the game.)
Where did I learn all I know about hockey equipment? Well, basically I’ve gone to the guys who know that kind of stuff inside-out — the hockey pro shop owners, I mean. I’ve picked their brains every chance I’ve gotten: Why do you do this? How do you do that? Which way is best for (whatever)?
Now, I’ve from time to time been teased — as in, “You know a lot of facts!” Hmmmmm… I never had a good reply for that until — ya, until…
A few years back I read an article with the author ultimately stating that “…common sense is the result of knowing a lot of related bits and pieces of information.” In other words, in order to reason-out a difficult problem, it helps to know a lot of underlying and slightly related stuff.
Still, the real reason I delve into so many areas of my sport is because I feel that there are a whole lot of people who rely on me for help. Of course, there are always new people coming into hockey, and the ones who come to me are obviously hoping my 45-ish years in the game can save them some anguish.
As importantly, there are numerous very experienced players, parents and coaches who quite often need my guidance in far more advanced areas. That’s at least part of the reason I’ve made sure I know plenty when it comes to physiology, biomechanics, psychology and just about anything else that might affect a player’s development or production. Again, people are looking to me for that kind of stuff, and I’m not the type who can let them down.
This aside… Believe it or not, I’ve been able to drastically change a hockey player’s game with just a slight modification in his equipment. I mean that! There are actually ways to help a skater be faster, just by adjusting his or her blade radius, or the way the blade is sharpened. And, I can even influence a player’s shooting power (or other shooting traits) with just a slight adaptation to his or her hockey stick.
Finally, as usual, while I’m really hoping my long time members here in CoachChic.com will adopt this approach to helping those around them, this entry isn’t really all that much about hockey. No, it’s more a philosophy I thought I’d share with you, my faithful reader, sensing you might like to consider it for your own line of work or your other interests. Hey, I honestly don’t believe we can ever know enough about what it is we do, no matter how small a part that might play.
