Hockey players all over the world look for ways to improve their skills so they can be more talented on the court. One way that people go about getting the best possible practice is by using hockey training aids. You might even be surprised by how effective these aids are.
There are a lot of different kinds of aids that you can use for your hockey training. Realistically, any hockey skill that you could need to train, you’d be able to find an aid that could help you along with it. There is a huge variety of hockey training aids.
Even though these training aids are incredibly popular, and regardless of how helpful they can be, there are still a lot of hockey players that aren’t convinced that they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. But how exactly can training aids be such a powerful tool to have at your disposal?
Well, if you’ve made your way to this article, there’s a good chance that you’ve been looking to find the answer to that question for yourself. You’re in the right place because today we’re going to be exploring the utility of training aids and how they can help your hockey game.
Get Your Head in The Game
Everyone can improve on something. It’s just a fact of life. It doesn’t matter if you’re a child that just started playing hockey a week ago or Wayne Gretzky himself. As Bruce Lee once said, “there’s always someone better.”
Of course, Bruce Lee wasn’t a very good hockey player and would definitely get smoked in a match against Wayne Gretzky, just like Wayne Gretzky would probably get smoked in a fistfight with Bruce Lee. In any case, he was right when he said that there was always someone better.
So, how does one remedy the fact that there will always be someone better than you at your chosen sport? You train. You train hard, and you train a lot. That’s how you get better at something. Have you ever heard the phrase “you have to walk before you can run?”
Well, that old adage is the key to everything. If you want to do something advanced, you have to have the basics down. Have you ever watched a small child try to run shortly after learning how to walk? They fall on their face in most cases.
Even if you’re fully grown this is true for you. You need to practice your skills before you can move on to more advanced skills. This is especially true in high-speed sports like hockey. The basics of hockey are almost more important than any advanced techniques you could learn.
Well, hockey training aids help commit the basics to muscle memory. Once you learn how to do the basics on auto-pilot, you can use your brainpower for more important things on the rink. As you probably know, there’s a lot that goes on in hockey games, so this is important.
More Variety Than You Can Shake a Stick At
We all have strengths and weaknesses. It’s just a common thing among humans. No one is perfect at everything, and training can help with that. That being said, there’s a reason why hockey teams have people in set positions during regular games.
That’s because even some of the best goalies of all time, like Terry Sawchuk, might not be a great fit for a position as a forward. You have to play to your strengths and try to make up for your weaknesses by not being put into a position that would expose said weaknesses.
That being said, if you’re looking to improve your strengths, you could easily find training aids that would be a good fit. For example, you could easily find most of the following aids at your local sporting goods store, assuming they stock up on a lot of hockey gear:
- Puck passers
- Dryland hockey pucks
- Hockey stick weights
- Puck launchers
- Balance boards
- Attack triangles
- Synthetic ice
The list goes on and on, there are a lot of different aids that you can use. That means that no matter what you need to train further, you can. It’s actually pretty incredible to see everything that is available when you look for it.
In fact, training aids can help with things like:
- Stickhandling
- Passing the puck
- Balance
- Speed
- Endurance
- Agility
- Accuracy
Pretty much anything you can think of, there’s a hockey training aid on the market that will be able to help you much more quickly than you’d be able to train with normal training. There are even a lot of training aids that can be used at home, meaning that you won’t need to get to the ice to train.
Add More to Your Routines
As a hockey player, there are a lot of things that you need to be good at. It doesn’t matter what position you play, you’re going to need to be good at a lot of things if you want to be an effective hockey player during games.
Firstly, you have to have some strength. At the very least, you have to be strong enough to hold your own on the ice. A lot can happen on the ice, and you want to make sure that you’ll be able to stay on your feet as much as possible.
Being strong can also help you keep the puck as well as help you hit the puck further. Both of these things are helpful If you’re trying to win hockey games, and there is no such thing as a hockey player that’s too strong.
You also need to have a lot of balance to keep upright on the ice. Ice, as you know, is very slick. That can make it a little hard to stay on your feet unless, of course, you have good balance. On top of that, there’s a good chance that you’ll also have to deal with other hockey players running into you.
Just like there’s no such thing as a hockey player that’s too strong, there’s no such thing as a hockey player that has too good of balance. Training your balance is probably just as important as training your strength for a number of reasons.
You probably also want to have the endurance to get through a whole game. Hockey games can get pretty intense, and that means that you have to be in good shape if you want to have any hope of not collapsing due to exhaustion before the end of the game.
So, that means that you’ll also need to train your endurance. Being able to get through a whole hockey game is something to be proud of, but imagine if you could get through a whole hockey game without breaking a sweat. With enough training, you might be able to accomplish that.
Of course, it really depends on who you’re playing against. If the other team is just as well-trained as you are, you’re probably gonna wear yourself out by the time the game is over. That being said, that’s the fun part of the game.
There are training aids that can help with all of these things and more. In fact, most people say that they feel that their training goes a lot more smoothly when they use aids to help them along. That’s because you’re focusing on a specific skill rather than practicing a lot at once.
If you do strength training at the gym, you know how big of a difference it can make when you isolate certain muscle groups. Think of these training aids as doing something similar, but instead of making sure that you’re working out every part of your body, it makes sure that you’re preparing every part of your brain to play.
Well, that’s not a great comparison because training aids also help with working out your body. That being said, the way that they help commit specific skills to muscle memory is an incredible thing to experience no matter what your skill level at this point in time might be.
On top of everything else, using training aids is just fun. You can make a whole game out of using a training aid, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. In fact, most people that use training aids say that it’s a lot more fun than traditional training usually is.
Get The Most Out Of Your Training
Every athlete in the world is looking to find the best way to train so they can be a more formidable foe during their respective games. Knowing what tools are available to you can make all of this a lot easier for you.
If you need new ways to train, look no further than training aids. These aids can help you reach your full potential as a hockey player, and that can make your life a whole lot easier when it comes time to face your opponents on the ice any time you have to.