The importance of Dry Land Training

By Jeff Serowik, former Pittsburgh Penguin, owner/director of Pro Ambitions Hockey Camps, Inc.

     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.