THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL TACTICAL SKILLS IN TRAINING HOCKEY PLAYERS
Report for the 3rd All Russian Scientific- methodical conference, “Current questions on the theory of hockey and educational methods of hockey coaches.”
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL TACTICAL SKILLS IN TRAINING HOCKEY PLAYERS
Hockey people around the world unanimously agree that when two teams bearing the same physical and technical skills meat, the winner will be the team with a higher level of tactical insight and ingenuity and with the better ability to transform tactics during a game. Only following this reasoning we can explain the 15 year slump of the National Team and the 6th place of Team Russia in the last World Junior Championships.
It is known that a team’s tactical level is based on the individual skills of each player, whether with or without the puck. These skills are joined together during a game while players interact with each other in ever changing game situations. Hence, individual hockey talent is based on the training of players in a combination of tactical, technical and physical skills, which are the basis of team sports. From this follows that actual playing skills are an expression of tactical knowledge through physical and technical skills.
The appropriate approach to training individuals is teaching the basic elements of hockey tactics and individual hockey sense. Even though professors Valentin Pavlovich Savin and Yuri Vladimirovich Nikonov fail to mention where hockey sense originates from and how it is mastered on an individual level, coaches are forced to recognize individual tactical skills in addition to group and team interaction as basic training methods in achieving a knowledge in hockey sense.
For ever so long hockey slang has used such terms as: “vision”, “he sees the game”, “he’s got a good sense of the game” and even intuition to describe players and situations. However all of these terms exist in isolation from each other. Logically thinking all of the terms mentioned above have until now been without a fundamental basis. However these terms can only be connected to each other and be seen as elements of individual tactical skills.
Any other reasoning simply doesn’t make sense. From this follows that the fundaments or the basic parts of tactical skills are keeping your head up, seeing the whole ice and exercising hockey sense within these limits. If for example the player only sees the puck, his ability to see the whole ice is limited to his peripheral vision and thus his sense of the game is restricted. After a player as been instructed and educated, he instantly turns his attention to his teammates and opponents. Furthermore he is able to use his technical skills, not only to look at the puck but to the distraction of his opponents, just like the center Igor Larionov did in his time.
Here we will establish the elements of tactical knowledge:
1. Vision control (i.e. player’s eyes)
2. Seeing the ice, which is made possible by eyesight
3. Hockey sense
4. Intuition as the highest form of development of reasoning of a logical human being, or rather the apex of tactical skills of the individual since intuition is the basis of improvisation, to which we own great hockey.
Technical and tactical directivity in education and training is with little effect. Upon graduation hockey players as a rule posses limited competitive requirements and undiscovered chances. Systematic failure of the national team reserves are a convincing conformation of this fact. E.B. Sologub together with A.S. Solodkov experimentally proved that the fulfilment and repetition of a movement simultaneously not only develops motional but perceptive skills as well. This means that a person’s consciousness and thinking as a category of tactical skills with the help of a person’s visual sensory system help refine technical development. This is why it is obligatory from the very first stages of training to focus on the correct position of the head i.e. eyes of the player. A child learning to skate as a rule has his eyes fixed on the ice. As a first step in tactical training one is to teach the beginner to skate with his head up. Hockey players need to master handling the puck without looking at it, just like artists in circuses do their tricks. Otherwise he will develop a reflex to look down and will in the future have limited competitive requirements and opportunities.
The slogan of A.V. Tarasov:” Athletism – the basis of hockey,” is acceptable for the upbringing of 15-17 year-old teenagers and for adult hockey players, but today one can find this idea being used everywhere and even in introductory training for children, whose energy already is used up in normal physical growth and attending school. Here I would like to recall the words of the late Nikolay Semenovich Epshtein who 30 years ago said:” A game has to make a team, players not only running around the ice.” For this reason, if we want to stop the negative tendencies in national hockey, we need to apply training methods that have effect on physical ability as well as tactical-technical thinking. On ice training needs to include tactical-technical elements and to successfully introducing these elements to children, we need to start with the physical and functional field of training, but not before the ages of 14-15 years. “Don’t need to reach for the stars”, was what already Nikolay Semenovich said aloud, otherwise physical training will frustrate teenagers between the ages 13-14 and they quit hockey which can already be seen in many places. From this follows that talented children as well as children who weren’t playing for the love of the sport will quit.
The time has come to recognize the role of individual tactical skill in training and education as parts of consciousness and thinking in the process of teaching the technical aspects of hockey. This view of training is called tactical- technical. Coaches need to systematically pay attention to players keeping their head up at all times and on the surrounding players. Only in this way a player can reflexively include all the mechanisms of tactical skills in his game.
We live in a time where it is sad to watch the way players manage themselves in penalty shootouts. At once you forget 1-2 shooters out of five. Also a result of a players keeping their heads down, which is done by the vast majority of hockey players is the tormenting scene of a player trying to deke his opponent. When he has his head down on the puck he isn’t able to see his opponents’ reactions at all. Less and less individual improvisation can be seen.
Yes it is true that hockey has become faster and tougher, but we do have to admit that for Valery Harlamov in Canada in the year of 1972, it was considerably harder. However he was able to take both defensemen for a ride in the park, even though amongst these played the impassable Bobby Orr. And take Aleksandr Maltsev for example who could play on any line (if my memory doesn’t fail me he played on 59 or 69 lines on the national team). Yes they were talented and yes they were from God, but the basis for their skills were learned in yards playing shinny hockey, where time and space were limited and opponents numerous. This is also how our comrades from Saint Petersburg, Oleg Ivanov and Aleksandr Andreev learned their skills. Time and again they left defensemen like the impassable Aleksandr Ragulin behind. Today this kind of skill and improvisation can be seen in the way our fellow countryman Maksim Sushinski plays the game.
Naturally hockey is a team sport, but on a primal level it is based on individuals. The changing situations and the roles taken by players can be seen as the player with the puck taking up the lead role and fellow linesmen taking up the roles of assistants, only to change roles in the blink of an eye, so that only the individuals with the highest level of hockey sense can perform such transformations in so fast, just like the great center Igor Larionov did.
To teach a child to become a world-class hockey player, even though he still is unable to skate properly and his shot is weak and inaccurate, above all else teach him to do things with thought and with proper vision control. Physical strength will little by little follow and you will be able to witness the change from an “ugly duckling” to a magnificent swan. Unfortunately not all are given strong health and the genetic inheritance that allows fast thinking but teaching of the proper way to play hockey is the holy mission of every coach. The recipe for each good hockey player is the talent for creativity that is based on advanced and fast hockey smarts. The players’ physical-technical skills are determined by a functional system that lets him develop the skill of improvisation within a game.
Ogulov Valentin Nikolaevich
Head Coach of Team Megafon Saint-Petrsburg, Russia
tel +7 921 391 22 37
11.01.2010
Tranlslated by Karri Takko 27.01.2011
