Most of us aren’t blessed with silky mitts. Even those that are probably didn’t get there with raw talent – they got there through practice and repetition.
Hopefully you practiced your off-ice stickhandling drills throughout the week. Practice makes perfect. However another way to improve your stickhandling is to warm up those neural pathways before the game to get ready for the action.
Here are four of our favorite pregame stickhandling warmup drills to help you put the opposing team in a blender, why pregame stickhandling warmups are so important, and our favorite hockey stickhandling training tools:
It’s Important To Warm Up Your Hand-Eye Coordination
Hockey is an amazing sport in that it requires three pillars of physical performance: strength, endurance and hand-eye coordination. We already know how important it is to warm up our body prior to a game, but it’s equally as important to warm up our brain as well.
By practicing these pregame stickhandling drills, you’re giving your brain the proper warmup to ensure your hand-eye coordination is primed for success. Priming your hand-eye coordination before a game has been shown to provide the following benefits:
- Faster transmission of signals between the brain, eyes and muscles
- Reduced errors and improved accuracy
- Increased muscle control with more precise execution
- Increased alertness and awareness
- Reinforced motor patterns
Our Favorite Stickhandling Training Tools
The great part about stickhandling drills is that you already have all the equipment you need – a stick and a puck! However we also love these training tools to really kick your practice up a level:
Dryland Stickhandling Ball Or Puck
It’s nearly impossible to practice your stickhandling with a normal puck unless you’re on the ice, and most of us don’t get as much ice time as we’d like. That’s why it’s important to have something that you can practice off-ice that mimics the feel of an actual puck. We strongly recommend practicing with either a Dryland Hockey Ball or a dryland puck like the Green Biscuit.
Plexiglass -or- Synthetic Ice Tiles
There is one way you can practice with a real puck off ice – by using synthetic ice tiles or plexiglass to mimic an ice surface. This is much less portable than simply having a dryland ball or puck, but if you’re looking to set up a little practice facility at home, ordering some plexiglass from a home improvement store, or using synthetic ice tiles are the perfect solution.
Drill #1: Juggling -Or- Bouncing A Ball Against A Wall
Before you get to stickhandling-specific warmup drills, your initial stickhandling warm ups should really be focusing on general hand-eye coordination. If you have any sort of bouncy ball – a tennis ball and lacrosse ball is fantastic – you can simply toss it low against a wall so it bounces off the floor and then back to you. Be sure to alternate your catching hand. This is a great hand-eye coordination warmup as well as a warmup for your reflexes.
If you happen to have three balls, you can also juggle for a few minutes, which is another fantastic hand-eye coordination warmup drill as well as a reflex drill. If you don’t know how to juggle, here’s a quick tutorial to really improve your hand-eye coordination fast:
Drill #2: Off-Ice Figure 8s Drills
If you have two pucks and a dryland stickhandling ball or puck, figure 8s should be a staple in not only your warm-up arsenal but your training routine in general. There are four ways to perform a figure 8 drill- horizontal, vertical, forehand side and backhand side. The video below shows the horizontal orientation version.
Drill #3: On-Ice Stickhandling Through Pucks [Patrick Kane Favorite]
Once the zamboni is off the ice and you’ve kicked off your on-ice warmup, controlling one puck through a mess of pucks is a great progression from the previous warmup exercises as it adds the component of quick hands and skating together. This starts warming up the final hockey-specific neural pathways in your brain that you’ll use during the game. There’s a reason it’s a favorite of stars like Patrick Kane – it really works.
Drill #4: On-Ice Partner Passing + Stickhandling
The final stickhandling warmup drill we recommend is to grab a teammate and pass back and forth to each other while adding in some forehand front-to-back stickhandling. This will help warm up the neural pathways of sending and receiving passes coupled with puck control, which is the ultimate goal of puck possession during the game.
More Drills = More Skills. Keep Practicing!
There you have it, four progressive warmup drills to help prime your body for puck control during the game. Remember that the main goal of warmups are to simply prep your body and mind for gametime, not necessarily to improve your skills. For that, you’ll need to dedicate more time than you probably have allotted to you for warmups for stickhandling practice and drills.
