Some new pylon course ideas are soon to be unveiled here at CoachChic.com. Not that there's anything new about different configurations, or that it's unusual to rearrange the pylons to create different kinds of skating or puckhandling patterns. Still, as I'll suggest in that entry, various layouts should really be aimed at enhancing specific kinds of skills. Now, if you go back to my earliest Mighty Mite post ("Our First Mighty Mite Hockey Practice"), you should see that I used a straight row of obstacles as a very simple of way of showing my babies how to go in and out of opposition players. (In my case, I carry around foam dots instead of pylons.) Still, while a good many of those youngsters maneuver fairly well through that course now, and while most of them are starting to instinctively use both sides of their stick-blades to change directions, I've felt lately that something new was needed to bring these skills to at least a slightly higher level. So, with that, I changed my dots a little and created the following... *A New Mighty Mite Pylon Course
-- Dennis Chighisola
To begin, there are plenty of good things to be said about using a basic straight-line course, and I'll continue to use that layout with my Mighty Mites. At the same time, I wanted something that would cause the kids to cut more sharply, as well as a design that might force them to use both sides of their stick-blades more. In actuality, I ultimately want my little guys to be able to make sharp cuts with the puck, something like one of my former junior high school team kids is doing in the photo to right. (Wanna bet those little rascals won't be able to do that by this coming spring?)
:)
A straight-line course can be made all the more difficult just by moving every other pylon outward a bit. The photo to the left illustrates that, with the arrows showing how I moved a pair of cones (or foam dots) slightly to the left. The photo to the right helps show how drastic the cut now has to be (in comparison to a straight-line course).
As I mentioned above, some of my kids still need a lot of work to make handling the puck on their backhands more instinctive. And you should be able to see that in the video (just click on the above right photo), with some getting it, and others not (at least yet). But, that IS what teaching and practice are all about, huh?
As an aside here... You will quite often hear my voice in the background of that video, and you'll hear either me or other coaches providing constant feedback throughout the videos hosted on this site. Yup, constant feedback is important, and it's one of the key elements in an "artful" way of coaching.
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Please share your thoughts on the above. You know I love hearing from my CoachChic.com friends!
