Although AA tryouts won’t begin until September, there is no time like the present for youngsters to get serious about their hockey training and begin preparing themselves to be at their best.
Eating healthy and being in top physical condition are of course just the starting point as you prepare for AA tryouts.
This article discusses the following 3 ways to really prepare, ways that go above and beyond merely eating healthy and being in top physical condition:
Let's look at each in a little more detail.
Once school starts back up, youngsters will begin to fall into more of a routine in their daily lives. But frankly, it is the weeks leading up to school during which most of the preparation for tryouts must take place.
And so, first and foremost, and even before school starts back up, getting into a pre-tryouts “regimen” is important.
If possible, get a hold of your team’s tryout schedule as soon as possible. And once you know it, begin immediately to adjust your own “pre-tryout training” schedule to match up with it.
In other words, if you know that most of your team’s tryout sessions will take place at around 7pm in the evening, you will want to adjust your own schedule so you are most ready to train and compete around this time of day.
Three (3) important “Whens” (of your daily schedule) should be adjusted:
1. When you train: Time your pre-workout warmup, as well as your actual workout, to align with the tryout schedule.
2. When you eat: Time your meals, e.g. two hours prior to your tryouts-adjusted warmups and workouts.
3. When you sleep: Get enough (but not too much) sleep, i.e. be refreshed and ready to go when it matters.
And of course once school starts up you might have to work around that too.
But look on the bright side: once you’ve made the team, you can get back to your normal schedule.
Virtually every great player I’ve ever spoken to about this has been able to name one particular thing they did when they were younger that “made the biggest difference” in their development as a player, i.e. something that revolutionized their game.
In my case, it was choosing to run the stairs of a 10-story building every other day for four weeks. Each of my workouts lasted about 60 minutes and I wore ankle weights. I went up and down the stairs: forward, backward, sideways, cairoca, 1, 2 and 3 stairs at a time (and yes, I kept my hand on the rail when going down the stairs).
And I didn’t skate once during this entire time. But the next time I stepped on the ice, it was definitely a “wow” moment.
Fury AAA coach John Varga (who still holds the career scoring record for an American playing major junior hockey) said he had two such moments. The first was at 8 years old on-ice when he would try to emulate the skating strides of speed skaters. The second was when he was 18 going through the Washington Capitals’ off-ice training camp for rookies (at the time no other NHL teams did this).
The point is that, with dedication and honest effort, every youth hockey player can in a short time make such a “leap forward” in his game.
And as proven in the above examples, it doesn’t have to be on-ice.
Every young player should definitely be working off-ice every day on his puck handling and shooting skills. But working on one specific thing, and doing the honest work to make a real leap forward, can definitely be a game-changer.
In the context of trying out for a AA team, a youngster will of course want to visualize making plays successfully during the tryout’s scrimmages. But he will also want to visualize hearing from the team’s coaches at the end of tryouts (or earlier) that he’s made their team.
And having such a positive outlook on things will obviously also help a youngster be mentally ready to compete at tryouts.
then he will be giving himself the best chance to earn a spot on his team of choice.
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Bridgedale is now accepting transfer students for the 2019-20 school year.