The 10,000 Hour Rule In Elite Women’s Hockey

By Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS

To get to the highest level of women’s hockey, you have to be willing to commit the time and effort necessary to get there.  But just how much time does it really take to become an elite female hockey player?  Experts say that in order to achieve mastery in a particular activity, you need to spend 10,000 hours working on it. That’s a lot of time, especially when you think about the fact that most girls hockey players are really only on the ice for between 5-7 hours per week during the season and far less than that in the off-season. 

Here’s how those 10,000 hours might breakdown for an aspiring girls hockey player looking to make it to the highest levels of hockey:

If you spent 10 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 500 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would take you 20 years to reach a “mastery” level.  Considering most girls hockey players don’t start playing until 7 or 8 years old, that might be too late.

If you spent 15 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 750 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would only take you 15 years to reach the elite levels. This means that you don’t need to start quite as early, but it is still a long time.

If you spent 20 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 1000 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would only take you 10 years to reach the elite levels. It would be 10 years of intense hard work, but you could get it done. Since most girls hockey players decide that they want to become elite players around the age of 13 or 14, it is realistic that starting this intensity of training schedule could get you to your goal by the time you were 23 or 24, which is the average age of the women’s national team members.

Whether you start when you are 5 or 15, the reality is that it is going to be pretty hard to collect all these hours training only on the ice. The time and energy you spend training off the ice definitely counts too. It is going to be virtually impossible to find 3 hours to train on the ice every day, but finding 90 minutes on the ice and 90 minutes off the ice is pretty realistic.  Certainly by the time you get to college hockey, 3 or 4 hours of training on and off the ice every day is the standard.

Becoming the best female hockey player possible takes a lot of time. But if you start building your foundation for elite performance on and off the ice at an early age, you give yourself the time you need to be great.

© Total Female Hockey 2008

Kim McCullough, YCS, MSc, is a Athletic Development Specialist and founder of Total Female Hockey. In addition to training and coaching girls at all levels of hockey, from novice to the National team, Kim has also played at the highest level of women’s hockey in the world for the last decade. Kim’s female player development website features a state-of-the-art Complete Off-Season Training Program and her blog gives the coaches and parents of aspiring young players access to the most up-to-date tips and advice on how to help their players take their game to the next level. To learn more about female-specific player development, get your Free Report: The #1 Mistake Female Players Make in the Off-Season at http://www.totalfemalehockey.com