Strength Is The Key To Success In Elite Women’s Hockey

By Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS

The most successful female hockey players get to the top of the sport by focusing on one thing and one thing only - making their strengths stronger.   Aspiring girls hockey players sometimes spend too much time focusing on improving their weaknesses, instead of on strengthening their strengths. If you are already the best forechecker on your team, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work at becoming even better. What if you become the best forechecker in your league? Or in the world?

Back when I was playing at an elite level, these were my 3 biggest strengths:

1) My ability to forecheck

2) My physical strength

3) My ability to be in the right place at the right time

Sure, I could have just stayed “good” at these 3 areas of my game and focused my energy on some other skills I wasn’t so great at. For example, I never had the fanciest moves in the world - I could have spent hours and hours trying to be a pretty good stickhandler or I could focus my efforts on being the strongest player on the ice. I was never known as a player with the fanciest moves around and no one would have expected that from me. They did expect me to win all the battles in the corner, in front of the net and along the boards though.

It just made sense for me to make my strengths much stronger, instead of making my weaknesses a little better.

Now don’t get me wrong - if there was a skill that I couldn’t do at all, then I would have worked hard to make it competent. For example, when I first started playing women’s college hockey, I had no wrist shot whatsoever. I was always a defenseman as a kid, so I spent the majority of my time working on my slap-shot instead. But as soon as I was moved up front, I knew that I would have to develop a quicker release and a powerful wrist shot in order to be effective. So I spent a lot of time working on my technique to get the wrist shot up to a respectable level. I was never going to have the best wrist shot in the world, but I didn’t want it to be an embarrassment either.

Now that we are heading into the off-season, you have the opportunity to develop some of your weaknesses and really strengthen your strengths. My physical strength was always a huge asset for me on the ice, so I spent a lot of time in the summer working hard in my off-ice training to become the strongest player possible. For me, the road to success was always paved right through the weight room. Ten years ago, when I first went to college to play women’s hockey, my dedication to off-ice training really gave me a huge advantage over my competition. Nowadays, it is an absolute requirement. You can’t get to the elite levels of women’s hockey without working as hard off the ice as you do on the ice.

What are your three biggest strengths as a player? What can you do to make them even better?

© 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