How Hockey Sense Training Changed the Game for USA Hockey
How Hockey Sense Training Changed the Game for USA Hockey
IntelliGym & USA Hockey Brought Sports Intelligence Training to Hockey
Power skating, weight lifting, dryland training, and proper nutrition are all critical factors in a hockey player’s development. Today’s athletes spend hours on physical training in addition to technical and tactical training, both on and off the ice. But, the mental game – aka hockey sense – is just as important as the physical. Until the Hockey IntelliGym was created, the only way for coaches to hone in on hockey sense was to watch videos and dissect the players’ decisions; there was no direct skill building involved. We now know the valuable difference cognitive training can make in the improvement of hockey IQ skills.
Anticipation, situational awareness, divided attention, working memory, and other core cognitive skills can be trained using the Hockey IntelliGym sports intelligence training program. And today, we’re going to tell you about how USA Hockey helped develop the program, along with the incredible results that the training has brought to the US National Team Development Program (NTDP) since integrating the training with their U17 and U18 teams in 2009.
But first, let’s talk about what hockey sense is and why it’s so important.
The Hockey IntelliGym is a computer-based cognitive training program proven to improve on-ice performance.
IntelliGym & USA Hockey Brought Sports Intelligence Training to Hockey
Power skating, weight lifting, dryland training, and proper nutrition are all critical factors in a hockey player’s development. Today’s athletes spend hours on physical training in addition to technical and tactical training, both on and off the ice. But, the mental game – aka hockey sense – is just as important as the physical. Until the Hockey IntelliGym was created, the only way for coaches to hone in on hockey sense was to watch videos and dissect the players’ decisions; there was no direct skill building involved. We now know the valuable difference cognitive training can make in the improvement of hockey IQ skills.
The Hockey IntelliGym is a computer-based cognitive training program proven to improve on-ice performance.
Anticipation, situational awareness, divided attention, working memory, and other core cognitive skills can be trained using the Hockey IntelliGym sports intelligence training program. And today, we’re going to tell you about how USA Hockey helped develop the program, along with the incredible results that the training has brought to the US National Team Development Program (NTDP) since integrating the training with their U17 and U18 teams in 2009.
But first, let’s talk about what hockey sense is and why it’s so important.
The Importance of Hockey Sense in High Performance Hockey
Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky aren’t the best of all time solely because of their size, shot, or speed. It’s their understanding of the game and their ability to see it unfold before it happens that makes them truly amazing. Players like Dylan Larkin, Mitch Marner, and Johnny Gaudreau use their hockey sense to elude defenders and find open ice and passing lanes that nobody else can see until it’s too late. The ability to anticipate a play can make or break a hockey player’s – or a hockey team’s – success. A split second can make the difference between splitting the defenders or losing the battle for the puck.
The best players in the world always appear to have time and space on the ice. They have time because they think quicker than their opponents, and they have space because they create and find space more effectively. They choose the best alternative in less time because they can prioritize alternatives and assess risk quicker while not losing focus. This “skill” to make quick decisions under pressure has previously been thought to be “untrainable.” But, the Hockey IntelliGym has proven that it can be improved using cognitive training.
“Hockey sense is to be able to process the game at a high level, quickly. To know what’s coming at you at any time. Who’s on the ice, where the next guy is, where the pucks going to go, where you should be, who’s the most dangerous player on the ice.”
John Wroblewski
Head Coach, US NTDP U17 Team
What gives an athlete hockey sense is cognitive processing skills, including anticipation, situational awareness, divided attention, pattern recognition, task switching, and more. The Hockey IntelliGym trains and improves these specific cognitive skills, which were identified as core to hockey intelligence during the creation of the program. Training these skills has been proven to improve performance on the ice. The key is to train the exact same cognitive skills that are used when making decisions on the ice, and then to train athletes’ minds like they train their skating or shooting – with repetition and dynamic exercises in a controlled environment. And that’s where USA Hockey and IntelliGym come in.
IntelliGym meets USA Hockey to Revolutionize Hockey Training
If you’re curious about the origin of where the IntelliGym technology came from, check out this story about how the technology was used to train fighter pilots with research conducted by NASA, the US Air Force, and world-renowned cognitive scientists.
Fast forward to 2008. IntelliGym had successfully proven that the technology can be adapted from training fighter pilots to the world of sports with the Basketball IntelliGym training program, which produced a 30% increase in player stats and team wins. The team looked to hockey. IntelliGym approached USA Hockey to build a program with the same technology that could be used to improve a hockey player’s hockey IQ. With 20 years of cognitive research already behind the technology combined with USA Hockey’s elite athlete development model and hockey intelligence knowledge, the team of cognitive psychologists, computer engineers, sports scientists, coaches, and athletes mapped the cognitive skills required to have elite hockey sense and developed the Hockey IntelliGym to specifically strengthen these skills. After almost two years in development, the program was completed towards the end of 2009.
“We’re very excited about our new tool that’s going to revolutionize off-ice training and develop hockey sense in youth hockey players. The IntelliGym is for all players. Bottom line. Helping to create hockey sense through the IntelliGym is going to be a very important step in developing our players.”
Mark Tabrum
Director, USA Hockey Coaching Education Program
After the program was completed in 2009, the USA Hockey National Team Development Program (NTDP) integrated the Hockey IntelliGym with its U17 and U18 teams in the middle of the 2009-2010 season, making it a regular part of their training routine for the rest of the season. The NTDP is an advanced program for elite American hockey players that works with athletes on every angle of their game. They focus on everything from nutrition to tactics, from power skating to physical training. The facilities and coaching staff are top-notch, so it is only natural to expect the teams to improve throughout each season. However, the 2009-2010 season was different.
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Remarkable Results Make IntelliGym the Official Cognitive Trainer of USA Hockey and the US NTDP
The U17 NTDP team was the first to adopt the Hockey IntelliGym in the middle of the 2009 season with the U18 team quick to follow. A total of 44 players used the IntelliGym that season. As a result, the athletes improved their points-per-game by an average of 42% compared to the pre-IntelliGym stats. Both teams also experienced a remarkable improvement in wins ratio after 10 IntelliGym training sessions with regular training throughout the remainder of the season. The U18 team wins ratio more than doubled within the season to 70%.
Matt Nieto, left winger for the Colorado Avalanche, was one of the first to use the Hockey IntelliGym that year. Nieto has played over 400 games in the NHL, so you would think he knows a thing or two about hockey sense. Here’s what he had to say about his time with IntelliGym and the US NTDP.
“At the NTDP, we were the first team to use this program. We used the IntelliGym a few sessions a week and I immediately began to notice improvements in my game. I was making smart, good, quick decisions on the ice. I’ll try anything if it helps improve my game and it certainly did. The IntelliGym has helped me on the ice with making sharper, quicker decisions, especially with reading plays. I noticed significant improvement in my game as a result of the program.”
Matt Nieto
Left Wing, Colorado Avalanche
“It’s amazing to me how they have put the program together specially to develop the mind and cognitive skills that overlap the game and the game of ice hockey. The team started to make plays under pressure that I hadn’t seen prior to them using the IntelliGym,” said Kurt Kleinendorst, former Head Coach of the US NTDP U18 Team.
With such promising results, the Hockey IntelliGym became a regular part of athlete development for the NTDP. Since then, the various cohorts have won an unprecedented seven IIHF World Championships with a total of 28 gold medals in international tournaments over that span. More than 300 NTDP athletes have used the IntelliGym, with over 40 currently under contract in the NHL. 16 of those, including Matt Nieto, played in the 2019 Stanely Cup Playoffs.
The IntelliGym is now a big part of USA Hockey helping to train thousands of new athletes every year. There are even clues that IntelliGym training can help reduce an athlete’s chance or injury. It can help you, your athlete, or your team too!
Hockey Training Changed for the Better
The Hockey IntelliGym is the only downloadable computer application proven to enhance hockey sense and improve performance on the ice. It is the official cognitive training application of USA Hockey and the US National Team Development Program. Today there are more than 37 NHL athletes across 26 teams that used the IntelliGym during their time in the US NTDP, including 16 players playing in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. In total, more than 35,000 athletes across the world used the program since its inception, spanning 3 sports, more than 20 countries, and 6 continents.
“Working on your mind is the most underutilized thing that we work on in sports today. Your brain is a muscle. If you use it, you’ll improve it. If you don’t, you’ll end up losing those skills that you have. I think even from the aspect that you’re continuing to exercise it and expand it is a tremendous part of the whole player that we’re trying to get with USA Hockey”
Danton Cole, Head Coach, Michigan State Spartans, former Head Coach, US NTDP