5 Critical Mistakes Female Hockey Players Make

When I started training off the ice as a young hockey player looking to gain an edge in competition, I had no idea that the training I was doing was completely inappropriate for me. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes I made and the ones women’s hockey players need to avoid on their way to the elite levels of women’s hockey:

Mistake #1 – Lifting too much weight:

When I started coaching off the ice, I was coaching with guys who were already playing junior and college hockey. I didn’t want to be seen as the “weak” girl, so I always pushed myself to lift more weight than I should have in a desperate attempt to “keep up with the guys.” Trying to train (and keep up) with future NHL stars and college men’s hockey players when I was 15 seems crazy now, especially since I had absolutely no experience with training off the ice. Lifting too much weight was especially dangerous, especially when combined with mistake #2…

Mistake #2: Using poor form when lifting:

Lifting too much weight poorly is a recipe for disaster for any athlete. I always thought that lifting heavier was more important than lifting the weight with perfect form. To me, higher weights meant I was stronger, when in reality, I was just cheating on lifts, using completely incorrect form to try to move a bigger weight.

Mistake #3 – Never take a day off:

I truly believed that every day I went out, another aspiring hockey player would train her harder, and when we met on the ice, she would beat me. It’s silly, I know, but that’s the mentality that led me to do my best on and off the ice every day. But I can also count on my fingers the number of days I stopped training on the ice or off the ice during my entire time in high school and college. Once again, he was dedicated and committed. But I never gave my body a chance to recover, and that’s what ultimately led to my body breaking down and taking early retirement.

Mistake #4 – Using too many machines:

As a young player, I remember taking great pride in the amount of weight I could push on the leg press machine. I was struggling and twisting trying to lift that weight, but it wasn’t pretty. It would have been much better to focus on single leg bodyweight strength exercises, instead of huffing and puffing on those stupid machines. Now, my philosophy on machine-based training is simple: female hockey players should NOT train on weight-training machines. Instead of having an athlete perform crunches or chest presses on a machine, we should be teaching them how to move and control their entire body in free space. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a hockey player execute a skill or movement on the ice with the full support of a bulky machine or using just a few muscles at a time? To excel on the ice, players must master fundamental movement patterns off the ice that integrate coordination, balance and strength, and that can’t happen while sitting on a machine.

Mistake #5 – Not building a foundation of strength and stability first:

This is probably my biggest mistake of all. I now know that if I had built the foundation of core stability and single leg strength I needed to excel at the elite levels of women’s hockey, before I started throwing big heavyweights, my career would have been much longer and more successful. But I had no idea at the time. I thought strength training meant weight training. All hockey players, no matter their age or skill level, need to build a solid foundation of strength and stability with bodyweight before touching a weight. Period.

So there you have it: the 5 biggest mistakes I made training off the ice as an aspiring hockey player. I had no idea that the off-ice training I began to do to gain an edge over my competition was completely inappropriate for me as an aspiring women’s hockey player. Girls need to train hard to reach the elite levels of women’s hockey, but they also need to train smarter.