Dev at 3–30 MHz
Tuning practice to the problem, the player, and the moment.
The game presents multiple signals, each becoming more or less relevant from moment to moment. The play, space, timing, decisions, movement, fatigue—all demanding something from the player at once. Good practice design depends on knowing which frequency we’re trying to tune into.
A player has a tendency to struggle when receiving passes in motion. The natural response is to work on receiving passes in motion.
This makes sense. It’s where the problem appears, so we reproduce the situation in practice. The player receives passes from different angles and at different speeds. We ask them to receive while accelerating, turning, or changing direction. We reduce time and space. Eventually, we add pressure from a defender.
But what if receiving the puck isn’t where the problem originates?
Imagine the player can’t skate comfortably without pumping their arms. Their upper body is doing more than supporting balance, rhythm, and connection; it has become part of how they organize and propel themselves across the ice. The player may look reasonably capable while skating without the puck, but when the puck arrives, the hands are suddenly occupied by another task.
The problem becomes visible when they receive the puck. Its cause may stem further upstream.
Where a problem appears in performance isn’t necessarily where it should be addressed. Seeing the consequence of a limitation isn’t the same as identifying its cause, and reproducing the situation in which a problem occurs doesn’t guarantee that practice is acting on the thing responsible for it.
This is where practice design becomes more difficult than deciding how closely practice should resemble the game.
Finding the Source
Consider a player trying to create separation from a defender.
At the level of performance, we can describe the problem simply enough: the player needs to change speed or direction to create a gap. Doing so successfully depends on reading the defender, recognizing space, timing the action, choosing an appropriate solution, and executing it under the demands of the moment.
But contained within that performance problem are other problems.
The player has to recognize when and where changing speed would be useful. They also have to possess enough acceleration to create a meaningful difference in speed. They may need to redirect force, reorganize their body, control momentum, maintain balance, and continue managing the puck.
A player can have one problem without having the other. They may recognize the opportunity but lack the ability to exploit it. They may have excellent acceleration but rarely recognize when it can create an advantage. They may be able to do both separately but struggle when puck control, pressure, and movement have to coexist.
These are related problems, not the same problem.
Distinguishing between mechanics, abilities, and skill gives us different places to look. Mechanics concern how movement is organized. Abilities are things a player can do: accelerate, decelerate, turn, cross over, glide, pivot, skate backward. Skill is the use of what’s available to solve problems in the game.
Performance depends on their interaction, but interaction doesn’t reduce the importance of their distinction. Where a problem appears and where useful change can be made may be two different places.
We readily acknowledge that players differ in their ability to accelerate, turn, stop, reorganize, or skate while handling the puck. But when it comes time to develop those abilities, there’s often a reluctance to give them meaningful space of their own. Their importance is acknowledged, but their development remains tied to the context in which they’ll eventually function.
The logic is understandable. Hockey performance ultimately requires players to perceive information, make decisions, coordinate actions, and solve problems under pressure. Therefore, practice should expose players to those things.
The trouble comes when therefore begins doing too much work.
Function tells us why an ability matters. It doesn’t automatically tell us how that ability should be developed.
Depth of Range
A player being able to skate doesn’t tell us how deeply their skating abilities have been developed.
The range between basic competence and high proficiency is enormous. Two players may both be able to accelerate, turn, stop, and change direction while differing substantially in how much speed they can produce, how quickly they can reorganize, how well they control momentum, and how many situations those abilities remain available within.
That depth matters. An ability can be functional enough for participation while still limiting what becomes possible in performance. A player can be capable of accelerating without being particularly capable of acceleration. They can complete a tight turn without carrying much speed through it. They can transition from forward to backward without being able to do so quickly enough, from enough positions, or under enough momentum for the ability to be consistently useful.
Players can also become increasingly skilled at working around these limitations.
A player who struggles to maintain speed through turns may slow down before entering, widen the arc, use crossovers, choose a different route, move the puck earlier, or avoid situations that expose the limitation. Those may all be intelligent and skillful solutions. They can also reduce the demand on the very ability we’re trying to develop.
The player may solve the game problem without solving the movement problem. Successful adaptation can solve the immediate problem while leaving the limitation being adapted around largely unchanged.
This is one reason visible performance can’t be our only source of information about development. Successful adaptation can reveal skill, but it can also conceal the boundary of an ability. The fact that a player has found ways to play with what they have shouldn’t automatically be taken as evidence that what they have is sufficiently developed.
Abilities can shape what a player is able to do while still needing meaningful time and space to develop in their own right.
This is where another assumption can sneak into practice design: if application matters, application should be present.
Those aren’t the same thing.
A coach can work directly on a player’s acceleration while having its application entirely in mind. Spending time on body organization, force direction, first-step projection, or accelerating from motion doesn’t imply that the coach has forgotten the game. The game may be the reason the work is being done in the first place.
Application can organize the purpose of development without dictating the form of every developmental activity.
Signal and Noise
Imagine practice arranged on a scale from zero to ten. At zero sits isolated movement with little or no game information. As we move upward, more information and demands are added until, at ten, we arrive at competition.
It’s an appealing way to think about practice. It’s also worth asking what exactly is being measured.
Context relevant to what?
A skater moving across the ice without a puck or defender isn’t operating in a vacuum. The skater is interacting with the ice, the blade, speed, direction, balance, momentum, equipment, task instructions, previous movement, intended movement, and a goal. Change the entry speed and the problem changes. Change the radius of a turn and the problem changes. Change the direction of travel, the available space, the required exit, or what movement preceded it, and the problem changes again.
There may be no game context. That isn’t the same as no context.
Different problems bring different parts of the environment into focus. What matters for one developmental target may be little more than noise for another.
If context comes to mean only game context, the game quietly becomes the reference point for every developmental problem. Mechanics and abilities may still be acknowledged, but primarily as features embedded within game performance. The question of how they might be developed starts with the assumption that the game should remain as present as possible.
That creates a peculiar tension. Mechanics matter. Abilities matter. Skill matters. Yet the closer practice gets to working meaningfully and directly on the first two, the more pressure there is to justify the absence of the third.
The final activity doesn’t necessarily tell us what should be emphasized at every point along the developmental path.
Someone rehabilitating an achilles injury may ultimately want to walk, run, and play normally again. But rehabilitation can include controlled loading, range-of-motion work, strength development, and heel raises. The eventual function organizes the process, but it doesn’t dictate the form of every exercise along the way.
Rehabilitation serves a different purpose within sport, but the developmental principle is useful here. The eventual need to perform something in an integrated activity doesn’t mean every component must remain integrated throughout its development.
The same is true when a child learns to ride a bike. Cycling eventually requires balancing, pedalling, steering, braking, looking where you’re going, and responding to the environment at the same time. But a child may temporarily use training wheels, have a parent steady the seat, practise coasting down a gentle slope, or work on starting and stopping in an empty space.
Each choice changes the problem. Reducing one demand can give the child more opportunity to explore another. It can make the activity safer, allow more successful movement, and increase confidence, enjoyment, and willingness to continue. The eventual activity requiring integration doesn’t mean every demand must remain present at every moment of development.
Maybe the better question isn’t how much context practice contains, but whether the context is relevant to the problem we’re trying to solve.
Turning the Dial
Practice design is often discussed as though context were something we simply add. Add a puck. Add a defender. Add a decision. Add pressure. Add variability. Add competition.
Each addition can create useful opportunities. Each can also create competition for attention, effort, and adaptation.
Let’s say I’m asked to help a player accelerate more effectively from motion. I might begin with a clear direction and no puck because I want the player to explore how they reorganize their body and redirect force while already moving. I could later add a puck to see whether that organization survives another demand. I could introduce a choice of direction, then an opponent whose movement provides information about where to go.
Or I might move in the opposite direction.
I might first notice the limitation during a competitive activity. The player repeatedly recognizes opportunities to accelerate but fails to create meaningful separation. From there, I reduce the problem. I remove the defender. Then perhaps the puck. I look more closely at what the player can actually do when competing demands are stripped away.
Practice doesn’t always move from simple to complex. Sometimes complexity reveals the problem, simplification helps us understand and address it, and complexity is where we return to see what changed.
The dial can move in both directions.
There’s a tendency to describe anything removed from the final activity as something missing from practice. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s the point.
Removing the puck may allow a skater to move faster than they’re currently comfortable moving with it. Removing the defender may give them time to explore a new organization without immediately abandoning it for a familiar solution. Predetermining direction may allow greater attention to how force is produced and redirected. Reducing speed may make a movement available before speed is gradually returned.
The value of a demand depends on the problem. Sometimes it belongs in practice; sometimes removing it creates better conditions for change.
That’s a functionally pragmatic way to think about practice design. The method follows the problem rather than the other way around. What we preserve, reduce, add, or remove depends on what we’re trying to develop and what the player needs at that moment.
The tuning will look different depending on where we’re trying to make change:
When mechanics are the target, practice can give the player repeated chances to find, feel, and refine a more useful way of organizing movement. The question is whether the environment gives that change enough room to emerge and stabilize.
When an ability is the target, practice can stretch what the player is capable of doing: more speed, sharper redirection, tighter spaces, greater momentum, different entries and exits, or repeated efforts. The question is whether the ability itself is becoming deeper and more available.
When skill is the target, practice can ask the player to use what they have in relation to information: an opponent’s movement, changing space, timing, pressure, teammates, and consequence. The question is whether they can find and use effective solutions as the problem changes.
These targets can overlap within the same activity, but the emphasis still matters. A coach trying to change how a player accelerates, how much acceleration they have available, and when they accelerate may design and observe practice differently. Tuning begins with knowing which problem has our attention.
Simplification can serve focus and efficiency, but its role can be broader. It can create physical safety, emotional safety, confidence, exploration, and enjoyment. These aren’t peripheral concerns. They shape what a player is willing and able to do.
A player who’s afraid of falling explores movement differently. A player expecting immediate pressure may rush back toward a familiar solution. A player who doesn’t trust the environment may avoid mistakes that would otherwise provide useful information. Trust expands the range of uncertainty, error, speed, risk, and experimentation a player is willing to tolerate.
Safety doesn’t just protect development. It helps shape the possibilities for development.
The question isn’t how much context we can add. It’s which demands deserve to compete right now.
Signal Exposure
There’s also a question of who we’re working with and how much meaningful time they need with the problem.
If an ability is genuinely limiting a player, occasionally exposing it within a larger activity may not provide enough time, attention, or appropriate demand to change it meaningfully. In more complex practice, the ability we care about is competing with everything else the player has to manage: the puck, opponents, teammates, space, timing, decisions, fatigue, and the immediate need to keep the play alive.
The player may only encounter the specific problem a handful of times. When they do, they may solve it by passing earlier, choosing a different route, slowing down, widening the space they use, or relying on something they already do well. Those can all be good solutions to the immediate problem. They can also mean the limitation we’re interested in receives very little meaningful exposure.
Some problems need more than opportunities to appear. They need enough time and the right conditions to be worked on directly.
A player with a substantial limitation may need a different dosage than one whose ability is already highly developed and needs to become more adaptable in use.
Take acceleration. One player may possess a powerful and reliable ability to accelerate but struggle to recognize opportunities to use it effectively. Another may consistently recognize those opportunities but lack the ability to create a meaningful change in speed. Giving both players the same activity may expose both problems, but that doesn’t mean it provides the best dosage for changing both of them.
The first player may need more opportunities to perceive, time, and apply acceleration in relation to opponents and space. The second may need meaningful time developing the ability itself: producing and directing force more effectively, reorganizing from motion, accelerating from different positions, and accessing that ability across a wider range of speeds and directions.
Development depends not only on exposure, but on getting enough meaningful time with the problem we’re trying to change.
A useful way to think about dosage is to look beyond the clock:
Experience: What does the player already bring to the problem? The same task may be overwhelming for one player, productive for another, and barely demanding for someone else.
Frequency: How often does the player actually encounter the problem we care about?
Concentration: How much of their attention and effort can be directed toward it when they do?
Demand: Is the problem being stressed enough to create change, or merely present in the activity?
Duration: Does the player spend enough meaningful time with the problem for anything to develop?
Recovery: Can the player continue working on the target with enough quality, or has fatigue changed the problem entirely?
Twenty minutes of practice can provide very different dosages depending on the player and the answers to these questions. A target can be present throughout an activity while receiving very little developmental attention. It can also appear briefly but be encountered repeatedly, deliberately, and at an appropriate level of demand.
Dosage is less about how long the drill runs and more about the player’s actual experience with the thing we’re trying to change.
Development and application can proceed alongside one another. The question isn’t which must come first or which matters more. The balance between them should depend on the player, the problem, and the moment.
Coaches have finite time. Players have finite attention and energy. Practice has finite repetitions. Efficiency matters.
If two approaches can produce useful change, but one allows a coach to address a particular limitation more directly, clearly, or efficiently, that matters. There’s no virtue in making a developmental problem harder to reach than it needs to be.
The amount of practice time and the amount of developmental opportunity aren’t necessarily the same thing.There’s also a question of time.
If an ability is genuinely limiting a player, occasionally exposing it within a larger activity may not provide enough time, attention, or appropriate demand to change it meaningfully. In more complex practice, the ability we care about is competing with everything else the player has to manage: the puck, opponents, teammates, space, timing, decisions, fatigue, and the immediate need to keep the play alive.
The player may only encounter the specific problem a handful of times. When they do, they may solve it by passing earlier, choosing a different route, slowing down, widening the space they use, or relying on something they already do well. Those can all be good solutions to the immediate problem. They can also mean the limitation we’re interested in receives very little meaningful exposure.
Some problems need more than opportunities to appear. They need enough time and the right conditions to be worked on directly.
A player with a substantial limitation may need a different dosage than one whose ability is already highly developed and needs to become more adaptable in use.
Take acceleration, for example. One player may possess a powerful and reliable ability to accelerate but struggle to recognize opportunities to use it effectively. Another may consistently recognize those opportunities but lack the ability to create a meaningful change in speed. Giving both players the same activity may expose both problems, but that doesn’t mean it provides the best dosage for changing both of them.
The first player may need more opportunities to perceive, time, and apply acceleration in relation to opponents and space. The second may need meaningful time developing the ability itself: producing and directing force more effectively, reorganizing from motion, accelerating from different positions, and accessing that ability across a wider range of speeds and directions.
Development depends not only on exposure, but on getting enough meaningful time with the problem we’re trying to change. Development and application can proceed alongside one another. The question isn’t which must come first or which matters more. The balance between them should depend on the player, the problem, and the moment. Coaches have finite time. Players have finite attention and energy. Practice has finite repetitions. Efficiency matters.
If two approaches can produce useful change, but one allows a coach to address a particular limitation more directly, clearly, or efficiently, that matters. There’s no virtue in making a developmental problem harder to reach than it needs to be. Nor should dosage be understood only as repetition. More time spent in an activity doesn’t necessarily mean more meaningful exposure to the target within it.
The amount of practice time and the amount of developmental opportunity aren’t necessarily the same thing.
All Channels Open
Abilities eventually coexist with perception, decisions, opponents, teammates, the puck, fatigue, emotion, and consequence. A player who can accelerate beautifully without ever recognizing when to accelerate is limited. So is a player whose movement disappears the moment another demand is introduced.
Integration matters because performance is integrated. Performance brings everything together. Development can move between the whole and its contributing parts as the problem requires.
Sometimes we integrate to develop. Sometimes we integrate to test. Sometimes we integrate because the interaction between demands is itself the problem. Sometimes integrated activity exposes a limitation that we then choose to address more directly.
The relationship doesn’t need to be linear. We don’t have to begin with isolated movement, progressively add demands, arrive at the game, and declare the process complete. Coaches can move back and forth. Observe performance. Form a hypothesis. Reduce the problem. Develop something. Add a demand. Watch what changes. Remove something again.
A functionally pragmatic process might look something like this:
Start by describing what’s happening without rushing to explain why.
Identify where the problem becomes visible and consequential.
Consider where it might originate: mechanics, ability, perception, decision-making, the interaction between demands, confidence, fatigue, or experience.
Consider the developmental depth of the ability involved. Is it merely available, or is it sufficiently developed for what the player is being asked to do?
Decide what you’re actually trying to change.
Preserve the information and demands necessary for that target.
Reduce or remove demands that are unnecessarily competing with it.
Give the target enough time and exposure to change.
Return complexity deliberately and observe what persists, what reorganizes, and what disappears.
This isn’t a formula for deciding how every player should practise. It’s a way of resisting the temptation to decide what practice should look like before understanding the problem.
The game remains important. It tells us what matters, exposes limitations, creates consequences, and provides the environment in which skating abilities must ultimately function. But the game doesn’t provide a complete developmental prescription.
Sometimes the problem needs the whole picture. Sometimes we need to narrow the frame. Sometimes we need more information, and sometimes we need less noise.
Good coaching isn’t about keeping practice permanently tuned to one frequency. It’s knowing what you’re trying to hear, what might be interfering with the signal, and when it’s time to turn the dial.