Why does Competitive Edge Hockey exist?
The reason we are here is simple and it is best illustrated considering the following scenario…
Imagine you are a part of a hockey community that has access to only one sheet of ice. Your community has grown to the point where this one sheet can no longer serve everybody and you need more opportunities for players to work on their skills, practice, and play games. Should this community build a second sheet of ice for $1.5 Million or more, or should they build an off-ice skill development center that can handle a full team for individual skill development and practice for a fraction of that cost?
We have built Competitive Edge to make it a truly viable alternative to on-ice skill development for the full range of individual skills…
We can work on the vast majority of each player’s skill set in small groups with professional coaching without adding cost compared to icetime (icetime that does not include those advantages).
Now, to answer the question regarding the best solution for a hockey community needing more development capacity for their players…
Over the years the answer to this question has been to build another sheet of ice (and eventually this community may still have to do that). This is because off-ice technology could not match the breadth of individual skill development that could be done on ice. That is no longer true, and Competitive Edge achieves this plus gives small group attention with professional skills coaches to a full team during our training process.
As a result, this community could save a ton of money by utilizing an off-ice center that matches Competitive Edge’s capability to develop their players’ individual skills while focusing their icetime more on team cohesion, read and react, and tactical schemes (of course they would still work on skills on-ice a fair amount as well). And since Competitive Edge Hockey has the ability to develop the vast majority of individual skill sets, this would be a very cost efficient solution.
The reason Competitive Edge exists is to bring this dramatically greater efficiency to the world of Hockey Development. Read on to learn about what this efficiency allows Competitive Edge to do for the consumer.
Competitive Edge’s Technology creates an environment where skill development can take place with hugely reduced costs compared to an ice sheet.
How does this help the hockey development consumer?
The reduced costs associated with an off-ice facility are passed on to the consumer in a number of ways.
- Skill development for a full team where each skater has a professional skills coach working with them at a 5 to 1 student to instructor ratio or better
- Private Lessons at about half the cost of on-ice private lessons
- Small group training (4 to 1 student to instructor ratio or better) at an hourly rate comparable to a 25 skater on-ice camp
- No need to set aside the full sheet of ice for a single group allows for flexible scheduling, so training can be done at times convenient for the students
Our systems also give our instructors a higher degree of control over what is demanded of the skater…
- The settings of the Bullet Treadmill and Crossover Flywheel can be adjusted to help the skater achieve the specific aspect of technique we are targeting
- Environmental cues are built into our facility to give students and instructor clearer and faster feedback on performance
- Areas are sized and outfitted appropriately to maximize number and quality of repetitions
This is all well and good as long as the training is truly beneficial to the student. We have taken great pains to ensure that this is the case. Read on for more on this…
A Repetition is a Repetition…
Whether on-ice or off-ice, quality reps create improvement.
If a repetition is performed exactly the same off the ice as it is on the ice, will one lead to greater improvement than the other? Of course not!
Keep in mind that it is very hard for the repetitions to be exactly alike in both settings, but also keep in mind that even when skating perfectly on real ice, not all reps are alike. Reps at low speed are different in terms of body position and extension push direction than those at high speed, and we need to build a motor program that is adaptable for all situations.
The reps that can be achieved on Competitive Edge’s Crossover Flywheel, Skating Treadmill, and Hand Skills area are very similar and also within the continuum of the techniques we’ll need on the ice, so they can be just as effective of training as on-ice development for a vast majority of individual skills including…
- Forward Stride
- Crossovers
- Backward Crossovers
- Transitions
- Puckhandling
- Basic Passing
- Saucer Passing
- Wrist Shot
- Snap Shot
- And Much More…
In fact, we can often produce advantages over repetitions on ice because our facility is specifically designed to host these specific areas of skill development. As a result, our instructors can exhibit a higher degree of control over how each rep is performed. We can also often get more reps per player in a given time.