Off Season Athletic Development

This is going to sound strange because it was a hockey dad who pointed this out:

Drills should be varied and be as close to actual game simulations as possible. Doing the same five drills makes you good at those drills and may not actually make you more athletic.

He was at a DI hockey invite only camp: a group of kids absolutely dominated three of the five drills that the camp put the kids through. The dad goes and talks to coaches running the camp and says that they had a coach leak a few of the drills they would be doing and a club coach had his kids do those drills on a regular basis..sacrificing practice time so the kid would look good at the invite camp. In the other 2 drills those same kids looked like pooh and in the live ice drills (simulated games- not a hockey so that is what it sounded like to me) they were skated off the ice.

The point of the drills was to demonstrate speed and agility (athleticism) but learning to do a drill doesn't mean that they are more athletic vs. having good muscle memory.

Our strength coach has made this a part of our program- multiple drills that are rotated 4 days of drills each week and no more than 2 weeks of doing the same drill. We have 20 ladders drills we use, 10 cone drills, we are a rip only team and we do 5 rip drills with bags but always try to add a novel movement (left side rip, squeeze shuffle/buzz attack/replace/chase/counter spill)