‍“I’ll do anything to make the team this year Dad”

The last 3 seasons Luke had been cut from AAA at fall tryouts – but this year felt different. 

He had been a good AA player, but his Dad knew he wasn’t truly ready for AAA yet. He loved hockey, but it was more about fun than competing or being the best. 

But this past year a switch flipped.  

It started with stick handling in the basement, then shooting hundreds of pucks on the driveway, then watching Youtube videos for drills and workouts.

Suddenly he was obsessed with not just hockey, but becoming the best player he could be. 

‍This past summer he had really put in the work. He was shooting more pucks than ever, had started doing workouts at home, he went for runs, he was focused on finally making the AAA team.

The truth is, with the work he put in – he earned it. 

“Look buddy, we see how much you’ve improved this past year – but we think you could use another year in AA.”

The conversation every hockey player fears, he was getting cut.

Things were quiet for a few weeks. No sounds of stickhandling on the driveway or pucks against the net.  No workout music from the basement. It was clear this one had crushed him. 

Then conversation came...

“Dad, I wanna know exactly what I have to do to play AAA next year. What I have to do to improve my shooting and how I can get stronger and faster. And I’ll follow that exactly 100%.”

The self awareness was impressive. He wanted help to create the exact game plan that he could follow to become a better hockey player. 

So his Dad reached out to the local skills coach who broke down his shooting and gave him drills that he could do at home and encouraged him to start off-ice training.

“If you get him training properly at this age and developing true strength and power it’ll be like pouring rocket fuel on his development.”

That's when the Coach recommended Kyle & Relentless Hockey. We had worked with thousands of youth athletes at this point & earned a reputation for our work developing of hockey players.

So we met with Luke & his dad to hear what he had been doing for off-ice training. 

Luke's Dad was hesitant about off-ice training, he knew it was important at a certain age, but Luke had previously worked a local old school personal trainer who acted more like a Drill Sargent putting kids through sloppy circuit training than a Coach developing true athletic foundations.

Luke, like most motivated youth hockey players, didn’t need this. 

He didn’t need a trainer to push him harder, he needed a game plan to make sure his work created results.

So that’s what we created for Luke. A 12 week blue print that he could follow that would develop not only the foundational strength and power he needed to thrive as an athlete, but also the exact attributes that translate most on the ice. 

• We focused on movement quality and exercises that would help him increase movement fluency and become an elite mover. 
• We emphasized developing foundational strength that would let him play stronger, own the puck, and also build power on for years to come.  
• We challenged speed & athleticism with speed drills that would help him refine his movement mechanics and unlock faster feet – along with plyo exercises to help him generate more power each in stride.  
• We used functional mobility exercises that would help him to stay healthy, address the imbalances that hockey players have, and start to build a bulletproof body.
• We utilized conditioning that specifically challenged the energy systems that hockey players use on ice so that he could play at top speed even at the end of his shifts when other players were slowing down. 

With the right guidance, Luke’s work started to pay off. 

He went from being one of the better players on his AA team, to being one of the best AA players in the league. 

He started to look like an elite player. His stride was more powerful. It was impossible to knock off the puck. He dominated his shifts and never seemed to run out of gas. 

It started with coaches and other parents joking with the classic “what are you feeding that kid!” 

But the jokes quickly became serious conversations about what he was doing, what camp had he been going to, what skill coach he worked with – where did he find the edge?

The truth is, there was no secret sauce. No coach that was going to turn him into an elite hockey player. No workout program that magically got him stronger. 

It was Luke’s hard work applied to the right game plan. 

At the time, we had created digital programs that were being used by hundreds of pros, juniors, and college players, but seeing Luke's results – we realized that youth players needed a blue print that would give them the exact structure they needed to develop into elite hockey players.

They had the ambition, they just needed the game plan – and that's when the Relentless Youth Development Program was born. 

Since then we’ve had thousands ambitious youth players translate their hard work and hustle into true athletic development that gives them not only the advantage over players now, but long term.

We've been fortunate to watch many of these players unlock their potential to go from AA to AAA and even years later go on to play Junior, earn scholarships, and continue to thrive in the game.

If you have a youth hockey player at home that's serious about becoming the best player they can be, then now is the time to start getting relentless with their training!