The Coach's Road

This week we talk with Jukka Tiikkaja, COO of Vierumäki. Jukka has formerly been with the Degree Program we are studying in from the beginning in 2001 until 2017 with a small break to work with the IIHF Asia Office. With his background with the program we talk about the evolution of the program over the years. In turn we talk about creating good learning environments for coaches through the analog...

This week we talk about our coaching philosophies. A conversation that in our minds was overdue since we commonly ask coaches to describes their coaching philosophies in our episodes. We go through some questions and aspects we feel are important pieces of coaching philosophies but also this episode is a good example of how a philosophy can differ from coach to coach and context to context. We are...

This week we welcome on Dr. Cassidy Preston, High-Performance Coach and Founder of Consistent Elite Performance. With Dr. Preston we explore how we can help athletes development mental toughness. We throw several practical examples from our own coaching at Dr. Preston and he walks us through how he would respond to the situations. This is a great mix of theory and practical ideas. Dr. Preston prov...

This week we welcome on Jeff Jackson, the Head Coach for University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish Men’s Hockey Team. With Jeff we talk about lifelong learning as a coach and what challenging times can give us. Then we dive into Tradition and Identity at Notre Dame and the character traits they try to teach their players. We then talk about the first actions he and his staff take to ensure newcomers...

This week we are very excited to welcome on Alpo Suhonen, The first European Head Coach in the NHL back in the early 2000’s. Alpo has coached on five different continents and in many different contexts and he shares with us what it means to coach human beings! We also talk about coaching the whole human and now we finally scratch the surface on what that actually means! Alpo brings an interesting...

This week we welcome on Dr. Sergio Lara-Bercial from Leeds-Beckett University in England. With Dr. Lara-Bercial we talk about his work with studying Serial Winning Coaches and some of the common themes in the coaches that they studied. We talk about the idea of driven benevolence and how do the four themes of philosophy, vision, right people in the right place and environment translate the youth s...

This week we welcome on Frank Serratore, Head Coach of the US Air Force Academy Hockey Team. Coach Serratore has been coaching at the Academy since 1997 so it was great to talk with him about his program, the types of players he recruits, their style of play and the evolution he has gone through since 1997. Coach Serratore has a lot of energy and even through zoom he displays great passion for wha...

This week we welcome on Don Granato, Head Coach of the Buffalo Sabres. With Coach Granato we get into what qualities do you need to be an NHL Head Coach, the importance of self-reflection in team culture, perspective, leadership and finally a bit about style of play and how it can impact players’ self-confidence! A lot to take away from this episode so enjoy the conversation! You can check out the...

This week we welcome on Head Coach of the York University Lion’s Women’s Hockey Team Daniel Church. Dan is currently pursuing a Master’s in Athlete Leadership which we explore in the conversation. We also chat about using some of the principles made popular by the All Blacks in New Zealand such as Transformational Leadership and the Dual Management Model. We talk about how this all makes groups su...

This week our guest is RJ Enga, former Assistant Coach with the Colorado College Tigers. With RJ we start with what hockey means to him and the part that it plays in his life. From there we dive into where strategy, systems and tactics fit into hockey and what they really should be used for. We also talk about how easy it is for coaches to overthink and overcomplicate the game. We then take an int...

This week we welcome on Mike Whyatt, Executive Director of Halifax City Soccer Club in Nova Scotia. Mike joins us to chat about sociocultural constraints and how they impact us as coaches, how our players learn and much more! We also chat about some of the trends in youth sport and the cultural aspects that may be influencing those trends. We get into a lot of different areas and overall Mike crea...

This week we welcome on Roger Grillo, The USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager for the Northeastern region. With Roger we discuss his background in college hockey and in teaching and how they have impacted his job now. From there we explore a couple different areas around player development including how to maximize player development, how to focus on the individual players, how to move from pretty goo...

This week we welcome on Perttu Kytöhonka, Sport Director for TPS Salibandy here in Finland. With Perttu we explore his coaching through CLA and NLP in a practical way. We talk about how he implements these theories into his coaching and how he approaches a training week. We also chat about the balance he strikes between closed and open activities, how he manipulates constraints, and how he progres...

This week we welcome on Jesse Welling, Coach with the Lahti Pelicans in the Finnish Liiga to discuss mental coaching and evaluation. Specifically we talk with Jesse Welling about the tool he created as part of his thesis to scout and evaluate the mental qualities of players. We explore the basic requirements for team sport athletes when it comes to mental qualities. We then dive into how the tool...

This week we welcome on our Communications Instructor and local theater director Salla Aas to talk about communication and interaction as coaches. We dive into important areas such as nonverbal communication and how that makes up 94-96% of communication. We also talk about using the wheel of interaction (find it here: http://bit.ly/woi-tcr ) and how we can use that tool as coaches to help manage o...

This week we welcome on Head Coach and The Coach’s Site Partner Ben Cooper. Ben shares with us his unique path to becoming a Head Coach including spending time in the NHL and The 2010 Canadien Olympic Team in his home town of Vancouver. We then dive into what he has learned from the 50+ great coaches he has had the chance to work with as well as what he has learned working with obsessed athletes....

This week we welcome on Iiro Partanen, Head Coach for TPS Turku U15 team. Iiro is another former student of the degree program coming from the DP16 class. With Iiro we explore his views on coaching and his education, the role of a coach and how that has shifted for him in his career, and the environment he strives to create. We also explore his values and how that leads into the way he wants his t...

This week we welcome on Dr. Stephen Norris to chat about Long Term Athlete Development. We chat about some of the different models and what the most important aspect is when selecting a model to use. We also chat about how we should be measuring development in our athletes and how we better serve them in the long run. Dr. Norris has a lot of great information on this topic and shares a lot of it i...

This week we welcome on Dr. Jia Yi Chow, Author of the book "Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition" written along with Keith Davids, Chris Button and Ian Renshaw. With Jia Yi we explore the relationship between The Constraints Led Approach and Nonlinear Pedagogy. Then we dive into the design principles of NLP that allow us practitioners to utilize the theory in our practice. We throw a couple of...

This week we welcome on John Luetkemeyer and Sami Aaltonen to discuss about club development. John has spent 17 years with Kirkwood Youth Hockey Association in St. Louis, MO and Sami is currently the Head of Coaching with TPS Turku. We dive into educating parents, developing culture, dealing with challenges and growing the club. Overall it is a great conversation with a lot of ideas being exchange...

This episode features Hunor Marton, U20 Head Coach for Barani, Banska Bystrica. Hunor is also an alumni of our program and with him we discuss his time at Vierumäki A, his core values and philosophy and the type of coach his player's see. We also talk about how he worked with his team through tough times, the practice mentality he instills in his players, and his goals for the upcoming season with...

This episode is special as we celebrate our first year as a podcast. We have had a lot of conversations with some great people and we cannot thank our guests enough. Also our listeners, without you guys we wouldn't have the motivation to keep going so thanks for the support, feedback, recommendations and everything else! In this episode we set some goals for the show's next year, we explore some q...

This week we welcome on Tobias Johansson for the second time to the Coach's Road Podcast. Tobias is now the Head Coach of the U20 Norwegian National Team as well as the Director of Player Development for the Association. This time around we talk about the preparations he was a part of for the Men's World Championships, the aspects of the culture in Frölunda he wants to establish in Norway, how he...

This week we welcome on David Laszlo, the new Junior Club Coach from Vaasa Sport. David is an alumni of our program and has been in youth hockey for over 30 years. We talk about the youth hockey world and compare his experiences in North America and in Europe. We then dive into to his passion for youth hockey, how he builds relationships with his athletes, and how he builds autonomy in his players...

For this Coach's Road we talk with Emmi Ruokonen, Head of Juniors for Lahti Basketball. Emmi comes from a Track & Field and Basketball background where she started coaching at the age of 14! Emmi shares with us about her time in Vierumäki in the vocational program and the degree program and how it has impacted her coaching. She also shares why she coaches, her idea of the role of a coach, and how...