The Coach's Road

For this Coach’s Road we talk with Quintin Bollue, Director of Player Development for Jar Idrettslag in Norway. Quintin started playing in Belgium and began his coaching career at the U19 level. We talk about how he decided to pursue coaching as a career, what motivates him to continuously improve and the impact the education opportunities had on him. Then we dive into his core values and philosop...

This week we welcome on Gary Hodgson from the ICoachKids Global Movement where he serves as the Content and Community Manager. Gary is also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Leeds Beckett University. With Gary we first talk about ICK and the mission and vision of the organization and the tremendous amount of work and volunteering that has gone into making it possible! We then dive into Gary himse...

This week we welcome on Author of The Language of Coaching, Nick Winkelman, PhD. Nick also serves as the Head of Athletic Performance and Science for the Irish Rugby Football Union. With Nick we explore the ideas in his book revolving around attention, memory, and the impact our language has on the learning of our athletes while exploring the Coaching Communication Loop. The language we talk about...

This week we welcome on Dr. Diane Culver, an Associate Professor from the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics. We explore theory around lifelong learning, Peter Jarvis’ three dimensions of learning, accounting for differences in individual’s biography, and the social learning theory! This is a fairly theoretical episode that provides some of the ideas on how humans learn as social bein...

This week we welcome on Pasi Mustonen, Head Coach of the Finnish Women’s National Hockey Team. This is the first repeated guest on the show and this time we talk with Pasi about the upcoming Women’s World Championship in May and how him and the team are preparing for the tournament over distance. After that we shift the conversation to exploring Pasi’s views on coaching and how that has evolved ov...

This week we chat with Bob Mancini, Regional Manager for USA Hockey's American Development Model. Bob has also spent time with the Oilers Organization and the South African Hockey Association and has been with USAH since the start of the ADM in 2009. With Bob we get into the development path of his son Victor, how his time with the Oilers and South Africa helps him in his current role, and how the...

This week we welcome on Hero Mali, Strength Coach for Jokerit in the KHL and the Finnish Men’s National Team. Hero has had a lot of success in his almost 14 years on the pro level winning championships at the national and international level. With Hero we talk about the difference in being a strength coach for a club team and a national team as well as how the cooperation in the coaching staff wor...

This week we welcome on Petteri Kilpivaara, Assistant Coach of the Dresdner Eislöwen in the DEL2. Petteri is a former DP student belonging to the DP4 class of students. He has a vast amount of experience at several levels and ages of hockey including working as an Assistant Coach for the Finnish Women's National Team for 4 years. In this conversation Petteri shares his learnings from his time with...

This week we welcome on Jeff LoVecchio, a Performance Coach and Owner of RIPT HOCKEY. Jeff also hosts The Hockey Think Tank Podcast along with Topher Scott. With Jeff we explore more into Strength and Conditioning and he provides us with some great conversation of training specifics for the first half of the conversation including what a typical session looks like for his athletes, what type of tr...

This week we welcome on the Founder of The Coaches Site and the Host of The Glass and Out Podcast, Aaron Wilbur. Aaron shares with us his favorite parts of running the site and the podcast, what he has taken away from the experience and how he applies the learnings in his life and coaching. We then talk about promoting yourself as a coach, taking theory into practice, and how being a good coach is...

This week we welcome on Peter Bolin, a Coach Mentor for Seclerland Hockey Academy in Romania and Hungary. With Peter we chat about his work as a coach mentor and how he establishes a mission for the club, changes the coaches behavior and works with the members of the club. We also explore the idea of giving feedback to our players based on their behaviors as well as the various types of behaviors....

In this episode we talk with Mike Harder, Director of Hockey Club Reno Ice, a brand new club in Reno, Nevada. Mike had a long playing career in the NCAA, AHL and various leagues in Europe. We dive into how that impacted his coaching and also explore how he got started in coaching, what he sees the role of a coach being, the philosophy of his club, and the goals he has for the new program in Reno....

This week we welcome on Mikael Tolkki, the video coach of the Finnish U20 National Team. Mikael also does some work for the International Ice Hockey Center of Excellence based in Vierumäki. With Mikael we explore video coaching including the role of a video coach and the benefit of having a quality video coach. We also dive into a very interesting topic of integrating technology into our coaching...

This week we welcome on Jake Jensen, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Eisbären Berlin. Jake also has a Masters in Science from SNHU, and has received a CSCS through the NSCA in the US. In today's episode we dive into the world of Strength and Conditioning for the first time on our show and explore Jake's transition from American Football to Ice Hockey, LTAD, testing and monitoring athletes...

This week we welcome on Rich White, the Innovations Manager for Emergent MVMT. We talk with Rich about Emergent and their purpose, their new course Origins (use code ‘coachsroad21’ for a 20% discount), and dive into ecological dynamics, ecological psychology and the dynamic systems theory. We also chat about his journey to using ecological dynamics, how to take the theory into practice and the rol...

On this episode we talk with Larry Huras, Head Coach and Co-Founder of Hockey Coach Vision. Larry spent time coaching in France, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Austria and began his career as a player coach for 6 years. During his time as a Head Coach, Larry won 7 championships. It was great to talk with someone that started as a player coach and Larry shares the insights and lessons fro...

This week we welcome on Stuart Armstrong, the Host of The Talent Equation Podcast. With Stuart we try a new challenge of going into the conversation with no preparation of questions and the result was a great conversation on all things coaching, the ecological approach, social media, and his key takeaways from his time running his show! We also explore if and when its appropriate to use a linear a...

This week we welcome on Professor Cliff Mallet from The University of Queensland. Prof. Mallet joins us to talk about Needs Supportive Coaching, creating Needs Supportive Environments, Social Identity Theory, and Motivation. We explore a lot in this weeks conversation with Prof. Mallet and we also jump into the importance of understanding the person in context as well as the leadership skills that...

This week we welcome on Professor Jean Côté from Queens University in Kingston, ON. Prof. Côté has done a lot of research on early sampling and formulated the Development Model of Sports Participation (DMSP) back in 1999. We dive into the structure of the model in today's conversation and also talk about early sampling vs. early specializing, deliberate practice vs. deliberate play, and how to pro...

This week we welcome on Juhamatti Yli-Junnila (Yli), the Head Coach of the U20 SM-Liiga Lahti Pelicans. Yli shares with us his beginnings in coaching including starting at the U13 age group and following some of his current players all the way to U20 SM. Yli also shares with us the philosophy and core values important to his coaching, the team identity his players have created this year, and the e...

This week we welcome on Markus Åkerblom, Assistant Coach of the Swedish Men's National Team. With Markus we talk about his coaching philosophy, why player centered environments are important and what the key elements are in a player centered environment. One thing we continue to return to in the episode is coaching with questions instead of answers. We also dive into creating a player centered env...

This week we welcome on Professor Charles Hillman, the Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. Dr. Hillman also belongs to the Department of Psychology and the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement & Rehabilitation Sciences. In today's episode we focus on Dr. Hillman's work on physical activity and its impact on brain health. We...

This week we welcome on three of our classmates from the degree program in sports coaching and management here at Vierumäki. Sara is from Finland, Michael from Austria and Craig from Wales. They each represent a different sport and have a unique path into the program. We talk about their paths to the program and then dive into what the program has meant to them in the way of key takeaways, favorit...

This week we welcome on Maso Lehtonen, Head Coach of Imatra Ketterä of the Mestis league in Finland. Maso is also an alumni of our program here in Vierumäki so it was nice to connect with him and learn more about his background, his coaching and his road overall. Maso shares with us why his teams find a sort of instant success, what he sees the role of a coach as and why he coaches. Its a great co...

On this weeks episode we throw it back to an interview we conducted over the summer with our instructor Mika Vähälummukka. Mika runs the classes on strength and conditioning and physical development in our program. We hope this kicks us off into talking more strength and conditioning pedagogy, models and planning in addition to our other topics. With Mika we talk about the difference between the Y...