ADM Kids

Q: My child is enrolled in the ADM and the hockey association has all the 8U players practicing together in small areas. It looks like they are being very active, but is this the right thing for their hockey development?
 
A: Saying that your 8U child “is enrolled in the ADM” is a common misnomer and misconception of many parents who think that USA Hockey’s American Development Model is only about 8U or cross-ice hockey. In fact, the ADM is much more than that. It’s a ladder of development based on age-appropriate training and competition. It’s a model of high-performance development that adjusts how players are trained based on their age-specific physical and cognitive development. While cross-ice hockey is considered to be high-performance development in the 8U age category, the ADM takes many shapes and forms as the player advances through its stages of training.
 
Station-based practices, when run correctly, are absolutely the right thing for your child’s development. They are the most efficient delivery method for our players to get not only a higher number of repetitions, but also the best development opportunity for a number of reasons, including:

• Smaller player-to-coach ratio, which gives the players more individual coaching during a station-based practice.
• Better leverage of coaching. Your better coaches now get to affect an entire program of players instead of just one team. Moving a player from station to station allows for better ice-time utilization, since less time is wasted setting up drills.
• With more kids on the ice, associations have the ability to lower costs and/or increase ice touches to provide increased development.
• Kids get more repetitions, and more repetitions translate into increased development. (See chart below)