Working Smarter is Working Harder

As I am preparing for tomorrow night's home game against Morzine, I would like to talk to you a bit about my other job here besides being a hockey player. As well as being the Strength and Conditioning coach for my own team, I also work for minor hockey as the director of Hockey Off-Ice Conditioning. It is only once a week but it involves driving this big van to go pick up students from school, making 3 different stops, drive them to the rink, then run them through workouts. You would think I would feel at home doing this, as I work a similar, yet more professional job in Vancouver at Twist Conditioning. These students are in a program called "Sport-Études." This means that for the students in this program, if their sport is hockey, they get out of school early to come to the rink and either do on-ice or dryland sessions, replacing a boring phys ed. class that they would get nothing out of in the first place.

I thought this would be a walk in the park, but after the first day I realized that this was going to be more of a challenge than saying "jump" and them saying "how high." On the first day they asked if they could grab something to eat quick before we started so I gave them 10 minutes to get ready. I had guys that were strolling in, baguettes in hand 25 minutes into the workout. So the next day, we arrived at the rink at 4:25pm I said if you are not ready to workout at 4:35pm you will be doing some push ups. Believe me, the french kids do not like to do extra work, it is a struggle to get them doing anything, so most of them were on time. One kid was 1 minute late so he did 10 push ups, 2 others were 3 minutes late so they did 30 push ups. I thought the last to be late was 6 minutes behind, so he did 2 sets of 30. You get the picture, for every minute late, you have 10 push ups. Then to my amaze, I had 2 more kids come in 17 minutes late! The rest of the students started cheering "170!!!" By our rules, they had 170 push ups to do, standing firm I told them they had the hour to complete them, thinking that they would accept, then after about 40-50 I would tell them it is good enough and to join the group. Well, they heard that, turned around and flipped me off, saying screw this, then sat in the bar and had a coffee and baguette for the remainder of the hour.

In Canada, if you were late and your coach gave you the opportunity to stay and finish the workout, you would be thanking him for those push ups. Was I going to make them do 170 push ups, well.... haha no not a chance, but it was just to test their character. They failed.

Now everyone usually uses about 5 of the 10 minutes I give them to get ready, and we start on time and work hard. Well kind of work hard I guess. That's another thing that bothers me, these french kids have no problem bailing out on an exercise. I had them all doing the plank, or forearm bridge, I said OK here we go, 45 seconds guys, lets go!!! After 10 seconds some of them are dropping to their knees, or my favorite is when they slide their feet up against the wall for support. When I try to encourage them they respond " Je n'arrive pas" meaning, "I cant do it." Some of these are junior players, and in Canada, when a coach is encouraging you and trying to get more out of you, responding "I can't do it" would get you cut so fast that the Belmont Jr. D Bombers would already have a jersey hanging for you in your stall.

They have no problem quitting exercises or taking the easiest way possible, but that is just their culture. They have the shortest work week in the world with 35 hours being considered full time work over here, and it seems that when you ask for something to be done, it is always "demain" (tomorrow) never right away. Though we are very different, I must say that I admire the French. I admire how they can manage to have 2 hours in the middle of a work day to go home and eat with their families from 12-2, I admire how they do not work on Sundays and use it as a day of rest and most of all, I admire their history and how everyone has ties to the World War II that took place on this very land. Just last weekend I ate lunch at our trainer's house, he is 72 years-old, and very grumpy, often blaming the import players for stealing tape and sticks, among other things. We started talking about WWII, and he said that in 1939, he was only 3 years old at the time, his father was taken prisoner by the Germans, and was held for 3 years before being released back to France. I was shocked by this but "Papy" as we call him, just nodded "Oui Oui" saying oh yes dad was a gone for 3 years, like it was no big deal? When I was a little boy, I would be upset if my dad spent too long at the launching for his "Boarder Police" book, let alone being gone for 3 years in a German Prisoner War Camp.

I appreciate their culture here and I am glad to be a part of it, the young hockey players I train are learning and getting better everyday and having learned a little more about "Papy" I understand why he favours the French players and is always blaming the imports for stealing. He is just protecting his own.