As a national team coach you have to use a bit different methods.
Because you don't have contact with the players all the time.
You are not present in their everyday life.
The total load of the
players is increasing all the time.
There's remarkable change in that
situation.
The players are practicing more, playing more games so we have to be aware of that fact.
We use the heart rate monitors all the time in the training and also in the games.
And it's really valuable tool for us especially during longer tournaments.
For example last World Championships we had seven games in 11 days.
We have to be careful that players are not overloading themselves after a long period of games and traveling.
Sometimes it's hard to say
stop, I just go and go and go.
And then when I kind of hit the wall,
I just realize that, maybe I should watch this data more.
In a practice and games it's so intense
so we have to take care of that we have low intense practice also and we can follow the load.
The players already take responsibility of
their training.
They monitor themselves a lot.
They know the feedback from
their feeling and from the data what we give.
We have many individuals who are following themselves all the time, like 24/7.
When you practice a lot, you need a lot of sleep and stuff like that.
So when you know that it's working as it should work, it makes your days easier.
As an athlete you really need to trust
yourself,
but it's really good to have kind of a one friend who's helping beside that.
I think it's good that we have this special data from the physical side,
but of course ice hockey as a game and all the tournament and matches
they need much more than just the physical side.
It's a mental, it's a skill type, you have
to be dynamic, you have to understand the game.
So everything combined makes the
best result.
