How long do you think it would take to become an elite female hockey player? To get to the highest level of women’s hockey, you have to be willing to commit the time and effort necessary to get there. So just how much time will it take?

In order to achieve mastery in a particular activity, experts say that you need to spend 10,000 hours perfecting your craft (in this case, girls hockey). That’s a lot of time, especially when you think about the fact that most girls hockey players are really only on the ice for between 5-7 hours per week.

Here’s how those 10,000 hours might breakdown for an aspiring girls hockey player looking to make it to the highest levels of hockey:

=> If you spent 10 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 500 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would take you 20 years to reach a “mastery” level. Considering most girls hockey players don’t start playing until 7 or 8 years old, that might be too late.

=> If you spent 15 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 750 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would only take you 15 years to reach the elite levels. This means that you don’t need to start quite as early, but it is still a long time.

=> If you spent 20 hours per week training for 50 weeks of the year, you would collect 1000 hours of training time per year. At that rate, it would only take you 10 years to reach the elite levels. It would be 10 years of intense hard work, but you could get it done. Since most girls hockey players decide that they want to become elite players around the age of 13 or 14, it is realistic that starting this intensity of training schedule could get you to your goal by the time you were 23 or 24 (which is approximately the average age of the women’s national team members).

Whether you start when you are 5 or 15, the reality is that it is going to be pretty hard to collect all these training hours on the ice. The time and energy you spend training off the ice definitely counts too. It is going to be virtually impossible to find 3 hours to train on the ice every day, but finding 90 minutes on the ice and 90 minutes off the ice (at the older age groups – midget plus) is pretty realistic. Certainly by the time you get to college hockey, 3 or 4 hours of training on and off the ice every day is pretty standard.

Becoming the best female hockey player possible takes time. If you start building your foundation for elite performance on and off the ice at an early age, you give yourself the time you need to be great.

What’s your timeline for becoming the best?

Work Hard. Dream BIG.

~ Coach Kim

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