How to hack any sport and step up your game

This is an article with ideas of improvement into your training methodics mainly applicable for all dynamic sports on non pro level. As dynamic sports I understand all sports that have multidimensional movements, multiple techniques, need coordination (body, muscle), flexibility and some sort of tactic or strategy. Basically all ball and playing sports, martial arts, some winter sports (ice hockey, snowboarding not so much nordic skiing). I don’t know about endurance sports (running, swimming) which have a high repetition of just a small repertoire of techniques or bodybuilding.

My background

I’m 31 years old, and in my life I learned and taught different sports (soccer, ice hockey, boxing, Krav Maga, surfing, snowboarding). I never made it professional and got to absolute top level. But I did a lot of different sports and learned them quickly.
I do hold a B license as a soccer coach. As most boys in Germany i started playing soccer age 5 and played on a fairly good level. With 16 I had sports hernia and surgerys on both sides, missing for almost 2-years, ending any further ambition in soccer. I played on till my early 20ies, when I suffered a broken foot I switched to ice hockey in winter and martial arts in summer - and become fairly good, though I couldn’t even ice skate. So I realized I did something right, and researched a little to understand what it was to outperform guys that played ice hockey for way longer and had the same training than i did. This is what I learned.

Flexibility, Core & Hip Rotation and Coordination

The most amateurs just do their training, and it doesn’t contain enough coordination, core and flexibility training.
Add stretching, core training and coordination just twice a week helps a lot.

Stretching
For stretching, you can either download a app and add 10 mins of stretching to your morning routine, or you stretch before/after the training though it’s not ideal. Usually the best it to have a little mobilization before the training, and for a training on the evening it‘s best to stretch on the next morning. It’s more practical to simply stretch after the training, you don’t need an extra warmup and shower afterwards so this is what I do.

Core & Hip rotation
Almost all movements need core strength and hip rotation. Just 2 or 3 times 15 min. of core training can add a lot to your strength and mobility. I use planking variations and hip mobility drills from Marc Versteg (Core Performance, http://amzn.to/2IhbNFn ). You can find plenty of videos on youtube also.

Coordination
Rope skipping is a great way to improve your coordination. Training with a agility ladder for just 10 minutes twice a week had an impressive impact on the youth team I was coaching. The cost of an agility ladder and a skip rope is low, and it can be even made at home.
Add 10 minutes of rope skipping and running coordination with the agility ladder has great impact.
In total, that’s just 30 mins. for stretching, core, hip and coordination training. Most of your teammates and neither your competition are willing to put that little extra effort in, which leave this a great leverag for you. Also, this addition to your training will prevent injuries, and in general flexibility, core strength and hip rotation are vastly underrated for any sport and movement.
Just go to your training 15 mins. earlier for coordination and spend 15 mins. after. If you make it a routine, it will be easy.

Train Techniques Dry and in mind,Deconstruct skills, technique variation

To learn a new skill break it down in smallest moves to better understand them. Find that critical part of a technique, which is the minimal input/dose. Then practice those small moves and fit them together. From there, varriate your training and try. There’s some research showing variation brings better training results as repetition of the same drill.
Research is also showing that even thinking about how a movement is done, results in a training effect. So effen just thinking about doing a move/technique helps to become better.
Also dry training is important. For ice hockey, you train your stickhandling dry, also your skating move. For surfing, turns and cutbacks can be trained dry. It also helps to group movements and link them to keywords, so the whole technique consists out of a easy to remember set of keywords.

Fail in training

Many guys train on the border, always varriate their training to the point they fail. As an example, Kitesurf pro Julian Hosp did train very complex moves so his training mainly consists of jumpes followed by crashes. If you don’t fail in training, you are not pushing your limits enough, training in your comfort zone is not as efficient as on the edge.

Vision, breathing, situation recognition, tactic behavior

In game sports tactics play a very important role and players with a good understanding of the game can compensate a lot.
A underrated point is the recognition of a situation. You can train your eyes for a better vision to recognize new situations quickly or follow the ball/puck better.

Surfers and free divers train their breathing to hold their breath longer underwater. Surprisingly, I noticed that training did also help a lot for Krav Maga and ice hockey.

Watching pros the different way

While you mates may watch the game with a beer and focus on the ball, you should watch the player without the ball. Study their behavior, when they recognize situations, how they react. Try to play the game yourself, what will he do, what would you do?
Watch how pros play your position and try to adapt their behavior.
Also, watch their training and imitate them. What you see in television is the result of years of effort on top level. They don't show the harsh path that got them there!

I hope these things help you to step up your game and hope you implement some. Let me know how your experience will be.
Looking forward to a discussion in the comments. What do you think about these methods and how do you train?