NRG Ice Hockey Academy

Please join us in congratulating our players selected to the 2026 WA team!

On ice session available …

Friday 29th May 5.45am.

Full time session
Mondays 6.45am starting 25th May.

Drop me a msg to book either.

Inside the Constraint: Developing Coaches 4:8 is now live on The Coaches Site.

A huge thank you to The Coaches Site for continuing to give coaches a platform to challenge ideas, share experiences, and push the game forward.

This article explores a simple question:

What if coaches don’t develop through information… but through the environments they learn in?

Too often coach development becomes drill replication and system copying. But the game is unpredictable, dynamic, and constantly changing.

We don’t build adaptive coaches by giving them more answers.

We build them by designing environments that force exploration, reflection, and problem-solving.

Inside this article:• Why traditional coach education struggles to create adaptable coaches• The shift from instruction to exploration• Mentorship through guided attention instead of control• Why experimentation matters in coach learning• How Task Sketch was built to support ecological coach development

The goal isn’t better drills.

It’s better thinkers.

Because better coaches create better environments, and better environments create better players.

By Barry Jones

Inside the Constraint: Developing Coaches 4:8 Inside the Constraint: Developing Coaches 4:8 By Coach Barry Jones - IIHF Level 3 High Performance - USA Hockey Level 3 Performance We Don’t Develop Coaches by Telling Them What to Do Coach development has traditionally followed a simple mo...

Private ice session available.
Friday 8th May 6.45am
Drop us a msg to book in.

Honoured to have my latest article published with The Coaches Site, Inside the Constraint: You Are What You Train 1:8.

We often hear, “Athletes don’t rise to the occasion, they fall to the level of their training.” But I believe there’s a deeper layer.

Players don’t simply fall to training, they express it.

Under pressure, athletes reveal what their environment has taught them to notice, solve, and become. If we train patterns, we get pattern dependency. If we train perception, adaptability, and decision-making, we build players who can thrive in chaos.

The same applies to coaches.

We don’t become high-performance coaches by title. We become them through daily behaviours, reflection, learning, contribution, and the environments we choose to build.

A big thank you to The Coaches Site for providing a platform where ideas that challenge tradition and push coaching forward can be shared with the global game.

If you coach any invasion sport, hockey, football, basketball, rugby, this concept matters:

You are what you train.

What behaviours is your environment producing?

Inside the Constraint: You Are What You Train (1:8) Inside the Constraint: You Are What You Train 1:8 By Coach Barry Jones - IIHF Level 3 High Performance - USA Hockey Level 3 Performance We’ve All Heard It Before “Athletes don’t rise to the occasion, they fall to the level of th...

PHANTOM or GHOST?

Black or white, the choice is yours.
The Twig Shop Phantom and Ghost are now available in 75 flex, P92 and P28.

These are not your average pro stock sticks.

Built at 375 grams, with a hybrid recoil kick point for a quicker, faster release, plus a solid blade built for durability when the game gets heavy.

Made with Japanese carbon fibre, like Bauer and CCM, and produced in the same factory that builds True and Warrior sticks.

You get 90% of the technology for half the price.

Clean look. Big pop. Serious firepower.

Phantom in black.
Ghost in white.

Which one are you taking?

IceHockey HockeyGear P92 P28 75Flex HockeyLife Twigs

On ice@sessions available,
Tuesday 7th& 14th April 5.45am
Monday 13th April 6.45am

Drop me a message 😊

On ice sessions that are available.
Tuesday 7th & 14th April 5.45am
Friday 10th & 17th April 6.45am.

Drop me a msg if you would like to book a session

I’m excited to share that I am a guest this week on the Hockey IQ Podcast.

We dive into the nonlinear approach, ecological dynamics, and what it actually looks like to coach this way in ice hockey.

We talk about:

• Designing training that reflects the chaos of the game
• Small area games and representative learning
• Perception–action coupling
• Moving beyond drills and into decision-rich environments
• Why repetition without repetition matters

This isn’t theory for the sake of theory. It’s about building hockey players who can adapt, solve problems, and think in real time.

If you’re interested in developing hockey IQ through practice design rather than prescription, this conversation is for you.

Appreciate the opportunity to share the journey

Barry Jones On this episode of the Hockey IQ podcast, we sit down with Barry Jones of NRG Hockey. Barry is a hockey coach (inline, street, and ice) out of Perth, Austral...

On Ice session available.
Friday 27th February 6.45am.
Drop me a msg to book in.