“USA Hockey Inc., is the national gov­ern­ing body for the sport of ice hockey in the United States. As such, its mis­sion is to pro­mote the growth of hockey and pro­vide the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence for all par­tic­i­pants by encour­ag­ing, devel­op­ing, advanc­ing and admin­is­ter­ing the sport.”

Why do we talk about ice hockey in a  brain fit­ness blog?

Well, we recently announced this very inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive, and now can offer more context:

USA Hockey and Intelligym:

- “USA Hockey, with part­ners ACE (Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing) and the BIRD (Bina­tional Indus­trial Research and Devel­op­ment) Foun­da­tion, have announced plans to develop a rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­uct that will, for the first time ever, pro­vide play­ers a train­ing tool to develop “hockey sense.”

- “To be called Hockey Intel­li­Gym, the software-based prod­uct will fur­nish play­ers with a highly effec­tive train­ing tool to develop per­cep­tion and decision-making skills. Fur­ther, it will enable coaches to fine-tune the train­ing pro­gram and follow-up on the progress of their players.”

- We’re really into unchar­tered ter­ri­tory with the devel­op­ment of Hockey Intel­li­Gym, said Dave Ogrean, exec­u­tive direc­tor of USA Hockey. “With the exper­tise of ACE and the sup­port of the BIRD Foun­da­tion, we’ll be able to pro­duce a prod­uct that will give our play­ers an oppor­tu­nity to improve in areas that train­ing has never before been available.

- “It is antic­i­pated that the prod­uct will be avail­able in Decem­ber 2010″

Full release: here

Com­ment:  this ini­tia­tive is very mean­ing­ful for two rea­sons: first, it shows how the Brain Fit­ness field is com­posed of sev­eral mar­ket seg­ments (we cover ACE as one of the com­pa­nies in the Cor­po­rate, Mil­i­tary & Sports seg­ment) beyond what we can call “healthy aging”. Sec­ond, it beau­ti­fully illus­trates the poten­tial to enhance cog­ni­tive per­for­mance at all ages — to improve qual­ity of life, dri­ving skills, job-related skills…

For more con­text, read: Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher

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