Kabir Bubna

·59 min·2 clips

Kabir Bubna says practice should be harder than competition, not easier.

Kabir Bubna, known as Cabs, joins Hockey IQ for a calm conversation about coaching, learning, and leadership. He is introduced as someone working toward a PhD in skill acquisition while bringing roughly a decade of coaching experience. Early on, the conversation focuses on what that PhD means to him and why it matters to him beyond formal study. He describes it as a creative way to work with knowledge, not just an academic box to check. The talk keeps circling back to how ideas actually show up in coaching practice. A major thread in the episode is leadership inside a team. Bubna describes leadership as something that can be shaped, but also something that changes with the moment and with the player. He talks about how a coach can spot when someone is ready to lead, even if that player is not the captain. The idea of giving players the steering wheel and knowing when to drive the bus captures the heart of it. Leadership comes across as situational, not fixed. From there, the episode moves into the challenge of coaching younger athletes. The discussion lands on the realities of working with high school players, around 14 to 18 years old. That age group often needs guidance and space at the same time, which makes the coach’s job a balancing act. Bubna and the host work through the tension between telling players what to do and asking questions that may be too open-ended too early. The conversation does not pretend there is a simple answer. What gives the episode its shape is the back-and-forth between theory and day-to-day coaching reality. Bubna keeps coming back to the idea that the best coaches know when to support, when to step back, and when to let a player carry more of the load. The conversation stays patient and reflective, with enough repetition to make the point stick. It feels less like a lecture and more like a working discussion about how coaching environments are built. The episode closes on those practical questions of responsibility, leadership, and trust.

As heard by us

A steady coaching conversation about when to guide and when to let players lead.

Kabir Bubna's Hockey IQ appearance focuses on skill building and the practical coaching question of how much to guide, and when to let players take the wheel.

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Want a practical talk on leadership, skill acquisition, and coaching young players?

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