Last night was my first Learn to Play class.
I was a little concerned going in because the class had accidentally been listed as an advanced class. I spoke to the instructor and knew he was planning to run it as a beginner class, but I also knew a few advanced people who signed up expecting advanced. I’ve seen classes turn into advanced classes due to the students in it, so I was a little worried that I was going to be completely out of my league!
Much to my surprise, the class appears to be the full 30 students [!], varying in experience from complete newbie (me and a handful of others) to people with 12 years of hockey playing experience. I may still be the worst student, but as hubby said, that means I can show the most improvement!
After the ice had been resurfaced, we all jumped onto the ice to warm up and stretch. I wasn’t feeling perfectly comfortable, but I was comfortable enough and I think I managed to warm up enough before we started our first drills.
Benny (the instructor) started out with some skating instruction. Yes, we can all skate and most of us have taken a power skating class or two, but sometimes small technique tweaks can make a huge difference to power, speed, and quickness. Benny demonstrated the difference in stride length when you push out rather than back, explained how deep our knee bends were supposed to be, and discussed inner edge versus outer edge and which we’re pushing with (inner) and which we return with (outer). Then he split us up into four groups to run the drills.
First Benny had us push only with the right foot, gliding on the left, to the slow beat of the metronome. I found that I was focusing on what my legs were doing and forgot to listen to push with the metronome — oops! Still, I pushed reasonably well with my right.
Next, we pushed only with the left and glided on the right. My left is my bad foot — it doesn’t like pushing. I don’t know why, but it’s the leg I have trouble with. Skating down the ice pushing off only with my left had me bouncing — I would push, then for some reason pop up out of position. Benny came by to skate behind me when he saw me doing this and gave me some extra instruction as I went down the ice. I did get a little better after that point, but I sure as hell wasn’t listening to the metronome!
Then we put both feet together and skated back and forth with Benny upping the speed. It actually gets a little easier the faster it goes. When the metronome was fairly slow, I discovered that my gliding leg doesn’t like to stay straight! Which means I’m wasting speed.
However, when the metronome is fast, I revert to my normal natural skating technique, which is to push back. At this point the assistant instructor (whose name I’m not sure of) came up behind me to point out that I was pushing back and needed to push to the side more. I spent most of the rest of the time during the skating drills thinking about pushing out, pushing out (which just feels wrong).
Finally, Benny reminded us to keep our arms moving with our legs, and by that, also to keep our stick out in front of us, moving forward and back with our strides. This was easy for me to visualize and do mostly because I watch a LOT of professional hockey!
At the end of the skating drills, the assistant instructor came up behind me, put a gloved hand on my shoulder (he must be a foot taller than me!) and told me that I was doing much better at pushing out. I didn’t feel like I was, so it was nice to have some support (hub tells me that they are very blunt and truthful and would not have said that if I were not doing better, so good).
Benny also covered stride recovery. He demonstrated the difference between bringing the just-pushed foot all the way back to center versus bringing it half of the way back. It completely changes the stride length and is much less efficient. Benny had everyone sit on the ice, use our sticks under our knees and hold our foot in the air. We did ankle rolls, outside to in. He suggested that everyone do 150 ankle rolls per day — 50 per foot solo, 50 doing both ankles at the same time. The supposed benefit is that the ankle rolls create muscle memory so when the pushing foot recovers and returns to position, it immediately comes back to center and connects with the ice on the outer edge (this is why the rolls are done outside to in — push out, return).
After spending almost an hour on skating drills, we started puckhandling drills. Benny went over the proper way to hold the stick in the dominant hand, how the wrist rotates to flip the stick back and forth, and how to cup the puck. He had everyone hold their stick up in the air in the dominant hand and rotate the wrist to demonstrate the stick movement.
[aside: I've always shot right in field (no choice there -- everyone plays right), roller, and street hockey, which is the opposite of what you are supposed to do. The top hand is the stick-handling hand, and if you shoot right, your left hand functions as your dominant hand. Since I have 10+ years of experience, I decided I would rather not switch to shoot left. I did notice that most of the people in class are shooting right, and I suspect most of them are right-handed, not left. ]
Then everyone grabbed a puck and we started some puckhandling drills. We stood mostly in place and passed the puck back and forth to ourselves at about a skate to skate width. When Benny blew the whistle, we went wide and passed the puck back and forth about as wide as possible with our stick length, then back to the short feet width on another whistle blow. I’m generally not an awful puckhandler, but I lost the puck approximately a zillion times during this drill!
After moving to another area of the ice (after chasing my puck there) I did much better but I tend to lose the puck when I switch from the short to the long or the long to the short. I think part of my problem is that I was being very uh… forceful. Perhaps I didn’t really need to be. I noticed most other people were a lot more relaxed and slower with their movements and therefore didn’t lose their puck much if at all.
Finally, they set up cones for us to slalom around while carrying the puck. This is normally something I enjoy because I get great pleasure out of weaving. But I kept losing the damn puck. Again, I think part of it was that I was being a lot more forceful while carrying the puck than I needed to. I did not quit the drill when I lost the puck though — I made sure to grab it and head back to the cones and finish the drill, even though doing so probably screwed up the other people (and I didn’t want to be yelled at by the instructor, ha!).
Then there was about 1 minute of scrimmage (I was on the bench for it) before Benny realized that class was already over and there was a game scheduled afterwards and they needed to resurface.
I felt relieved after the class — I survived! I was very tired and red (no matter my stamina level I turn bright red while exercising), and my shoulders and upper arms were sore.
The not-so-short list of things to work on:
- left leg stride– I will probably go to public skate and practice just pushing with my left leg around and around the rink.
- pushing out rather than back while skating quickly — keeping an ear out for the toe snap
- puckhandling, though my technique here is okay, maybe just some basic practice would be good though.
- stopping. Because I am embarrassed that I am too chicken to do a hockey stop or t-stop in class (I like to fall when I do these stops since I learned how to snowplow — I keep putting my weight on my toes, not the center of my foot and then I pitch forward)!
My next class isn’t for three weeks due to the 4 July holiday and the Caps developmental camp, but I hope to squeeze in plenty of icetime between now and then.
