Last night wrapped up the ten class Adult Dynamic Skills Course at the SensPlex. In order to make up for the session cancelled by the power outage, we went on a Thursday night. And this was probably why there were only eight of us on the ice last night!
And although there was a sort of a ‘last day of school’ feeling on the ice, once the coaches called us in, we actually went pretty hard and did some neat things.
The first part featured a lot passing drills using the full length of the ice. This morphed into a tense little segment on power starts using the toe of your blades. From there we played 4 v 4 and then the last ten minutes were given over to us to do whatever we wanted.
And it was this last ten minutes which really sort of encapsulated what I have learned over the past six months:
- There I was taking a slap shot. Down on one knee, turning the wrist over and pinging one off the post and enjoying that sound that I cannot believe ever becomes boring.
- There I was practicing my one-foot stops with the inside leg. Suddenly it started to come together as I remembered an early tip from a class in October: look towards the direction you are turning and stopping. Presto! I was managing a little one-foot glide stop with both feet.
As I left the ice, I felt that I was indeed finishing my first season of hockey. And it has been so much more enjoyable and rewarding than I could ever have imagined.
Hello, I am an incoming senior in high school who has just completed my first season playing high school, my time in skates to be honest. I had stumbled across your site while searching for more tips to learn how to play the game better: the simple stuff really such as stopping on my non-dominant side, or skating backwards, which I still haven’t mastered. But I digress, I have to say that reading your account has been a very interesting read, because you have been able to attend classes and such that aren’t avaliable stateside. It was cool to see that someone else from such a different age group is also going through a similar process to what I am, it is inspiring.
Keep up the good work, and any tips you learn that you could pass on to a beginner would be simply amazing because you seem to be having worlds of success.
Once again Keep it up and good luck.
-Henry