Monday Clinic

I made it all the way through tonight’s clinic, missing no reps; but it was a light crowd, so the coach went pretty easy on us – no end-to-end after the skating drill.  I’m still happy I made it through the whole thing and I learned why we wear our facemask.

So skating drill started with one rep of “suicides”:

Start at the goal-line, then forward to the blue-line, stop and return backward.  Repeat for the red-line, far blue-line, and far goal-line.  Very glad there was only one rep of this.  Then we moved on to puck carrying drill, thankfully not backwards.

This drill was goal-line to goal-line, carrying the puck … but carrying it in specific ways.

First, side to side in front of you – and very specifically the puck should be moving far outside your feet.  I’m right handed, so this meant when the puck was to my right it should be so far that my left (top) hand is all the way across my body and past my right hip.  Theory of this is that doing so will make the goalie move more side-to-side as well as you close on him.

Second was carrying it in front.  Instruction was to avoid drawing the puck back toward you … after all, you’re skating forward.  So push the puck forward, stop it with the stick, then put the stick down again behind the puck, by which time you’ll have caught up and can push it forward again.

Finally was dragging the puck.  Just dragging the stick a couple feet behind you with the puck on it, all the way up the ice.  And back.

So two reps each (up-back-up-back) of each of these. 

Next was some shooting/deflection drills:

Okay, so line of players at the blue-line.  One player in front of the goal, screening the goalie, and a third in the faceoff circle, waiting to move in on net.

Coach dumps the puck around the boards and next in line moves up to stop it, then takes a shot, with the guy in front of the net moving to screen/deflect.

Then shooter moves to the faceoff circle, faceoff circle moves in front of net, and the guy who was in front of the net moves to the end of the line.

After some reps of this, coach changed it up, and formed two lines:

Basically the same, except that the second line is having to skate into the zone and get into position instead of starting there.  This is when I learned the value of the face mask.

In one rep, I went in a bit to the left of the goal.  The goalie came out to block the shot, so I wound up behind him:

The shot came hard and he blocked it with his stick, so it came up past his shoulder and ping into my mask.  To which coach commented: “And that’s why we wear the facemask.”

Didn’t hurt a bit – and I hardly noticed it except for the rather loud ping right next to my face.  I have, though, now officially abandoned any contemplation of wearing a half-shield.

And one last changeup to the drill:

This time stopping the puck deeper in the zone and passing to the teammate by the goal instead of shooting.

Why Write This Blog

Especially after my latest clinic experience, a friend or two has questioned why I write this blog.  After all, it’s not like my kayaking blog, where I actually know what I’m doing; or my programming blog, where I’m writing about a field I have some expertise in.  No, with regard to playing hockey … or, rather, even preparing to play hockey, I’m pretty much at the level of general incompetence.

Which is entirely the point and precisely why I started this blog.

When I decided to try playing, I had a lot of questions.  What would the equipment cost? How good a skater would I have to be to take hockey lessons?  How much would lessons cost?  Was I in good enough shape?  What would a hockey clinic be like?  What would a skate and shoot be like?  Were the guys in the locker room likely to be assholes to a complete newbie? Was it even possible for someone to start playing at forty-something?

I found a lot of information about kids starting to play, but very little about adults, especially middle-aged adults, just starting to learn. 

I would have liked to have read something about the aerobic and anaerobic muscle as it relates to hockey before I started this – if I had, I’d be much further along than I am now. 

So I’m writing this to provide some of the information that I wish I’d been able to find before I started.  And writing this post, I see that I haven’t covered some of those questions I had, so at least I’ll be able to write some new posts that don’t involve me falling down or puking … that’ll be a nice change of pace.

Another reason is precisely because of my difficulties and stutter-steps in doing this.

I very much doubt that there are many people who could go to their first hockey clinic and do worse than I did tonight – they might suck, they might be the worst skater/player at their clinic, but they’d be hard-pressed to do worse than I just did, so there’s clearly hope and they’re not alone.

Blame it on the Blood Bank

So … Monday night clinic … yeah …

Not a good performance this week.  I knew going in that it would be bad, but had no idea, really.

Last week I donated blood.  And it was a double-red donation, so they took twice as many red-blood cells as a regular donation and I got a bunch of salt-water in return.  It’s a fair trade, except for the part where I noticed a significant difference in my visits to the gym. 

Each interval was much harder and took much longer to recover from.  Not unexpected, but disheartening, so I expected to have poorer performance this week.

Before heading to the rink for the clinic, I drank a 5-hour energy.  Now … I know that my problem is not solvable with an energy drink.  I know this, but I drank it anyway … and it did not agree with me.  I was queasy before I left the house.

So tonight I was drenched in sweat, out of breath, nauseated, and had burning calf muscles before the end of the warm up.  It was bad.  We went to the goal-line to line up for skating drill and I had to take a knee to rest my calves. 

Skating drill tonight was goal-line to goal-line – first backward, then forward.

This was followed by a second rep, but this time carrying a puck.  I can generally keep a puck with me (at least skating forward).  I can generally skate backwards at a not too embarrassing speed.  Tonight I learned that I cannot combine the two.

We were divided into two groups for this drill.  I was in the first.  So the coach would send the Ones and when we (well, everyone but me) got to a certain point (I don’t know where, because I wasn’t there yet), he’d send the Twos.

In the backward puck-carrying drill, the Twos passed me at the blue-line.  The first blue-line.  Yeah.

I fell somewhere in the neutral zone.  And when I say “fell”, I mean that I lost the puck, stretched for it, and body-slammed the ice.

By the time I passed the second blue-line, both groups were at the other goal-line, lined up, and listening to the coach describe what the next drill would be.

I face-planted again at this point and noticed that the coach had stopped talking.  I’m not sure if it was because of me falling or because he’d run out of ways to not say “as soon as that last guy makes it to the goal-line, we’re going to skate forward with the puck”.

He was grinning, so I said: “Dude, go ahead and laugh.”

He wanted to make me feel better, so he asked everyone who’d ever done that before to raise their hand and announced that everyone who didn’t raise their hand was a liar.

Now, let me tell you this, I know funny and me face-planting into the ice after everyone else has been finished for half a minute or so?  That’s fucking funny.  I deserved a couple laughs.

Unfortunately I don’t know what the rest of the drills tonight were, because, yes, after three lengths of the ice, I was done.  I made it to the locker room and spent several minutes giving serious consideration to puking into the garbage can.  Got my gear packed and into the car.  Stopped the car on the way home to puke beside the road. 

Fun night.

Lesson Learned: No energy drinks ever again.  That’s not my problem and they don’t agree with me.

Monday Clinic

So did a week of interval training make any discernable difference in my performance?  Maybe.

I talked to the coach before practice about changes I’d made in my workout routine this week and he thought they were okay.  He also seems to think that I’d be fine playing in the rookie game, but I’m still hesitant – I don’t care so much about the skills, but although I can stop and turn, it does tend to require some advance planning on my part. 

Drills are one thing, but with an opposing team out there I’m concerned that I’ll run into someone (or the goalie) and hurt them.  I’d also like to be able to make it through the entire practice without feeling like I’ll blow chunks first. 

It struck me this week, after last Monday’s revelation, as I looked into the difference between aerobic and anaerobic, that everything I’ve ever done as far as exercise has been aerobic – hiking, kayaking, golf … all aerobic.  So starting something anaerobic for the first time at forty-something and having to build an entirely new type of muscle may be pretty stupid.  Oh, well.

First skating drill tonight was much like last week, trying to get us into that hop-turn from a standing start.

Starting on the blue-line (top arrows) and facing the side boards, he first had us just step sideways to the other blue-line.  The “hop” off the leading foot started to feel more natural during this drill, but after a few reps of this we were back to adding the turn.  It might be that I’m not making enough of a hop to get fully turned at the start.

Next (bottom arrows) we’re back on the blue-line, but this time facing down-ice.  Forward to the other blue-line, with the first three to five strides being quick steps.  Then stop and the return is backwards.

The coach is stressing to everyone that he doesn’t want to see anyone doing crossovers backwards in this drill – strictly power-skating.  This is easy for me to comply with, because I have no f-ing clue how to do a backward crossover.  I’ve watched it and watched it, but it still seems like magic to me – the way the feet move just shouldn’t wind up in the body going the way it does.

Puck drill is much the same as last week, but there are enough people to have three skaters.  It simulates recovering the puck in your own zone after it’s been dumped in by the opposing team.

Skater 1 dumps the puck in behind the net.  Whoever’s fastest of the other two (not me) heads for it.  The other one makes for the boards at the blue-line – bail-out man.  Skater 1, meantime, skates into the zone, playing defense until we have the puck, then doubles back to head up-ice.  Whoever stopped the puck passes to the bail-out, and we head up-ice, passing, for a shot on goal.

Lots of yelling by coach on everyone’s reps about the bail-out not being in position and the pass not going to him first.  Also more stressing, like last week, about not stopping in the neutral zone to wait for the puck – keep moving, zig-zag, even come back down-ice, but don’t stop and don’t turn around to skate backwards.

Good point that skating backwards to take a pass on offense is going to let the defender set himself in your path.  Even in a no-check league, when you run into him backwards there’ll be no penalty and you’ll be face down on the ice.

I made four reps of this (it was two last week) and had to sit on the bench for a bit to catch my breath, but I made it back onto the ice for two more reps before the end of practice.  That’s better than last week, but too soon to tell if the improvement will be consistent.

I was happy with my passing during this drill.  I flubbed a couple, but so did everyone and my flubs weren’t the worst.  On one I got the puck near the goal line and made a nice backhand pass across the slot that was right on target.  I also took a pass on one drive and got the shot on goal – that’s an accomplishment in two ways: 1) my shot was on goal instead of six feet to the right; and, B) I was at the goal to take the pass instead of out in the neutral zone struggling to catch up.

Accomplishments are all about perspective.

A Stab at Interval Training

So Monday’s clinic taught me that I needed to add anaerobic exercise to my routine.  Today I made a stab at that.

First, this is not a recommendation or suggestion for what you should do.  I’m not at all knowledgeable about exercise, fitness, or nutrition – I’m just trying stuff and relating the results.  It’s entirely possible that I’m killing myself with this, so emulate at your own risk.

That being said, my understanding is that I need to add short periods of intense activity (anaerobic) to my longer, less strenuous efforts (aerobic).  Although the coach recommended blue-line to blue-line sprints during public skating, work and money prohibit me from going skating every day.  The impact makes running or a treadmill out of the question for me, so I decided to add more intensity to my time on the elliptical.

Using the machine’s built-in interval setting with a base resistance of 5, my 30-minute workout looks like this:

Starting slow today, trying to avoid that whole killing-myself thing, I went with increased intensity every fourth minute (arrows).  The machine handles adjusting the incline and resistance, I just had to increase my strides. 

I slowed my normal pace to the 100-120 strides per minute range and increased it on the red arrows to 180-200.  Well, until about the twenty minute mark, when I really started wearing down and settled for 150+.

This is going to be a work-in-progress as I try to find a base resistance level and strides that will start taking care of that anaerobic-thing.

Back at the Hockey Clinic

Yes, I’d been planning to start back with the lessons in January, but I had several things that would have interfered with Monday nights and didn’t want to start if I couldn’t go every week right away.

Did the three months of exercise get me in better shape?  Well …

First drill: Line up on the blue-line, facing the side boards.  Now we’re going to skate to the red-line and stop, but we’re facing the side boards, so we have to turn.  The way I’m lined up, the red-line is to my right, so my first instinct is to turn my right foot and push off with my left … as in many cases, my first instinct is wrong.

I’m supposed to lift my left foot, cross it over, and push-off/jump off my right foot.  This feels very awkward. 

Stop at the red-line, then go back, this time lifting and crossing over the right foot, while pushing off with the left.

A few reps of this and I’m getting the hang of it – better pushing off with my right foot, but I’d expect that.  I’m feeling okay, not out of breath, so I start feeling confident that the exercise did some good.

Next drill is similar, but blue-line to blue-line and we start from our knees facing the far blue-line.  Oddly this feels more comfortable to me if I’m pushing off my left foot … from both knees, I get my left foot under me and push up and out, getting my right foot under me.

A few reps of this and I’m still feeling pretty good.  I get out of breath once we stop to get ready of for the next drill, but during it I was okay.  I was the slowest at both of these, but I haven’t been skating a lot, so I’m okay with that as I get better.

Next up is some puck-handling with our feet – trying to get us to kick the puck to our sticks along the boards or to control a pass that comes to our feet.

So four or five of us around each circle, and first it’s just feet.  Stop the puck with your feet and kick it to the next person.

After some time of doing this, we change it up and pass with the stick, but stop the puck with our feet – kick it out to our stick after stopping it.

This is harder work than it sounds like.  At least for me, it’s awkward and a lot of work to maneuver from a standing start, so when the pass is off it’s a lot of work move to stop it.

I was not the worst in my group at this, so that made me happy.

Last was a passing and shooting drill.  Two lines at the blue-line.  One player dumps the puck in along the boards while the other heads to the other side to stop it.

Once he has it, both head up ice, passing along the way, and take a shot on goal. 

Two things the coach was stressing in this drill:

1) Stay together.  If one of the pair is slow (me) the other (everyone else) needs to stay with him, not just blast up the ice.  We want to attackers in order to split the goalie’s attention.

2) Keep moving.  The faster skater shouldn’t just stop and wait for the slower – when he catches up he’ll just blow by, so keep skating.  Side to side or even skating back to the slower skater is preferable to just stopping and waiting.

This is where it fell apart for me.  I’m slow, so I’m skating all-out the length of the ice for this drill.  I made it through two reps and when I got back in line after the second one, I was out of breath, dizzy, and nauseated. 

So I headed to the bench for a rest and frustration.  The coach came over to talk to me while I was sitting there – he remembered me from the few times I was there last year.

I told him, “I’ve spent the last two months on the elliptical five times a week to get ready for this, I don’t understand.”

“That’s aerobic,” he said.

I gave him my best look of incomprehension.  It’s impressive, I get to use it a lot.

“This is anaerobic,” he explained.

Well … crap … so I’ve spent the last two months doing the wrong thing?

He explained that aerobic was still important so I’d have legs in the third period.

Great … I’ve prepared myself well for the third period, I just can’t get through the first shift.

His recommendation?  I can’t run, knees and shins won’t take the impact, so he suggested pushing myself in intervals at public skating. 

I should also be able to add some interval training to what I’m already doing on the elliptical, by just increasing the speed.  I’ll also be hitting the skate & shoots to skate hard with my gear on – I’m more comfortable on the ice when I have it on anyway.