Monday Clinic

Tonight’s clinic was a lot of fun and I’m happy with my performance, despite a number of falls.  Since the falls were because I was pushing things, I’m good with that.

Skating drill started with coach putting us on the goal-line and having us crouch as low as we could – then skate to the other goal-line in that position.  And back.  His point being that everyone is typically standing too straight while they skate.  Then down and back at speed, followed by sprints from goal-line to blue-line and goal-line to center ice.  His point after the sprints that what we’d just done took a little less than a minute and that’s how long shifts should be in the game – not the two or three minute shifts that are typical.

The regular drill was three skaters on the attack, this time with one of us dumping the puck in, rather than relying on the coach to do it.

So each rep was both different, based on how well whoever had the puck could dump it in, and more realistic to our level of play.  Especially since some of us, including myself, simply don’t have the oomph to wrap the puck with any kind of power.  For us, the dump in was cross ice

This was because the goalie had been instructed to play the puck if it was piddling along the boards from a sucky attempt to wrap it, and our rep would stop if he was able to. 

The other thing he stressed was to form a triangle, not a straight line, on the attack.  With the straight line, a defender can move out to the center man and with two players there a pass likely won’t make it to the player in the far circle.  With a triangle there are more options.

My first rep at left-wing was very successful.  I got the puck off the boards and made a nice backhand pass that was right on target to the right-wing and he scored with it.  Yay!

My second rep at right-wing was less so.  After I dumped the puck in and headed for the net, the left-wing passed it behind me.

I don’t turn to the right so good still, so this had the predictable result of me hitting the boards at speed.  Much like last week and with much the same result – some ribs that are still tender.

A bit later, the coach upped the ante and announced that he’d be playing D for the rest of the reps to put pressure on us.  “You all know who I am.  If you shoot the puck through me … I will kill you.”

So on my first rep at left-wing for this change I got to the puck in the corner and the blade of my stick went right through the slot in the Zamboni doors.  Before I could back up a bit to pull it out, the coach was on me with some gentle jostling and crosscheck or two.  I got my stick out, but went down on the ice, but was able to whack the puck back to the high slot area.  Of course, the guy I thought would be there had moved to the point along the boards, so the puck sailed out of the zone.

What I should have done is left off with trying to free the stick and protected the puck with my skates until I could see a teammate along the boards and just kick it free to him.  Or at least looked up to see where someone was before I whacked it.

For the final instance of my ass hitting the ice, I was again at left-wing and dump in was cross ice.   The puck rebounded from the boards to the goal-line and rather than trying to pass from there, I decided to scoop it up as I went by, take it behind the net, and pass from there.  Good idea, poor execution.  My skates hit a rut behind the net and I went down, but managed to scramble back to the puck and pass it.

Monday Clinic

I skipped blogging about the clinic the last two weeks, but might make the posts later.  Tonight’s clinic was lightly attended with only nine skaters.  Coach went easy on us for the skating drill, just a couple times up and down the ice and then on to shooting.

So we started by simply skating into the slot at the hash-marks and taking a shot off a pass from the coach.

Next we changed it up into two lines.  Coach dumps the puck around the boards while one skater heads for the slot and the other gets the puck along the boards, then centers it for the shot.

And the final drill split us up into three groups.

The new skater carries the puck behind the net, passes to the wing, who then centers it for the shot.

This was a good night for me – I made it through the whole clinic and actually felt pretty good at the end of it.  I even considered staying to play in the game after, but it’s probably best I didn’t.

During the last drill I was coming along the boards to get the first pass and it looked like the guy behind the net was going to pass more into the circle, so I angled that way.  Then he passed along the boards, so I had to turn to get the puck.

Unfortunately, that’s a turn to the right and I still don’t do that well, so I ran into the boards.  Still got the puck and made the centering pass, but something hit my upper ribs.  Not sure if it was just my arm or if the stick was between me and the boards, but it’s tender today.

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.