Personal Training - shooting at dusk

Ater last night's educational Prelim Final loss I was quite happy to take it quiet at home today.  The last six Sundays I've taken at least one youngster to the Ice Arena, always found it reasonably taxing exercise (partly why I do it, indeed), but always a true pleasure to spend time skating with the grandkids and their friends.  This'll be the longest in a long time that I haven't been on the ice.  That's sad.  But what was sadder was breaking the news to B (9).  He took it like the polite young man he can be (and, generally, is) which only made my job the harder.  Sigh.  We'll use the pass sometime during the approaching school holidays.

Getting over all that, it was off to the primary school before dusk for some shooting practice.  I was gone about an hour and a half.  Temperature 16'C and humidity around 50%.  Still a little run down, I again set out with intention of not exhausting myself and getting in some puck practice.  So, no warmups when I got to the netball court.  On with the gloves and into it.  Aimed at three hundred shots tonight.

Achieved it, and then some.  I repeated the shooting repertoire from yesterday but put up the numbers of shots. Twenty five each of 15' snap (6), 15' wrist (2), 15' fwd facing wrist (7), 15' backhand (0).  Not overly discouraged, I had a break and did laps each way with puck on the backhand.  Didn't take more than three attempts to get a lap done with the puck on the outside, did it first time with puck on the inside.  The pace is beginning to pick up.  Then, fifty 30' wrist shots (7).  For a break, dynamic exercises (mainly, pick up puck at 30', deke it to a state of control and then shoot by 15').  Then, to close down the shooting range, seventy five 15' forward facing wrist (23), and twenty five each of 15' snaps (7), 15' wrist (3) and 15' backhands (3).  For the first time I hit post with four shots in a row (final set of snaps) which led to some reflection on 'luck' as I gathered the pucks with the splay-footed-puck-tapping-while-turning drill, and a handful of slapshots.

In addition to the dynamism and 'playtime' element brought to the session by drills that I improvised through my 'breaks, I made the most of the various opportunities provided within the drills themselves for further dynamic exercises.  For example, when in front of the 'goal' I always tried to gather and shoot any rebounds and, when the pucks escaped me (as they eventually always did), I'd gather them back using various combinations of type and direction of turn (and hence, forehand/backhand puck handling).  At one point it dawned on me how much better I have become over the past week at doing this sort of thing.

I skated up the hill to home in the gathering dusk, ten minutes later and I would definitely have not felt comfortable on the road and stuck to the (far less efficient) footpaths.  So, well timed.  My pace up the hill was steady driving straight attack run, not at total effort but enough that it was hurting in the thighs.  Concentrated on the weight transfer in the power stride.  What was interesting with this was that, upon return, after about a minute I had gotten control back of my breathing and, after two, would have been able to do another shift.  Encouraging.