Last night I was at the Ice Arena for my sixth session in a row of Corey's weekly Ice Hockey Academy. As always, it was a enjoyable, educational and exhausting hour! Many thanks to Nancy for making it possible for me to attend, the demands any half serious hockey player makes on the household economia is considerable, and in a sense we owe it all to our loved ones.
Sentimentality over, it was onto the ice. After several laps he had us skating as hard as we could between the blue lines while we did several laps. Then he had us do it the other way for several more. Then we had a minutes breather while he explained the next evolution of the drill. Namely, one whistle meant do a stop and then take off in the opposite direction as hard as you can. Two whistles meant that one had to immediately do a full tight circle and then continue in the direction you were going as hard as you could. And then it was the equivalent of several laps of this. And then it was, 'get a drink'. This was a conditioning exercise, also termed 'cardio' (by a colleague who is also into fitness per se).
Then we did a sequence of drills where one of the concentration points was puck handling, with introductions of skating techniques and positioning (hockey sense) to culminate in basic teamwork practice.
The initial exercise was to drop gloves on the ice in front of one, about one and a half times the distance apart of one's feet in the classic hockey stance. Then, stick handle the puck in figure of eights around the gloves. Then, reorganise the gloves so they are the same distance apart, but now the second glove is just that distance in front of you. Then, kick the gloves apart to the distance of two sticks lying end on end and skate between them, carrying the puck. Then pick up the speed. Then, leave the pucks in a pile and cycling from one end of the ice to the other and back, via doing fast circles around each of the five face-off circles. Then do this with a puck.
Then, everyone grab a puck and gather in the zone between the one blue line and adjacent red goal line. The (empty goal) was put in the middle of the zone. Everyone, keep moving, protect your puck, try and knock other players' pucks into the goal. If your puck gets scored with, you go up to the far blue line and start back and forth between it and its nearby goal line, doing hockey stops and accelerating out of it each time. I think I could have kept going the whole way through the long battle between the final two puck carriers (of whom I knew both), but once I was only able to accelerate out of the stop every second one on average I found it quite easy to stop the exhausting skate/stop routine and watch the battle play out at the other end of the ice. The winnner was the one who first decided to just leave their puck alone on the board and chase down the opponent and their puck to seize it and score. Then, get a drink.
When we returned to the ice,.refreshed, there were a sequence of 'witch's hat' cones spaced about two stick lengths apart in a line up one side of the rink between the non neutral zone circles, and a goal with goalie at the other end. The idea was to skate in a fast slalom through the cones and then have a shot on goal. After a few rounds of this, four cones were put into a diamond shape (same distance between them as the others) in the zone nearest where the drill began and a pile of pucks dropped in the top corner diagonally opposite where the skaters had begun from. The idea was now to pick up a puck after passing the goal (after your shot) and then carry it back, making full circuits of each of the cones while carrying it. Then, rather than doing circles, skate back down the middle of the cones after taking your shot, dangling the puck, 'outside' or 'inside' each of the cones in the diamond (depending if the cone was near the boards or not). Then, repeat the skating drills but this time start alongside the pile of pucks nearest the goal (ie we were all near the goal and able to hear the exhortations and have things pointed out to us about the shooting). Then, get a drink.
Then, step it up. This time, all the cones were scattered in a random pattern across one end of the rink. The goalie in his net was down the other. All the skaters gathered in the middle, with the pucks in a pile nearby. Skater 1 would go up and weave a pattern (nothing in particular) through the cones, curling back towards the centre, they were to call for the puck shortly after turning. The second skater of the pair would pass the first the puck, then pivot so as to be skating in the same direction (ie. towards the goal) but backwards, in front of the skater 1 with the puck. Skater 1 was offence, skater 2 was defence. Idea was to either get a shot off on goal (either into the goal or requiring a goalie save from which rebound didn't go in) or get it out off the zone to end the play and get the next pair moving from the centre.
Just to lighten the mood (and, I suspect, give the goalie a breather) we all then had to line up on a goal line on our knees. We had to get up to our feet as quick as we could, go as fast as we could to the blue line. Drop to our knees and get to our feet and to the centre line, then the next blue line, then the far goal line. Then back. Rinse and repeat. Get a drink.
The final puck handling exercise of the evening was a four line drill, starting from the opposite end of the ice to the goalie. From right to left, the four roles of the various lines were; puck carrier, puck carrier defence, puck support and puck support defence. Essentially, a two on two battle with the emphasis added now to passing/receiving and positional play. The battle zone was extended to include the neutral zone also. Everyone (as always in these things) was expected to have a go at each of the lines several times over. As there were 14 of us to start and several dropped off through it, it got to be a bit of a final conditioning exercise by the time we ran through it the last few times (eventually paced by the need to have one or more of the empty lines filled by one or more of the surviving skaters returning from the previous battle).
Finally, a strength battle tournament where everyone split into pairs, standing facing each other in the middle of the ice with each holding their hockey stick towards the opponent and holding the blade end of the opponent's stick as it was held towards them. Then, each player tries to pull the other towards the boards on their side of the rink. In each bout, the first to score three times against the opponent wins. Then play the winner of a neighboring pair. Continue until only one pair left. Then they fight it out. It was a contest of strength and stability. When one lost one's footing you were even more helpless than when resisting a stronger bigger person's pull. It took agility to get to one's feet and keep resisting the opponent. I was getting the hang of it by the time I had been knocked out 3-0 by fellow Knight Andy in the first round. I had a bit of a cheer squad during my intense struggle in the final round.
The night concluded with the final bout, and all the rest of us having quite a laugh as the final two used their varied abilities in strength and catlike agility to determine the victor.
A great evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment