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nate94gt

Playing hockey

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I checked and this appeared to be the appropriate forum, since its general hockey talk.

Anyways, i have never really skated before (aside from when i was a little kid, and i wasnt good). That said, i never had the chance to skate, since i grew up in a small community that has no rink, and none of my friends skated.

However the other night my buddy called me up and had a friend say that he wanted to get a hockey team together, and since my friend knows i like hockey, he asked me if i would want to play. i figure this is my chance to gear up and take on the sport of hockey.

As mentioned, i have never really skated. How difficult would it be to learn to skate good enough to play on a just for fun hockey team? I am quite athletic, so im sure that'll help. I figure it would be best to go to open skates w/ someone thats a good skater and have them give me tips... or is it something i could just go out and try and pick up most of it on my own?

I imagine that once you lace up the skates and get out there for a few minutes, you'll get decent enough to skate forward, then you can start working on stopping, turning, backwards, and the other hockey skating moves over the course of a few days of skating.

So if there is anyone in the kalamazoo/holland/grand rapids area that is willing to help me out on open skates at rinks or something, that'd be sweet.

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I checked and this appeared to be the appropriate forum, since its general hockey talk.

Anyways, i have never really skated before (aside from when i was a little kid, and i wasnt good). That said, i never had the chance to skate, since i grew up in a small community that has no rink, and none of my friends skated.

However the other night my buddy called me up and had a friend say that he wanted to get a hockey team together, and since my friend knows i like hockey, he asked me if i would want to play. i figure this is my chance to gear up and take on the sport of hockey.

As mentioned, i have never really skated. How difficult would it be to learn to skate good enough to play on a just for fun hockey team? I am quite athletic, so im sure that'll help. I figure it would be best to go to open skates w/ someone thats a good skater and have them give me tips... or is it something i could just go out and try and pick up most of it on my own?

I imagine that once you lace up the skates and get out there for a few minutes, you'll get decent enough to skate forward, then you can start working on stopping, turning, backwards, and the other hockey skating moves over the course of a few days of skating.

So if there is anyone in the kalamazoo/holland/grand rapids area that is willing to help me out on open skates at rinks or something, that'd be sweet.

Good for you and good luck getting out there!

You could learn on your own, but bad habits tend to last a lifetime. I would bet there are beginners' clinics at your local rink or one nearby. Those are the best because there will be people who can help you, but also it will push you, which is important. I've coached a lot of beginners, and they always seem to do best when they skate with a group a little beyond their ability. Skating with the guys will also let you gauge where you are at and let you know when you are ready for some games.

The toughest thing for beginners is getting used to bending your knees so much. The key to balance and 95% of skating is keeping your knees nice and bent. If you don't do that you will fall a lot and get knocked over even more. Beginners tend to get frustrated and a little lazy about bending your knees because it can be hard work at first and you may end up really sore. You can do lunges and knee bends to help get in good skating shape.

The same goes with your back. If you watch a player over the course of a game, he will probably bend over and back 100 times over the course of a game. Its not a mystery that so many hockey players have back issues. A beginner isn't going to be used to that either. Stretching and a strong core will help you minimize the stiffness and soreness you will most likely have in the beginning.

Have fun!

Edited by kook_10

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Learn with a stick in your hand. It will encourage you to lean forward and it will also add balance... and it could save you last ditch from a nasty fall. ;)

Good luck and have fun. The only way to get better is to keep doing it. Sometimes if I haven't skated in a while, I'll put my inline skates on in the house. Just to get the feel of having skates on and keep my feet tough. :)

Edited by Broken 16

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I checked and this appeared to be the appropriate forum, since its general hockey talk.

Anyways, i have never really skated before (aside from when i was a little kid, and i wasnt good). That said, i never had the chance to skate, since i grew up in a small community that has no rink, and none of my friends skated.

However the other night my buddy called me up and had a friend say that he wanted to get a hockey team together, and since my friend knows i like hockey, he asked me if i would want to play. i figure this is my chance to gear up and take on the sport of hockey.

As mentioned, i have never really skated. How difficult would it be to learn to skate good enough to play on a just for fun hockey team? I am quite athletic, so im sure that'll help. I figure it would be best to go to open skates w/ someone thats a good skater and have them give me tips... or is it something i could just go out and try and pick up most of it on my own?

I imagine that once you lace up the skates and get out there for a few minutes, you'll get decent enough to skate forward, then you can start working on stopping, turning, backwards, and the other hockey skating moves over the course of a few days of skating.

So if there is anyone in the kalamazoo/holland/grand rapids area that is willing to help me out on open skates at rinks or something, that'd be sweet.

I wouldn't even bother trying to play hockey until you can skate well forward, transition turn (Leg over leg), skate backwards somewhat well, and be able to transition from forward to backward and back to forward. If you have ANY skating skill these are all skills you could build up in a month. If you're starting from virtually no skating experience it will take a lot more practice, and you'll have to work twice as hard as anyone who's skated most of their life. If you're heavier (I'd say over 170) learning to skate can be not only challenging, but painful. It's one thing to fall when you're 6 and weigh 45 pounds and only have to fall two feet. It's another to end up in a crumpled mass of 200 pounds of flailing madness. I took the most injuries on my wrists, but I learned to fall very quickly. Still didn't change the fact that my thighs and ass were bruised all summer long. Watch out for your wrists, instinct is to use them to break a fall, but often the fall will break them. Start learning to fall on cushioned parts of your body early on....use your shoulders, upper arm, thighs, ass, etc. If you're going down, tuck and roll with it. Trying to fight an obvious fall is a good way to strain something, and landing badly can straight up break bones. If you're new to skating, be prepared to fall....a lot. Especially when other people are trying to beat you around :)

If the people on your team are fairly good, play as a winger. Center is a lot of responsibility, and Defense is not a position you want to "Start" at. If you screw up as a forward, you don't score. If you screw up as a Defense, they do score.

I would get a ball or a puck, and a street hockey stick, and practice on your own. Once you can shoot and hit the general area of the net, once you can skate in all directions, then you're ready to start learning to play hockey. Unfortunately, trying to play ice hockey with limited skill in skating, is like trying to play basketball if you've never ran anywhere before.

Still very viable. I learned to skate at 19, by 20 I was good enough to play mid-range inline hockey with local leagues. I did play Defense, but I always lacked the agility of the guys who had been playing hockey for a decade, so I could use my size and a slightly longer stick to do pretty well densively. My slapshot was exactly like Lidstroms, except his goes in the net sometimes, and mine very rarely did :)

I played with little kids a lot. Amazingly, it was fun, and improved my agility more than playing with adults. Nothing will anger you more as a grown man than when an eleven year old can skate circles around you :)

Start small. Think big. Learning to play hockey (Or even skating for that matter) can be frustrating if the people around you are a step ahead of you. I'd suggest setting aside a lot of personal practice time to focus on core skills such as skating, stick handling, shooting. If you really suck, the best way to be effective early off for me was always to agitate and try to chip the puck from possession. Sometimes a good chip can make it look like you did something awesome.

If it's contact ice hockey, use your size if you have it, and work on speed. If you're a smaller guy, work on agility and quickness.

Speed = How fast from point A to point B. On a car, it would be measured as "Top Speed"

Agility = How well/efficiently you transition from one movement to the next. On a car, it would be "Handling"

Quickness = How quickly you can get the wheels rolling. On a car it would be "Accelleration".

If you don't have a lot of experience, don't buy expensive sticks. They are shockingly easier to break, especially if you're just practicing your slap shot. I was actually pretty good, had a semi-decent slapper, bought a brand new $90 stick, and broke it in my first game. Unlike NHL stars.....I didn't have 30 back up sticks.

If you break a stick, it's usually non-returnable. Sure they cost sometimes tripple digits for a good one, but sticks break, it's a fact of life, and no sports store will return or swap it if you're an adult, and it looks like you just took a really bad slap shot. So go cheap, until you have skills to support your costs :)

Edited by Joey v3.4

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The Rink (in Battle Creek) offers quite a few classes to learn to skate and skill classes. I took a beginning one a long time ago, probably when I was like 7 or so. Haven't really skated much since. Probably a total of 8-10 times since. Working for my hockey team makes me want to take up skating again, went to an open skate in Royal Oak a few days ago and after about 5 min on the ice, my feet hurt like a ***** haha.

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Good for you and good luck getting out there!

You could learn on your own, but bad habits tend to last a lifetime. I would bet there are beginners' clinics at your local rink or one nearby. Those are the best because there will be people who can help you, but also it will push you, which is important. I've coached a lot of beginners, and they always seem to do best when they skate with a group a little beyond their ability. Skating with the guys will also let you gauge where you are at and let you know when you are ready for some games.

The toughest thing for beginners is getting used to bending your knees so much. The key to balance and 95% of skating is keeping your knees nice and bent. If you don't do that you will fall a lot and get knocked over even more. Beginners tend to get frustrated and a little lazy about bending your knees because it can be hard work at first and you may end up really sore. You can do lunges and knee bends to help get in good skating shape.

The same goes with your back. If you watch a player over the course of a game, he will probably bend over and back 100 times over the course of a game. Its not a mystery that so many hockey players have back issues. A beginner isn't going to be used to that either. Stretching and a strong core will help you minimize the stiffness and soreness you will most likely have in the beginning.

Have fun!

This, this, this a thousand times this... I played at a pretty good level growing up and blew my knee out at 16... fast forward knee rehab and 10 years later when I joined an adult league and I had to teach myself to bend my knees that much again and was sore as hell, even now, 2 years back at it and I'm more of a "stand up" skater than I used to be (just due to the fact that my knee will never be the same and it can't take AS much extreme bending pressure) and I'm just now MAYBE at 75% of the skater I was... long story short, proper "hockey posture" is the key to strong skating...

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Someone else said it, but I support it. Learn to skate with a stick in your hand.

1) It will balance you, and you can use it in an emergency to help stop a fall. I used mine a lot when I learned to skate backwards. It was as much a cane as a hockey stick in my early days. I ALWAYS had a stick with me, even if I was doing long distance skates.

2) Your arm movements are different with a stick. Without one you can use your arms to generate speed via swing. With a stick in hand, you have to hold it one handed to generate that same speed swing with your arms, and while holding the stick two handed your posture is different, as is your skating. Most notable is that with a stick you skate with more of a forward lean (Good all around. Get out of the habit of skating "tall" pretty quickly, unless you're one of those rare few who for some reason just does better with a tall stance)

3) Having a stick will help you focus on keeping your stick on the ground. Because you're constantly doing things with your stick on the ground, it will help you practice skating with a lower posture. The lower you are able to skate, generally the more stable you'll be on your feet.

4) It will improve your stick grip, and improve how natural it feels in your hand. If you skate with a stick 90% of the time, when you skate without one it will feel awkward, but that's a good thing if you want to play hockey. Take a ball with you wherever you go, or a puck if you have a flat surface to practice on.

5) If a girl sees you skating, she'll think you're athletic. If she sees you with a hockey stick, she'll start working on wedding prepartions :)

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Like Mr. Miyagi said, "First, need balance".

Like others have suggested, learn to skate before you bother doing anything else. Don't be afraid to fall either, which will happen naturally for beginners. After that, skate with a stick and learn to skate backwards as well. Then you can play with the puck when you're ready.

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I wouldn't even bother trying to play hockey until you can skate well forward, transition turn (Leg over leg), skate backwards somewhat well, and be able to transition from forward to backward and back to forward. If you have ANY skating skill these are all skills you could build up in a month. If you're starting from virtually no skating experience it will take a lot more practice, and you'll have to work twice as hard as anyone who's skated most of their life. If you're heavier (I'd say over 170) learning to skate can be not only challenging, but painful. It's one thing to fall when you're 6 and weigh 45 pounds and only have to fall two feet. It's another to end up in a crumpled mass of 200 pounds of flailing madness. I took the most injuries on my wrists, but I learned to fall very quickly. Still didn't change the fact that my thighs and ass were bruised all summer long. Watch out for your wrists, instinct is to use them to break a fall, but often the fall will break them. Start learning to fall on cushioned parts of your body early on....use your shoulders, upper arm, thighs, ass, etc. If you're going down, tuck and roll with it. Trying to fight an obvious fall is a good way to strain something, and landing badly can straight up break bones. If you're new to skating, be prepared to fall....a lot. Especially when other people are trying to beat you around :)

If the people on your team are fairly good, play as a winger. Center is a lot of responsibility, and Defense is not a position you want to "Start" at. If you screw up as a forward, you don't score. If you screw up as a Defense, they do score.

I would get a ball or a puck, and a street hockey stick, and practice on your own. Once you can shoot and hit the general area of the net, once you can skate in all directions, then you're ready to start learning to play hockey. Unfortunately, trying to play ice hockey with limited skill in skating, is like trying to play basketball if you've never ran anywhere before.

Still very viable. I learned to skate at 19, by 20 I was good enough to play mid-range inline hockey with local leagues. I did play Defense, but I always lacked the agility of the guys who had been playing hockey for a decade, so I could use my size and a slightly longer stick to do pretty well densively. My slapshot was exactly like Lidstroms, except his goes in the net sometimes, and mine very rarely did :)

I played with little kids a lot. Amazingly, it was fun, and improved my agility more than playing with adults. Nothing will anger you more as a grown man than when an eleven year old can skate circles around you :)

Start small. Think big. Learning to play hockey (Or even skating for that matter) can be frustrating if the people around you are a step ahead of you. I'd suggest setting aside a lot of personal practice time to focus on core skills such as skating, stick handling, shooting. If you really suck, the best way to be effective early off for me was always to agitate and try to chip the puck from possession. Sometimes a good chip can make it look like you did something awesome.

If it's contact ice hockey, use your size if you have it, and work on speed. If you're a smaller guy, work on agility and quickness.

Speed = How fast from point A to point B. On a car, it would be measured as "Top Speed"

Agility = How well/efficiently you transition from one movement to the next. On a car, it would be "Handling"

Quickness = How quickly you can get the wheels rolling. On a car it would be "Accelleration".

If you don't have a lot of experience, don't buy expensive sticks. They are shockingly easier to break, especially if you're just practicing your slap shot. I was actually pretty good, had a semi-decent slapper, bought a brand new $90 stick, and broke it in my first game. Unlike NHL stars.....I didn't have 30 back up sticks.

If you break a stick, it's usually non-returnable. Sure they cost sometimes tripple digits for a good one, but sticks break, it's a fact of life, and no sports store will return or swap it if you're an adult, and it looks like you just took a really bad slap shot. So go cheap, until you have skills to support your costs :)

yeah, im aware that i cant play hockey if i cant skate :o

Which is why i want to get working on this skating thing. Im a pretty good golfer, and i know that golf doesnt necessarily translate into hockey, the fact that i can swing is a plus :o When i was around 12 or so, i got a hockey stick and had a puck, and i'd go in the garage and do slapshots all the time.

I just need to learn how to skate :o

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yeah, im aware that i cant play hockey if i cant skate :o

Which is why i want to get working on this skating thing. Im a pretty good golfer, and i know that golf doesnt necessarily translate into hockey, the fact that i can swing is a plus :o When i was around 12 or so, i got a hockey stick and had a puck, and i'd go in the garage and do slapshots all the time.

I just need to learn how to skate :o

The slap shot is one of the most overrated shots of all time unless you're extremely good at it. Most of the time you'll heel it and the puck will flutter in front of you.

I grew up playing defense and the first thing I learned to do was not take a slap shot unless I knew I could take it, otherwise I'd pull it in and control it before passing it or wristing it.

It's a pretty common mistake that people make. It's way easier to be accurate with a wrist shot instead of a slapper.

Golf doesn't really translate, by the way. I've been golfing and playing hockey since I was 5, and while the muscles used for slap shots are kind of similar, you're not trying to hit a moving golf ball into a 4' x 6' net.

For stick work, the most important thing you can learn how to do is skate with two hands on it unless you're skating backwards. Unless you have extreme wrist strength like Bertuzzi, you're not going to be able to do anything with one hand on the stick other than poke check.

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no offense, but if u are in your teens - you probably missed the boat. unless your playing with friends for fun, youll be pretty much walking on ice. learning to skate isnt easy. if you try to play in a youth hockey association at your age, even house league people will probably blow by you.

i loved playing summer hockey, when they had about 2 rep players per each team of house leaguers. hockey is not easy. i learned to skate when i was about 5, and even took figure skating lessons before.

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Do you have good or any insurance?

I had two seperate friends of mine in the past decade or so that have been hurt playing pickup hockey. Like, no insurance, f*** your life over, set you back a decade finance-wise type hurt...

Zetterberg, etc., when they catch a lower back injury, they immediately see the best physical therapists, chiropracters, specialists, etc. money can buy. If that happens to you though and you can't afford what I mentioned above, you're looking at tons of pain before an often times eventual and inevitable lower back surgery which will set you back well over $10,000. Like I said, this has happened to two seperate friends in the past decade or so. Just be careful if you don't have good insurance...

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no offense, but if u are in your teens - you probably missed the boat. unless your playing with friends for fun, youll be pretty much walking on ice. learning to skate isnt easy. if you try to play in a youth hockey association at your age, even house league people will probably blow by you.

i loved playing summer hockey, when they had about 2 rep players per each team of house leaguers. hockey is not easy. i learned to skate when i was about 5, and even took figure skating lessons before.

You're making skating out to be A LOT harder than it really is. I'm sure he's not planning on competing for a spot on Team USA. It's no different than anything else, with enough practice and dedication and smarts, you can be a solid hockey player no matter what your age.

And "missed the boat" on what exactly? Playing hockey and having fun?

Edited by Broken 16

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no offense, but if u are in your teens - you probably missed the boat. unless your playing with friends for fun, youll be pretty much walking on ice. learning to skate isnt easy. if you try to play in a youth hockey association at your age, even house league people will probably blow by you.

i loved playing summer hockey, when they had about 2 rep players per each team of house leaguers. hockey is not easy. i learned to skate when i was about 5, and even took figure skating lessons before.

If you've ever went skiing, then you can do a hockey stop as they are relatively the same. If you've ever cross country skied, then you'd probably be able to learnt o skate quite easily.

Don't worry about getting hurt or making a fool of yourself because you won't get hurt and there will probably be someone worse than you out there :D

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You're making skating out to be A LOT harder than it really is. I'm sure he's not planning on competing for a spot on Team USA. It's no different than anything else, with enough practice and dedication and smarts, you can be a solid hockey player no matter what your age.

And "missed the boat" on what exactly? Playing hockey and having fun?

It won't be fun if he joins a league and he's walking on ice while everyone else whos been skating for 5+ years blows by him all the time.

If you've ever went skiing, then you can do a hockey stop as they are relatively the same. If you've ever cross country skied, then you'd probably be able to learnt o skate quite easily.

Don't worry about getting hurt or making a fool of yourself because you won't get hurt and there will probably be someone worse than you out there :D

Snow blading you can compare to skating more then you can skiing.

I use to do all three :P

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Do you have good or any insurance?

I had two seperate friends of mine in the past decade or so that have been hurt playing pickup hockey. Like, no insurance, f*** your life over, set you back a decade finance-wise type hurt...

Zetterberg, etc., when they catch a lower back injury, they immediately see the best physical therapists, chiropracters, specialists, etc. money can buy. If that happens to you though and you can't afford what I mentioned above, you're looking at tons of pain before an often times eventual and inevitable lower back surgery which will set you back well over $10,000. Like I said, this has happened to two seperate friends in the past decade or so. Just be careful if you don't have good insurance...

I know for lacrosse, if you pay an annual membership to US Lacrosse you're covered by insurance for any injuries you might have during a game; wouldn't hockey have something similar?

Edit: I haven't played hockey seriously since high school, so I wouldn't know.

Edited by Theophany

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It won't be fun if he joins a league and he's walking on ice while everyone else whos been skating for 5+ years blows by him all the time.

Snow blading you can compare to skating more then you can skiing.

I use to do all three :P

Which is probably why he's coming here looking for pointers on how to learn. I'm just not sure where pointing out the obvious is helpful here. Obviously he knows he's gonna suck at first.

@nate

Don't listen to this guy. Just play one shift at a time. After a while of sucking bad, you'll do something good. Then it's pretty much all good from there, but you'll still probably suck pretty bad for a while. Eventually, you'll catch one of these 'leaguers' being lazy and you'll make them look stupid. It's only a matter of time and effort.

Edited by Broken 16

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I know for lacrosse, if you pay an annual membership to US Lacrosse you're covered by insurance for any injuries you might have during a game; wouldn't hockey have something similar?

Edit: I haven't played hockey seriously since high school, so I wouldn't know.

Local adult leagues out here require both health AND dental insurance proof before they'll let you sign onto a team. Full cages, yadda yadda..

I'm trying to get back into the swing of getting on the ice after I broke my ankle last winter. Plus the gear isn't exactly cheap. I'm only maybe a 1/3rd of the way there, and female chest protectors aren't like their dime-a-dozen male counterparts.

Good on the OP wanting to get into the game :)

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Local adult leagues out here require both health AND dental insurance proof before they'll let you sign onto a team. Full cages, yadda yadda..

I'm trying to get back into the swing of getting on the ice after I broke my ankle last winter. Plus the gear isn't exactly cheap. I'm only maybe a 1/3rd of the way there, and female chest protectors aren't like their dime-a-dozen male counterparts.

Good on the OP wanting to get into the game :)

Yeah, we require that for lacrosse out here, too, it just happens that a membership to US Lacrosse covers that completely.

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I'd love to play, but I never learned to ice skate (and I rolleblade really terribly). I don't even think there are any clinics for adults to learn to skate around here, be nice if there were. I went once with my cousin and I could stay up and even skate (relatively) fast, but as soon as I tried to turn or change directions...well...it wasn't pretty. Also, skating backwards is way beyond even my wildest dreams, but I'm sure on local teams I could do without it.

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Me and two of my buddies are doing the same thing as you right now. We all decided we wanted to pick up hockey and the past few weeks we've been going out to public skates and working on skating. It's been fun, even just skating on its own is a good exercise. I had a little bit of skating experience when I was younger so I'm catching on pretty quickly. Just keep on working at it and you'll see improvement come pretty early. It's never too late to learn something.

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