Saturday Dynamic Shoot

Yesterday I took advantage of the weekend and fine cool weather to go down the school for an hour and a half of shooting practice.  I seem to have finally reached the point of my inline skating where I am putting into practice the original idea that led me to lace up some inlines in the first instance (ie puck and stick practice, not inline skating per se) without even realising it.  It's good when a plan pans out :)

As much as I enjoy the skating for its own sake (eg. my River Skates), time is a limiting factor and I need to make the most of my opportunities during the 'off season'.  I've reached the level where I don't embarrass myself as a skater when playing inline hockey, and where I don't have to be consciously working out the basic moves when practicing.  So, I can concentrate on my stick and puck work for its own sake, making me a much more dangerous inline player and, hopefully, a much more competent ice hockey player.  Which was the whole point of picking up inlines in the first place.  So, plan achieved.

As seems to be the current pattern, upon arrival at the school I didn't spend any time on specifically skating drills and moved straight into shooting mode.  As a slight compromise in this change of emphasis from skate to shoot I did my dynamic shooting drills first, laying a hundred shots on the goal from a variety of pick-up maneuver scenarios.  As previously, I kept stats on each 25 shot cycle rather than just the aggregate 100 shot total.

For the first 50 shots from the 15' circle, I curled in from the centre from randomly chosen Left/Right, with a forehand wrist resulting.  Stats were 9-4-3 and 10-7-2 for each bracket of 25.
Third set of 25, I picked up the puck on both FH and BH, inside and out, as I skated out from the goal curling left or right (deking only as necessary), before FH shots.  10-4-2.
For the final 25 dynamic shots, I picked up and curled as per the third set, but this time inserted at least one set of dekes into the maneuver (though no distinct pattern to it).  8-4-1.

Then I closed off with 4 set of 25 stationary shots at 15', moving through my standard four types of shot (FH snap, WS, FF snap, BH).  I made it a more technical exercise than previously by further breaking each set into 5 repetitions of 5 shots (easy to do with five pucks), concentrating during each of these mini-reps upon a particular aspect of the mechanics of shooting (breathing, stance, weight transfer, follow through and power/flex).  8-9-7-7.

There are four observations I'll make about the session overall:

1 - It took 90 minutes to progress through the routine, significantly longer than when just limited it to 'shooting' per se, rather than micro techniques for static shots or scenario in the dyanmic rep's.

2 - My shooting stats are the best I've produced since I started shooting at the school.  Also, the shots 'felt' better, more powerful, accurate and controlled.

3 - The building into the rep cycle of micro reps (ie the 5x5x4 breakdown of the 15' static exercise) made the 'counting' much easier (ie, I didn't have to count how many shots I'd had from 1-25 as this was 'built into ' the exercise by progressing through the pattern of 'techniques' (breath, stance, weight, follow through, power), and I didn't have to count the five shot reps due the number of pucks (5 for each of the 'techniques')).  This reduced the load of my cognitive channels from such 'book keeping' and freed it up for 'learning'.  I think this is good pedagogy for me, building one of a coach's functions into the structure of the drill itself.

4 - I was very hungry upon return home, and had a good sleep a little later in the afternoon.  Both signs of a good workout as well as good practice.

Will go out and do it all again shortly...