Muse back!
February 08, 2009 / Sunday
Practice Practice Practice
Gave my legs a few days of rest and went to go practice all the things I learned at skills today. Let's do another breakdown by stride.
Forward Skating
More focus on pushing sideways with the legs, not crossing my arms on front of me, and keeping my hand low enough to see my palm. I could feel the crunch under my skates, and it felt goooood. I'm still pushing myself at about 90%, but I'm pretty sure I'm already as fast as I used to be at 100%, if not faster. I also feel more stable. No more feeling like my skates are slipping out behind me because, I don't have to cheat by leaning my upper body forward anymore.
Forward Crossovers
I did a bunch of circles on my own. I'm still weaker going right than left, but I'm at least happy that I'm no longer catching my skate blade on the ice. Keeping my body up and away from the turn going right is really not natural for me.
We did a lot of stick handling drills today. One of them involved a fast slalom down the ice, weaving down a line of cones. I naturally crossover going left around the cones, but today I dared for the first time to throw in some right crossovers. I couldn't make myself do it for every cone, but I did get some in there, and whaddaya know, my skate didn't catch.
Backward Skating & Crossovers
I practiced a bit of both backward skating and crossovers when I remembered to in our free time. Mostly, I focused on keeping my legs wide apart, keeping low, and pushing or pulling sideways with my legs. I pushed and pulled at maybe 70% (that's a total guesstimate), but felt faster and more stable than ever before.
Power Turns
This was kind of funny. I did nice tight power turns all during self-warmups. Then we did a power turn drill, and it took me half the ice to complete a turn. Jordan was laughing at me. I was too. That is all.
This Section Has Nothing To Do With Skating
We did a puck protection drill along the boards late in the session. The one big takeaway from that: use my butt to keep my opponent away. I'll have to try it in a real game situation. It was easy at the clinic, but I think that's 'cause I went up against guys who were twice my size and they were trying not to squish me.
Also, while we were doing a stationary stick handling drill, my forearm on the top hand got really tired. What kind of exercises can I do to strengthen it? I can't always have a stick and puck/ball handy.
I'm writing all this down for me, and likely boring all of you in the process. Sorry! But this will likely continue. I'm on a mission to improve this year, in enough ways that I don't find myself feeling as if I haven't gotten any better when 2010 rolls around.
I'm a little amused that I'm already thinking about 2010.