Any tips for skating on ice for hockey?

Learning how to play ice hockey?

• I'm 14 and I've just got this urge to play start playing ice hockey (Not in the NHL, since I'm older) I'm learning how to skate I can skate forwards and stop but I'm not the greatest at skating backwards or turning. I'm going to the rink a lot to practice. And during the summer I believe there's a rink open a few hours away where my cousins are living.I need some tips on stick handling and shooting too. Thanks =)

• Answer:

  I'm a top level hockey player (youth), and I'm going to offer the best assistance I can. I'm going to offer that is if you are serious about wanting to play hockey (and want to be really good). To begin with, I can not stress how important it is to become an excellent skater. With most sports, you can already walk/run (soccer, football, baseball, etc). With hockey, you have to practice before you even got the basics. Learn to become a really good skater. Be able to go "quick-feet" and full stride skating forwards. Make sure you are extremely comfortable stopping on both sides. If you are in a game, and are not comfortable stopping on one side, that hesitation can lead to injury. Last, learn how to skate backwards (crossovers, stopping backwards, the whole deal). Practice, practice, practice. Try to get an excellent stride. Throw on some rollerblades, and work on your crossovers. Keep doing them (for at least an hour a day, backwards and forwards). The only time you can practice your stops is really on the ice. Keep practicing it, always. Next, ALWAYS work on your stickhandling. You can begin this right away. Get a plastic ball, and stick handle as FAST as you can for 30 seconds. It doesn't matter if you lose the ball during that 30 seconds. The point is speed, not accuracy in that drill. And for 30 minutes to an hour a day, just play around with the ball. By this, I mean working random dekes, stickhandling under and around a spare stick, and kicking it off your foot. When I'm in hotels (for traveling), I sometimes stickhandle in the hallway. You may lose the ball a lot, and it will be hard. After around a week or two (if done everyday, literally), you WILL notice a huge improvement in your stickhandling. Furthermore, shots are very important in hockey. Buy around 30 to 50 pucks (start with light pucks; plastic. Then, move on to real rubber pucks, the ones used on ice). I do around 250 shots every other day(on a net). I pretty much split them up evenly into wristshots, snapshots, slapshots, and backhanders. As a beginner, I recommend working right away on your wristshot and slapshot. Snapshots take power and time to get perfect. Backhanders take lots of practice. I also recommend you look up a guide on how to take proper shots. For conditioning, I recommend you run long distance for around 1 and a half hours a day. However, please keep in mind, long distance training is NOT hockey training. NEVER, ever do this training. I only recommend you do that as described above, for around 14 days (2 weeks; everyday) just to get a little in shape. After that, I recommend you find a HOCKEY SPECIFIC trainer. To top it off, hockey takes A LOT of practice. Stick with it, and you WILL get good. The higher level of a player you are > the better team you make it on to > the more fun (more competition). Start with a recreational league if you can. If you are EXTREMELY serious about hockey, one rec season is enough (I played one rec season, then went straight to travel hockey. I am serious about hockey). Rec should teach you the extreme basics. Literally, practice everyday. Ditch the Xbox, the PS3. Gretzky practiced all day, even after his friends begged him to go see a movie, or stuff like that. Hit the search engines, find out how to take proper shots and stride, stop, stickhandle, dekes. Purchase a hockey training DVD. However, the one skill you can NOT train is gameplay. I can't believe I'm saying this, but watch TV. Watch the pros play, and learn how they react in a game. What do they do? When do they pass? When do they dump the puck? When is it the right time to do something? How do they play defensively? What about offensively? I know this is a long answer, but I really tried to help. I wish you the best of luck. 14 is not a bad age to start. You could be playing travel hockey, on a good team within a year if you REALLY work hard. Why would you say you can't play in the NHL because you are older? Some NHL players have not even started playing hockey until 15 years old. The difference between them and the average Joe, is that they WANT it badly. They want it so badly, they will forfeit movies, Xbox, PS3, and sacrifice everything to be top quality hockey players. To end this... PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE :) P.S. - Try to find a serious hockey coach. One that will know about pretty much everything hockey. Purchase some books on hockey attitude. Hockey is 50% attitude, 50% skills.