badger_14

It's definitely the hips for me, too, and I'm already a very flexible person. If I don't stretch out properly, my right leg stiffens up completely because the hip flexor just. Won't. Move. And then the muscles spasm around it and that's no fun at all. When I go and work out, about a quarter or more of my time is just stretching and flexibility, just to keep things loose. What's hard on the knees is those shots that slip through that one tiny gap between my pants and my pads ... (yes, I know I should get kneepads, but I also want a pet miniature unicorn and neither of these things are going to happen right now.) BeeDee - you look good! Yes, you do need to keep your stick down when you're in stance, for sure, although you do seem to keep it down when someone's coming at you. Your chest protector looks huge - is it really that huge, or is it just the angle? Can you move well in it? Like Optimus says, back straight and chest up - settle your body like it's in a chair at a fancy dinner, butt down and chest high. It'll be murder on your thighs for a while. Something my goalie coaches have us do is, right at the start of the game, get into stance right against the boards so you can feel where your body settles. Sort of like tapping your posts to get aware of where you are in the net - same principle, bodily awareness. The coaches have us practice lots of shuffles and even just side-steps - down the red line, back the red line, down and back. Slaloms, same thing. The other week the coach had us do the Iron Cross - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBr0RI8Idk0

I passed my road test! At last! And hey, for a guy who, five years ago, would have a panic attack leaving his own porch, this is a hell of an accomplishment. Now I can properly apply to ambulance companies, and I'm not beholden to rinks that are only located on or near the T! I mean I'm forbidden from using the family car but that's what zipcar is for.

I'm skating on them a lot better actually, now that I think about it. I think the major problem is 'new skate stiffness', since it's only the fourth time I've skated in them. I always seem to feel a bit wobbly the first few minutes out on ice, which I suspect is due to being used to 8 or 9 years of stiff, heavy player skates.

Tonight's group was much more even in skill level. I'm still sorting out the goalie skates, but it's a lot better. Of course I am still a novice and play like one. First damned goal of the night was a bank in off my own teammate's skate. Ugh. One of the other players stuck a GoPro to the glass and puts the videos on youtube, so I'll hopefully look at that in a few days when I need to feel shame.

The one I was at was a mix of very-novice trying to get their feet under them, and ex-high-school players sandbagging down, the latter just stripping the puck and carrying it coast to coast the whole game. As a goalie I was annoyed, from a skater's POV, I would've been furious and discouraged. There's 'better players challenging you' and then there's 'why am I paying $25 [as a skater] for this?' Especially when the company has several dozen different no-commitment skates, plus leagues, at every skill level, per week. Definitely! No place to go but up. Especially if you don't pay. Only your pride will be hurt and maybe the skaters will get frustrated. I think someone on here (LawGoalie?) said at one point that you shouldn't join a real game until you can reliably turn away at least half the shots that come at you, and I think that's pretty reasonable. You might suck but you won't get completely buried, which is good for your own confidence as well as not getting an earful from the guys in front of you.

I've been playing for about two months ... I think I'd be seasoned enough by June or so. Actually I might be now, but I'm still getting used to the goalie skates, and I want to give it a bit more time. So four, five months? Here, though, 'novice' leagues aren't ... necessarily all that novice, and there's not always fantastic parity. When I played in an organized pickup (the company calls it No Commitment Hockey) that was listed as 'novice' there were some very not-novice skaters there. Goalies are kind of a scarce commodity and even in D level hockey, the goalies are pretty experienced because they grab who they can. For me, that means I feel like I need as much non-league experience as possible, because there's not likely to be any leeway to mess up when I do get into a league. I'm playing as a sub for a D/novice league tonight so we'll see how that goes.

Great to hear you had fun! The soccer drill (I hesitate to say 'drill') is fun as all-get out. I've done it with the kids and it really does take your mind off the fact that you have skates on and you might fall. As in being a forward, everything stems from movement and being comfortable in your skates and gear. Between drills, besides watching the other goalies, I like to flop around and practice getting up, or just flop and stretch, wiggle my feet around, flail like a turtle, just, as you might say 'become one with my gear'. Nice thing about practice is no one cares if you mess up or try something new (and mess up), not like in a game or pickup. At the end of clinic, the coaches have us play this game (which you might get to try, or maybe suggest) where one of us stands in net, and the other goalies (and/or another coach) are off to the sides, and the coach takes shots. Goalie makes a save, he gets a point. Coach scores, he gets a point. Rebounds are live, so the other goalies and/or coaches can fire one in, too. There's a lot of scrambling, occasional deliberate falling, frequent accidental falling. It's a quick game - play til five or win by two.

I play with the Beantown Softball League, primarily in Allston. Mostly established teams but they have a free-agent day every season, and some teams do their own recruiting. The officiating is usually fair (we have basically the same rotation of umpires, many of whom are also players or coach teams in the league) but sometimes we get a guy dropping down from officiating the upper levels and they hold us to a higher standard. My own elbow understands. Trying to rest it for this weekend, when we have a triple-header.

Drives me up a wall when the umpire has an excruciatingly narrow definition of what a strike is. We had a first-time pitcher yesterday and most of what I saw him throw would've been strikes in the previous game (different umpire, and I play catcher so I see a whole lot of calls). Not just frustrating because we were losing (he was calling the same on the other team) but it really rattles our pitchers - novice and experienced- when that happens.

An embarrassment of riches, won in a contest. -CCM Resistance helmet/cage combo -CCM Tacks skates (seriously these are so light trying them on was like wearing a cloud of mouse farts) -CCM RBZ carry bag And still waiting on the stick to arrive.

Nice thing about the clinic I attend - goalies who want to just face shots from the skaters attend for free, and they're at one end, and then goalies who want the specific instruction get the middle and don't have to face any shots if they don't feel ready. I mean, in the drills you usually get shots, but it's very controlled, and 40 minutes of a 55 minute clinic could be devoted entirely to movement. There's usually 3 goalies, but the minimum is one (of course) and the max is 6. The coaches have all been good to us allowing us to rest when we need it, or modify drills to more experienced or less experienced players. (for example, the coach might want a more experienced goalie to butterfly slide from post to post, but would tell me to shuffle.) Actually, the ice is divided in three - adult novice players at one end, goalies in the middle, and kids at the other end, so you can also lend yourself to the kids' group if you feel that's more your speed (and it gives the kids a thrill, shooting on a real goalie). Then a six year old dekes you out of your pads and you get to feel shame. Stretching is a process. A little bit at a time. Most of the time, about 20 minutes of my workout is devoted just to stretching. Groin, hips, back. Sometimes if the trainers are around, I make sure to do really pretzely stretches to freak them out. But I also work at the gym and enjoy messing with my co-workers and don't advise that as a proper training technique.

Batters throwing the bat. Seriously, stop that. Catching is risky enough as-is.

Yeah, that's the kind of session where people just want to dangle, deke, and score. Pickup is often like that. :( If you can wrangle a friend to go with you, maybe they can take some video. Doesn't have to be a goalie-friend, just so you can look at the footage later. What my coaches have me (and the other goalies) doing most of the time is just movement - shuffles, t-pushes, more shuffles, forward, back. Slalom forward, slalom back. Rocking horse (or sausage link, depending on who taught you) forward and back. Lots of shuffling. If you don't feel up to shuffling, you can side-step. That helps build up the muscles and it's the foundation for everything else. The other basic drill is the 'two puck' drill, where you have one puck about a foot from the top of the crease at either post, skate up to one puck, skate back to the middle, skate out to the other, back to the opposite post. It's hard when you have people always swooping down to steal your puck, I'm sure. You could try tiny cones. USA Hockey calls these "letter drills", because you make various letters of the alphabet as you skate, shuffle, and push your way around the crease. The example above would be an M. You can also try a W, an E, an A, or a V. Some of the best advice I've gotten is head-hands-body. Where the eyes and head track, the hands and body follow. And we also do a drill where the goalie gets in stance at the top of the crease and the coach takes shots slightly to the left or slightly to the right, and your job is to track the puck and just side-step toward it. Not even shuffle - just step enough that it hits your glove, arm, blocker, etc. That's about moving your body to get in front of the shock, your body of course being a bigger target than your blocker, or what have you.

I've taken to filling my (32oz) water bottle about a quarter to a third of the way with gatorade, and the rest with water. I sweat like a racehorse under my gear, so much more than as a player, and the extra bit helps. Especially in a half-ice game where you have like zero breaks for a drink. Personally I felt (in goalie skates) like I was almost impeded going down - like I was getting tripped up or had to do some kind of ballerina move to butterfly. How did it feel for you? Had you worn your pads at all before?

First game in the new skates. A bit stiff, as you might expect new skates to be, so a little pain on that count, but mostly soreness, nothing unbearably awful. Other than that everything is all pear-shaped. First the blades felt too dull, probably because they're wider, because later they felt plenty sharp. Long, flat steel makes maneuvering precarious and I felt like I no longer knew how to drop properly. It got a little better, but the first time I dropped in warm up it felt like someone fired an electric shock up the outside of both thighs. Fucking smarts. I think that was the toe lacings, which I was trying since now I have goalie skates, but I took out immediately. I'll figure those out later. I've heard people recommend the bungee-style toe straps? Things got better after about the first 2/3rds of the game, including the soreness, so hopefully I'll feel better next week. Overall kind of frustrating, but no fundamental problems with the skates, just a matter of climbing that steep learning curve. Next week I should be able to do the clinic afterward, too, so I'll get some tips from the coaches and some nice, slow practice not killing myself. Once again I got hit in the Triangle-of-Pain (somewhere between the top of the medial padding and where my pants don't quite cover) where my thigh wraps do nothing. Is it possible to permanently damage muscles if you get hit in one place over and over again? I hope not. Obviously, my next paycheck should go toward proper knee protection.

The commuter rail line that I take to the rink is going to have service suspended on weekends starting April 25th, and ending November 22nd. Hockey attendance is about to get a whole lot spottier. (or, the commute will be about 3x as long by taking a bus and subway/streetcar).

At last! Goalie skates of my very own. CCM RBZ 70's.

Come to the dark side, we have cooler gear.

Shoebottom didn't seem so bad, but maybe it's different for a skater vs. a goalie. Bob Cormier was kind of intimidating. Most of the guys, Bob Beers and Tom Songin in particular were nice about dropping back and encouraging me between plays, making sure no one ran over me, etc. (also, having a pack of former NHL'ers taking warm-up shots on you is both exhilarating and utterly terrifying.)

I got to play goal for the Boston Bruins alumni today! Had the usual pickup this morning, and afterward I was in the locker room, and the rink manager comes and he's like hey, you're the goalie? Yeah, I'm a goalie. And he says, the Bruins alumni team needs a goalie today, do you wanna play for them? Well yes of course. I ended up splitting the game with the guy who runs the clinic I skate at, and it was so, so much fun. People in the stands, an announcer. It was a charity game for the Dana-Farber institute and the doctors are pretty darn good, although it was clear the Bruins alumni could pretty much turn the game whichever way they were inclined. I made some decent stops and the alumni were all very nice, and I came home with the game puck. Seriously, accidentally the best Saturday ever.

The Men's Choir (aka, the male half of the Sanctuary Choir) got to do an ensemble piece of our own this morning, which was the highlight of my week, because when we do an ensemble piece there's a 99% chance we get to act like complete dorks in front of the congregation.

The hockey gods are clearly angry with me: the train was late, I got bowled over by a player who lost their edge, and I had an asthma attack during the clinic. On the other hand time put in at the gym has resulted in a pleasantly pretzel-ish sense of flexibility and range of motion while playing.

Yesterday, the driving instructor got the wrong street, and called me from five miles away on the wrong side of two highways. Today, I get home from work expecting to grab some lunch and chill before my driving time at 4, only to find I'm apparently scheduled for 2. I know full well I scheduled for 4pm, I wrote it down while talking to the driving school when I initially scheduled the sessions. Argh.

Immensely frustrated that my mom (who is currently physically incapable of driving) won't let my dad take me and the car to a nice, isolated parking lot to practice getting used to controlling a 2,000lb death machine the controls. She's driven that car maybe once since she bought it a year-ish ago, and no one's driven it at all in the past two or three months. It's not even a scary-fancy-fast car either, it's a nice, sedate little honda accord. Currently, I'm paying for driving lessons myself, but even yesterday the instructor was like yeah, you need some time in a parking lot, because you're not used to this machine and you're going to get hurt or hurt someone else. Faster I get good at driving, faster I get my license, faster I get that nice EMT job and get out of here. Argh. (I mean I get her being protective of the car, but the car has been rotting in a snowbank since the end of January)

Drove a car today for the first time in something like 8 years. Instructor was patient. My technique is horrendous but I didn't destroy anything and it was a lot less traumatic than anticipated.