The Obstacle Course Challenge

Level Up Your Stickhandling

There are several easy ways that you can improve your stickhandling at home.

  1. Do a variety of drills. There are lots of stickhandling drills that you can work on at home. There are a couple of dozen that are already included in our TeamBuildr workouts. There are lots of others you can find on YouTube.
  2. Add moving feet. All of these drills get harder if we move our feet. If you have limited space, you can add basic motion such as skaters, single-step crossovers, two-step crossovers, four-step crossovers, knee to floor touches, floor mohawks and more.
  3. Eyes up. We want to be able to see the ice while we’re stickhandling so it is important to practice keeping our eyes up and using our peripheral vision. Find a partner who can flash fingers for you to call out while you are doing the drills.
  4. Add fakes and misdirection. Practice adding fakes to all the drills. These could be eye fakes, stick fakes, shoulder fakes, foot fakes.
  5. Add competition. Practice with a friend to raise the difficulty. Protect the puck. Remember to keep your line of protection (keep your body between the puck and your opponent). Try to fake out your friend. Play keep away. If you haven’t got a friend practice with an imaginary friend and use obstacles to indicate where they are.

More on all of these ideas to come.

The Obstacle Course Challenge

Today, we’re going to challenge ourselves by creating and practicing on an obstacle course. Here are some examples:

Assignment:

Create your own obstacle course for stickhandling. Be creative. You can stickhandle using pucks (regular, green biscuit, weighted, etc.), balls of various types (stickhandling ball, tennis, lacrosse, golf, etc.) and even food (eggs?) if you are feeling adventurous. Set it up with obstacles like pucks, pylons, sticks, gloves or other household objects. It can be indoors, outdoors or even on an outdoor rink (if you’re lucky). Add motion, fakes and various moves. Practice the course until you can do it really well. This is a great drill for goalies as well. Use your gloves and a goalie stick if you can.