Especially after my latest clinic experience, a friend or two has questioned why I write this blog. After all, it’s not like my kayaking blog, where I actually know what I’m doing; or my programming blog, where I’m writing about a field I have some expertise in. No, with regard to playing hockey … or, rather, even preparing to play hockey, I’m pretty much at the level of general incompetence.
Which is entirely the point and precisely why I started this blog.
When I decided to try playing, I had a lot of questions. What would the equipment cost? How good a skater would I have to be to take hockey lessons? How much would lessons cost? Was I in good enough shape? What would a hockey clinic be like? What would a skate and shoot be like? Were the guys in the locker room likely to be assholes to a complete newbie? Was it even possible for someone to start playing at forty-something?
I found a lot of information about kids starting to play, but very little about adults, especially middle-aged adults, just starting to learn.
I would have liked to have read something about the aerobic and anaerobic muscle as it relates to hockey before I started this – if I had, I’d be much further along than I am now.
So I’m writing this to provide some of the information that I wish I’d been able to find before I started. And writing this post, I see that I haven’t covered some of those questions I had, so at least I’ll be able to write some new posts that don’t involve me falling down or puking … that’ll be a nice change of pace.
Another reason is precisely because of my difficulties and stutter-steps in doing this.
I very much doubt that there are many people who could go to their first hockey clinic and do worse than I did tonight – they might suck, they might be the worst skater/player at their clinic, but they’d be hard-pressed to do worse than I just did, so there’s clearly hope and they’re not alone.
