Canadian Underwater Hockey Freestyle Number 2

There's tons off footage off the basics in the games and you can take all the time in the world to study and get better from that...theres no question there.

But its nice to see when a couple guys get together to do some cool things you know.

Probably not you know. You will probably see the basics done very well, and there will flashes of brilliance occasionally.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

hence my use of the "real" moves

Aha, OK, I get you. Must be my rather limited English comprehension there - misunerstood you.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

Yeah, but as I tell my kids, the basics win the big games, but if the basics are all you know, then they're the hardest thing you know, and it takes effort to pull them off. The more twisted interesting things you can do, the better your fine motor control over the puck becomes, the more simple the 'basics' become and the less time you spend thinking about them in the big games - which equals better, smoother control with faster reflexes.

Learn the cool moves kids, just make sure you keep up the work on your basics as well.


Oh, and those occasional flashes of brilliance in worlds games surrounded by a cloud of hard fought basic skills? Those are the flashes that win and lose close matches.

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It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose.

^^ i agree 100%

nice juggling in the video by the way

Actually that's a good point BentFishBoy. All I hear from people these days are that Fancy is bad, toooo much fancy, fancy doesn't help anything and all that stuff.

It's good to finally hear something that backs up the use in learning those unique skills.

Ah, Benny, I didn't know, congratulations...

Oh, I agree with you there, and I do some juggling/puck flipping/stupid moves for skills training basically only to do that - increase puck control and coordination.

I have seen though, and keep seeing kiddies practising wonderful moves lying static in the water who haven't a hope in pulling it off in a game - and who cannot consistently pass or turn without their bum rising 50 cm from the bottom. And I despair.

I still say do these well:
- Pass
- Swim hard
- Turn (for backs)
And you will do alright at Worlds.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

i agree with jols... while having fancy skills in your repertoire might make it simpler in your own head to execute a basic skill, the skill still needs to be done well, and often it takes effort. for example it takes more effort to turn, and then kick out of the turn to get a good front pass off, rather than turn, and flip a lazy backflick hoping for the same result... which is inevitably what people who learn to backflick do for a few months as they get used to using it well.

of course basics are king, there's no debate. the people you see in high level games who actually manage to pull off wacky moves regularly and actually make a decent contribution to their team (ie dont just swim around barrel-rolling every time they get the puck and generally being unhelpful) are the players who have decent basics already.

the danger is if kids grow up doing flash tricks which by their very nature often move the body higher from the bottom than usual (and making their position weaker) and learn these tricks before they learn basic stuff, and end up with terrible habits that are very hard to break later on. when i was in school me and my mates used to spend a lot of time mucking around with skills.... but most of it was basic curls, tic-tacs, dummies and sidesteps, all of it flat on the bottom... that was pretty much all there was to practice!

but schoolkids in wellington today might not be practicing those things anymore.... well maybe if they have a good coach they hopefully will. if more skills were around back then we'd have been swimming round upside down too, but the fact remains that often kids now enter high grade games with bad habits because they havent practised basics enough.... and as jols says, easiest example of this is guys not even being able to stay on the bottom properly, swimming around trying to make tackles 40 cm off the tiles and wondering why the opposition can just reach under them and take the puck back. used to be if you had a young guy on your team, he just wasn't quite as fast or strong as older players and didn't have much breathold or determination due to confidence... now you can add to that the fact that they often try silly skills and options in stupid places, which has to be drilled out of them, and they generally dont have very good basic tackles.

i'm a big advocate for circus tricks, but basics first, tricks after.

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench