How To Hit A Hockey Ball

Hi. My name is Adam Larkin. I'm the East London Hockey Club Varsity Captain.

I've been playing hockey for about 12 years and we're just going to do a quick demonstration of the technique of hitting a hockey ball. So, the key with hitting a hockey ball is to make sure the ball is out of your feet, but your weight is down, just to make sure that you're hitting the ball along the ground. We're going to have our hands towards the top of the stick so we are then able to use the full length of the stick as a lever in swinging down and striking the ball.

The key is making sure that, as I said, the weight is over, your eyes are over the ball, and that you're following through and sweeping and catching the turf as you do it. So we step into it and we move along the floor and we use a sweeping motion, use the weight of our stick and our shoulders to catch the ball in the middle of the arc. We'll just do that again.

Well, again, step into the ball, weight down and sweep through the ball with a strike. Sometimes it might be safer to, if accuracy is more important than power, it's often that you choke down on your grip so you've got a smaller lever of your stick but you're then able to have more control. Exactly the same technique, but with essentially less way for it to go wrong, so you just choke down and just follow through.

You're then able to strike the ball much more accurately. So those are the basics of hitting the ball. The key is to have a smooth swing, keep your weight over the ball, keep your eyes on the ball and to follow through and to strike in the direction.

That's the basics of hitting a hockey ball. .