How To Stop A Hockey Ball

Hi, my name's Adam Larkin. I'm an East London Hockey Club First Team Captain, and I've been playing hockey for twelve years, and I'm just going to do a quick demonstration of the correct technique of stopping a hockey ball. So the key things about stopping a hockey ball: the first thing is showing your opposite number where you want the ball to be passed to you.

So, you do that by using your stick to demonstrate where you want the ball. So if I show it to Kevin and show him that I want it out here, he'll pass, and the ball is then ready to be stopped on my strong stick side. And a second important technique is having very soft hands when you take the ball, and using the momentum of the ball to pull it into your path, so that you're stopping the ball in a fluid motion.

So, Kevin, pass it again. You see we pull the ball back and we stop it, taking the ball back in our stick. And by doing that, we then are able to free our feet up to make our second move.

So if we get the ball in again, we've taken the ball. It's already out here now, which makes my next move to pass the ball on to the next player. And in case you sometimes end up receiving the ball not on your strong side, but on your reverse side, the safest method of stopping the ball to make sure you stop it dead is to use a flat stop like this.

So, get the ball and we'll stop it dead. And we're then able to stand there and make the second pass. And the more difficult technique is trying to stop it while standing with a flat stick.

The benefit there is that you're able to keep the ball going and able to use your feet and maintain momentum. So you push it in, and the key is to get right behind the ball and use your upright stick to stop the ball. So that's the very basics in terms of stopping a hockey ball.

The key things to remember are having soft hands when you receive the ball, using the motion of the ball to get it out of your feet so you're able to make the next move, and having correct body position so you can look, see the rest of the field and who you're going to be passing the ball on to. .