What is a Hockey Shooting Pad for?

What is a Hockey Shooting Pad for?

Hockey is one of those sports that takes a lot of training and hard work to be any good at. Anybody that has ever played hockey, whether on the ice or rollerblades, knows that a certain amount of athleticism is required in order to even skate good enough to enter a rink. When it comes to moving around, scoring points, passing, and stickhandling it takes a whole other level of skills to make an impact on the team. A hockey shooting pad is a great way to improve shooting skills, but it takes a lot more than one training aid to get the arsenal of skills needed to win games.

Using a Shooting Pad

In the absence of a real ice rink, synthetic ice, or even dryland hockey tiles you can lay down a high-quality shooting mat, or pad, in order to get the much-needed practice it takes to master the nearly impossible shots that make points and win games. In most cases, using a shooting tarp or some sort of training goalie set up so you can hone in your targeting skills works best. If you don’t have any of these, you can also use y our imagination and shoot pucks at targets that are a safe distance away from people and property that might get damaged. To get an even more intense training session try making shots while using a hockey balance board.

The Best Hockey Shooting Pad

The best hockey shooting mat that you can get for yourself is one that is going to have a truly slick surface on it so that you get the most out of your practice shots. When you purchase a shooting pad you will have options on the sizes that are available to you. Whatever size that will best suit your needs will work great, but the key is to do your research and see whether or not it has the kind of slick surface that will allow you to get the closest type of shooting slickness that you can to real ice. The closer your shooting pad is to the way your flooring is when you play games the more you will get out of your practice sessions.

Repetitive Shooting Drills

A great way to build skills using a shooting pad is to do the kind of drills that make you shoot the same shot over and over again so that you train your muscles and your mind to work together and make the hard shots that great deke moves get. Simply put your mat on the ground and get a stockpile of pucks that are easy for you to reach. Pick one of the targets on your shooting tarp and aim for it over and over again until your pucks are gone. Take note of all of the shots that you make and compare them to the ones that you miss. If there is a certain target or targets that you have problems hitting just keep practicing on that shot until  you make it every time.

Conclusion

It might not seem like a big deal, but every time you focus your shots and take time to improve them you strengthen your skills. You can break bad form habits by continually forcing yourself to shoot with the correct form over and over again. Since the shooting mat is portable and very lightweight you can pack it up and take it anywhere. Portability like this gives you the freedom to practice shots wherever you can. Just remember to always be careful when you shoot pucks. If you hit a person with a puck that has some heat on it you could hurt them.

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