You guys are VERY helpful. Thank you.
grab with your weak hand and punch with your strong. most hockey fights are just that. God I miss playing.
Fucking cool Stuff straps on skates
Hockey fights have a code of honor, elbowing would be considered dirty and cowardly.
putting on the foil coach.
I think hand conditioning would be important, too. One of our best players hurt his hand during a fight on Friday night and had to leave the game. Fortunately, he's only going to miss one game (it's not broken).
I used to hit a makiwara board on a regular basis. It gave me really hard fists, but my knuckles will always be somewhat deformed (not like Kimbo, though :-). Is there a better way?
Thanks again. You have really helped, and I'll bet the Spirit coach will wind up reading all of this information.
Coming from someone who has dropped the gloves more times than I ever needed to playing hockey. I can tell you that the two most important things in a hockey fight is making sure you tie up their power punching arms, most fighters in hockey are not great punchers with their non power side, very few can switch and throw with half the amount of power they generate with their power arm.
Second, keeping your opponent of balance, watch Toe Domi fight, he takes on guys twice his size and wins, why? He keeps his opponent off balance. That is a fighters number one priority is keeping balance and second freeing up his power punching arm. Take one of those away and the advantage is taken away.
I spoke with Domi about how he practiced and he told me besides trial and error in fights the main thing he would practice is the tie up and his balance while circling to pull his opponent off balance.
So in order of his idea it was,
Work on your tie up and grip and work on practicing keeping your opponent off balance. You can do both those things without ever throwing a punch against your teammates.
Have them watch Youngblood!
I used to cut a hole in the thumb of my glove when playing so I could hold onto the face cage easier when I was pummling his helment.
bjjprim8 - thank you for so much info.
Brett
bubba,
something I forgot to add was while practicing pulling your opponent off balance and circling to do it take your power arm and rear back hard and fast like you are going to hit someone. That motion if not practiced can throw you off balance while circling. The beauty of tieing up and circling especialy if you are shorter than your opponent is it the motion bends their backs slightly and allows for hard uppercuts. The other beauty of circling is it pulls your opponent into your power punch when you turn to punch. Watch Domi the guy is a master of it.
Dougie,
I never understood that, why the hell do guys even bother throwing punches in full cages with no intent on taking them off? Any time I played somewhere that you had to wear a cage, be a man call the guy out, tell him to take his helmet off and fight and take your suspension. All this throwing and hitting helmets and cages is a waste of time. No one gets hurt and what message has been sent?
When you are 15 and playing you can't fight. The cages are supposed to protect the face from pucks and sticks.
However, you have to start learning to throw somehow. When you do fight though you get like a game misconduct at that level.
You learn how to fight but don't get seriously hurt. Then when the helment comes off you at least know how to throw and what to do.
Dougie,
Fighting with a full cage and helmet produces bad habits because of that I can't be hurt attitude. Like I said, take the game misconduct and fight if you're really going to fight that is.
I disagree.
Cheers!
performs open heart surgury on Waltj with my hockey stick
"Being Canadian, you are always taught that if you are in a fight, try and pull the guys jersey over his head!"
Either that or pull guard...
Dougie,
Than you guys weren't interested in fighting you were playing make pretend trying to be like your favorite enforcer IMO. If you were really interested in dropping the gloves and sending a message you would do just that, minus the cage and helmet where you have no worry of being hurt at all.
"I cut the thumb out of my glove to grab the cage." LMAO and exactly what did that do? Neither of you could punch each other in the face, so what exactly was the point? What message was sent? You'd do better running someone in open ice if you are wearing a cage and not willing to take it off, you send a better message that way than by pillow fighting with helmets and cages. JMO
One of my students is a boxing coach who helps the local WHL team with their fighting. I don't know too much about precise techniques but I do know that they wear helmets with the full cage, hockey jerseys and UFC style gloves to practice at the boxing club.
The helmet with the full cage allows them to throw hard shots to the head/face and the jersey allows them to grab on.
I think it's very important to work around the grips as it can be very hard to throw a punch while your opponent is hanging on to your jersey at the elbow/ bicep.
It's kind of hard to practice the balance aspect off the ice, roller blades maybe?
Just my $0.02.
"the #1 problem is that guys train for hockey, they don't train in an organized, goal oriented method for fighting. which is silly because fighting is part of the sport."
This is a great point, absolutely true. I've been an avid hockey fight fan for over 10 years now. It's definitley part of the game, yet I don't beleive teams practice it. As stated earlier, guys like Grimson and Domi probably have their own little drills set up, but I think it would be worthwhile for teams to actually schedule some fight work into their practices. Drills like a tug of war to help with balance, even fighting with gloves or with headgear (full cages) so that you can throw down but won't hurt each other.
I also think learning to switch hands is a very good idea. Look at Langdon and Probert, both those guys were great at switching, and if you do it right you can stay one step ahead of your opponent.
I have played hockey since I could walk and played personally in the nahl. Many fights, many games, the #1 move in a hockey fight is to TURTLE,lol and those who play the game know what I am talking about. eric newell