A common question I get asked is how do you teach someone to hit a hockey ball? “Should we teach them Australian style or should we teach them European style?”

What’s the difference you may well ask? Europeans are a lot lower then they hit the ball. If you envision more of a baseball type swing with the player standing further away from the ball, the swing is more in a rounded type motion. Australian style on the other hand is the basic opposite of this, the player’s front foot is a lot closer when addressing the ball to hit and the swinging motion is more of an up and down type motion. As cricket is a huge sport here in Australia, I believe that is where we come to develop our technique for hitting the ball, its more like a cricket ‘drive’ than a baseballer’s swing as outlined when describing the European style above.

Personally, I don’t think  you should teach them any particular way. I’m of the opinion that an individual will have a basic swinging technique and rather than making the person change the way they hit to something that doesn’t feel ‘natural’ to them, let’s use their ‘natural’ technique and build from that, unless this is the major reason for the player’s inability to hit the ball consistently at a high level.

When teaching someone how to hit you should always keep it simple. Here are some of my tips when teaching someone how to hit a ball.

• Whatever the style, the left ankle should always be inline with the ball.
• Get the player to hit the ball from a stationary position before getting them to hit it on the move. This ensures that they are consistently getting their feet in the right position.
• Get them to point with their left shoulder to where they want to hit it.
• Once they can consistently hit the ball straight and firm, begin to include movement in the drill.

Hitting is one of the most underrated skills in the game. If someone is able to deliver the ball firm and flat to their teammates, their a huge asset for their team. Below is a little trick I use to help people who are struggling with their hit:

1. Using only their left hand and standing 1 metre from a wall or fence, get the player to grip their stick about halfway down the stick.
2. Then, using just their left hand, get the player to hit the ball against the wall/fence.
3. The aim here is to get the player, using just their left hand to hit the fence and have the ball come straight back to them off the fence. Once they can do this get them to do it 10 times in a row.
4. After 10 times, get them to put 2 hands on the stick and repeat the same step.
5. After hitting the fence/wall STRAIGHT 10 times, get the player to step back 2-3 steps and get them to move their hands up the stick a little.
6. Continue following the steps 1 through to 5 so that as the player is about 10-15 metres from the fence/wall, they are at grabbing their stick at the top and hitting the ball consistently flat and accurate into the fence.

If you’ve got any tips you use to teach hitting, I’m interesting in finding out. Please add them as a comment below.

Happy hitting.

Trav

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.