Improving shots ( in floorball )

[nofun]

Hi,

I play floorball and are trying to improve my shots. I've just received a pair of 10lbs clubbells and the clubbell video. As I see it I have to improve my grip strength and shoulder strength/flexibility . What exercises should i do ?

regards,
Geir

[crubio]

Geir,

I suggest is that you watch the Clubbell Video. Get the basics down first - Clean to Order and shoulder park. Then for ballistic shoulder strength work on pendulums, and circles. For grinds start with the armpit cast, head cast, and sheild cast.

Stay well away from failure on all sets. :twisted: Get good at performing these exercises before increase reps or volume. Once you can comfortably do these, start increasing sets and/or reps.

Once you have found your exercises, stick with them for at least 2-6 weeks. Then try some other exercises. Really, any exercises you choose is going to work your shoulders all the way around.
Keep us posted on your progress.

[nofun]

If you wanted to improve your shots in floorball or hockey , which exercises would you do ?

regards,
Geir

[Scott Sonnon]

Geir,
Work on Inward Pendulums, Mills, and Side Swipes Squats.

[nofun]

I've noticed that the strength and coordination of my right arm is a lot better than my left. What would be the best way to "fix" this ? Should i do more sets or reps with my left ?

regards,
Geir

[Doug Szolek]

Gier, this problem crops up often with unilateral (one side at a time) training.

Remember what I'm about to tell you because you will probably come back to it often in your training and in learning any skill with each hand indivdually.

This imbalance in the strength and coordination of each hand is do more to increased coordination in your right hand (as you are most likely right handed yes?) than an actual strength defecit in your left arm. It comes from handedness leading you to perform the majority of your daily activities with your right hand, especially those requiring fine motor skills. By daily activities I mean, brushing teeth, scrambling eggs, using the tv remote control, writing (that's a big one), using a computer mouse, etc. Because you use your right hand so much more often than the left the neural pathways to the muscles of the right arm/hand are "wider" or smoother than the one's of your left. How this translates to the manifestation of strength is that when the time comes to pick up a Clubbell with either hand your right hand/arm has been more thoroughly conditioned to actively recruit the present muscle fibers to perform the work so you see the result as your right arm being "stronger" than your left arm.

Because this is mostly a neurological phenomenon, the best way to counter it (and thereby balance the strength of your arms) is to train yourself to do more of your daily tasks with your left arm. It's not as hard as it sounds, trust me, for the most part you'll only be dusting the cobwebs off of presently existing pathways. Take it slow and be patient with yourself. Pick two tasks that get performed often and that tie in to your survival like grooming practices and food preparation/consumption. Be gentle at first and really feel out the motion.

A fun side effect of this is that you'll be improving your right side performance of the skill while training the left side (sympathetic learning) which is why the neural pathways are already set up on your left side and just need dusting off. All your life you've been doing things right handed, not knowing that your left side was learning all those skills at the same time.

Ok, now to make up for the actualy muscular defficiency (which I say again is a much smaller part of the whole issue but one that needs to be addressed none the less) you're gonna cut down the work your doin' with the strong side. By this I mean, work your "weak" side first in every unilateral movement that you're working and then when you're doing that motion on your "strong" side, stop at the reps you put up with your weak side. If you try to do more with less as in forcing your weak side to catch up to your strong side, it will lead to overtraining and often further diminished strength. What you need to do is slow down to let your left side catch up. Call it compassionate training :wink:

So does this mean that you'll be ambidextrous in no time, well maybe but probably not. You've been conditioning your right hand more than your left for X amount of years (where X is your age) so it would likely take an equal effort for your left to be truly equal to your right. But, for the purposes of strength training (which is mostly gross motor function) you should be able to iron out any perceivable difference in a matter of months.

An interesting side note: In floor ball, I'm assuming that you only ever hold your stick right handed, is this correct? If so, you could greatly improve your shot skill by practicing with a left handed grip for the first three quarters of your practice time then switch back to right handed in the last quater of your practice time, not only will you be training the coordination of your left arm, you'll be fine tunning the coordination of your right so that when you get back to what you know best (right handed stick control) your shots will be flowing like cheese and butter 8)

Let me know how this works for you and if you need further clarification. Always glad to help,

[Scott Sonnon]

Tremendous response, Doug. There's nowhere else on the internet that people would receive such thorough answers (and for free!) Thank you for being so generous with your time to help CST members!

[nofun]

Thanks for the great respons, Doug :)

I know it will be hard but i'll try to use my left hand/arm more and i'm now using my left hand on the computer mouse :)

It will be very hard to use my left hand in floorball because about 30-40% of the time i only have one hand on the stick and I simply dont have the coordination/strength in my left arm to do this. The first thing i'm going to do is to do my "home drills" with a lefthanded grip.

ftp://ftp.innebandy.netpower.no/hegresport-netpower21.09.2003/1-3.mpg

regards,
Geir

[Doug Szolek]

Glad to help Gier :)

In reguards to using your left hand while playing... that wasn't quite what I had in mind. I was suggesting to do this only in practice as you're right handedness will always have your right more apt to score a goal than your left.

What you may want to do is put together a workout of the Clubbell exercises suggested above by Coach Sonnon and at the end of the session work shot practice for Floor Ball where you do the first 75% of the practice with your left and the last 25% with your right. Then post your results in the Personal Training Program Logs forum to let us know how your doing and see if the detailed training/practice combo doesn't bring out other issues of form and technique to be helped. BTW, by putting the Clubbell training directly before the skill practice of Floor Ball shots, you'll be sure to be going for pure coordination and not gross motor strength in your shot technique.

Let me know what you think and if you need any help getting the Clubbell program together.