Power Soccer Practice

Most of you will probably know that I like to have a routine. I don't mind changing that routine, but I like to at least have some idea of where I am going. This being said I have found it very valuable to see where I want to be going in power soccer as well. By watching the US national team, I have seen where I want to elevate my game and how I can keep improving. After playing again today with some great competition, I've thought about how really I need to rearrange my thought process in order to succeed.

The first thing I realized was that if the ball goes towards your back left tire, you should not turn to the left as you normally would to attack face on. The reason for this is that, assuming that you were moving towards your goal while attacking, when you turn to the left, the ball will hit your chair or guard and bounce back towards the other goal. Obviously, you don't want to allow the other team a fast-break like Nate took on our team today (although it is awesome to see tenacious defense from other members of my team since I'm not really the most aggressive player on the court, and I need someone to compensate for my shortcomings). If you pivot around to the right, you'll be able to use the right side of the guard to send the pass back towards whatever teammate sent you the pass and keep the ball moving forward. Intuitively, I should want to turn left, but I'm attempting to rearrange my thoughts so that I will be able to get my guard on the ball and push it up the court quickly.

Another important thing I learned is that the only way to hit a spin shot is to get a backing start before swinging around and hammering the ball. When I first started playing, I knew that it would be easier to just turn into the ball. However, that did not give me enough momentum to hit the ball with any force. By gathering the velocity of backing up and then converting it into the turn, I was able to hit the ball much harder. Also, it is very important to make sure that turn acceleration is maxed out. My mechanic Eric maxed out my chair on to help me ram the ball and put it in the goal.

So, I'll try to keep you updated on some stuff I'm learning while playing power soccer, and I hope that I will always be able to show the game to a bigger audience.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiemann/ / CC BY 2.0