How to Disguise Your Shot

By Lisa Brown

By the time you hit U12 (Petites), you will start to notice that you need ‘new weapons’ to score goals.

Athletes who score 3 goals per game at the U10 (Novice) level often struggle as they get older because their shot is too predictable.

Your shot is usually predictable because you have a big wind up or a big follow through. Check out these pics:

Wind up

Follow through

Disguise Your Shot

You can learn to disguise your shot. One option is to shoot off your ‘opposite foot’. If you shoot right handed, you usually release the ring with your weight on your left (front) foot:

Shooting off your opposite foot means releasing the ring when you are on your right (back) foot. (It’s the opposite for left-handed shots.) This picture shows former Team Canada Ringette star Laura Warner shooting off her back foot:

To shoot off your back foot, you must be able to raise the ring with power and accuracy without using your backswing or weight transfer. This requires strong wrists and a quick ‘wrist snap’.

The benefit of being able to shoot off your back foot is that your shot is unpredictable. Without a big wind-up, you can release the ring quickly, before the defence and goalie have time to anticipate it.

4 Comments

D'Arcy Bain on June 21, 2010 at 5:05 pm

Don’t forget the back hand. Player’s focus on the wrist shot often forget the backhand. If players are right handed and left eye dominant (RHshot-Leye) their forehand will be the best shot. But a player with RHshot-Reye will be better on the back hand. This is the same for LHshot-Reye (forehand) LHshot-Leye.
I also tried to see if a player found it easer to shoot moving foreward or backward. Set up 10-12rings in arow and had them gliding forward or backward shooting a wrist shot one after the other. It was surprising that this also made a difference for some.
I than designed strategies so that they could receive the ring in their best shooting position to have the most success to score.
As many were shooting forehands, backhands moving forward and backwards the shots were disguised