Search Results: competitive guys

Long story short, I started learning to play hockey over the past couple of years, but really, I have only a year’s experience figuring the down time with the pandemic. Picked a terrible time to start, lmao.

I received an email today from a local adult hockey league advertising the upcoming winter/spring season. I didn’t sign up for a league in the fall, because I didn’t feel ready. I could play, but I don’t want to be bad, because I’m hard on myself for athletic failure, and more importantly, I don’t want to be a liability for the sake of my team. I’m getting better, but I’m still waiting to get fluid and automatic instead of clumsy and hesitant. I’ve changed my mentality to “take over the game” when I think I’m the best player on my team who’s on the ice, and I feel like I thrive in that scenario. But when I’m the third-or-lower of the five, I feel like I suck, haha. I’ve been playing at night recently with some new guys, and the first week, most of them were 55+, and I scored like six goals, one guy was calling me “Stevie Yzerman” after the former NHL great. The next week better players came and I had a TOUGH night lmao.

So this league…what makes me consider it is it’s supposedly for beginners, and there’s an evaluation game and then a draft party afterwards, and you get picked for a team. I just don’t know how tight they’d be about skill level, like would ringers be out there posing like novices? The other thing…I already know I can’t make the second game of the season because it’s my dad’s 90th birthday. I guess it’s just one game but I’d hate to miss it after committing to a team. The season ends April 6th, so I could wait til then…. but I’m so anxious to get started with competitive play. I’m all heart and grit out there, haha, but I’m still getting some of the finesse skills down. But against similarly skilled players, maybe it’s a good opportunity to play and get better, instead of just trying to keep up with way more experienced guys.

What do you think?

I have gotten back into kickboxing since my club reopened after being closed due to the pandemic. I have stuck to just training but would like to compete soon. In competitions, your opponent's gender is random, so I could fight a guy or a girl. I have no way of knowing until the day of the competition. I don't wear a cup when I'm training because it is uncomfortable and restricts my range of motion, especially with kicks. However, I have seen a few competitive fights recently where it's a guy fighting a girl and I have occasionally seen the girls try to kick the guy's groin in the middle of their fight. So now I'm worried because if I end up facing a girl and I'm not wearing a cup, she could land a hit to my balls and win the fight. But if I do wear the cup, I won't be able to be as nimble or be able to kick as far, so she could still beat me. I haven't fought girls before so I don't know how they think during fights. So here are my questions for you to get insight:
1) Girls, if you were fighting a guy and you knew he wasn't wearing a cup, would you go for his balls to win?
2) If you did, how hard would you do it? Full strength or just enough to weaken him?
3) If you managed to land a hit to his groin but he didn't go down, would you move on to something else or just kick him again until he goes down?
4) If he was wearing a cup, would that change how you fought him?
Every answer helps.