Do you want to increase your slap shot power or just learn on how to take a slap shot that is accurate and not take someone’s head off when you take the shot.
Follow the five steps below on the key to slapshot power.
5 Steps on how to take a powerful slapshot
Step 1: It all starts with our body position. Have your knees slightly flexed and make sure your chest isn’t hunched over too far forward by keeping a fairly upright body position.
This is really going to help us move our arms through the backswing so it’s very important that we have some flex in the knees as the legs are going to help us generate some power into our slap shot.
The lower you grip your hockey stick down the shaft the stronger you’re going to be with that bottom hand.
Step 2: The backswing: When you take a backswing your body weight will start to move in a forward direction so what’s happening here is we’ve had the weight stacked up on the back leg from there we’re pushing off the back skate towards our intended target.
Your head and the body all move in the direction towards the target and that helps us move some of that momentum into our shot.
Weight transfer plays a huge role in maintaining speed and adding speed to the puck in our slap shot.
Step 3: The swing: We start with a back swing, you take the stick up to an upright position and use that bottom hand to help generate some more power with the stick flex so we want to avoid twisting, pick that stick up just to about a parallel position.
To become more efficient in the slap shot it all depends on how much time you have to get off that slap shot.
If you’ve got all the time in the world you can wind up to a parallel position, if you don’t have time you want to be efficient, shorten that swing up just a little bit and again we’ll sacrifice a little bit of power onto that shot but we will ensure that we get that shot off and towards the net which will give a scoring opportunity.
Step 4: The recoil effect: Your stick is in an upright position and from there we’re going to try to get very very steep as we drop that blade down towards the ice and the steeper we are the more flex we can see out the hockey stick which brings us to what we call the recoil effect.
As the stick drops down again maintaining a straight arm with that bottom hand when the elbows bend on the way down we’re shortening the length of that arc and when we shorten the arc we lose out on power so we keep that arm extended all the way through the shot and then from here we’re in a position to apply pressure in a downward direction with the bottom hand.
The stick is going to act like a whip it’s a bow and arrow effect the stick is going to go from a deformed shape back to its straight and natural position.
We have now been able to use the stick to help us add a little bit more speed and power.
Step 5: Puck position: The last thing that we’ll talk about here is our puck position.
The puck position is absolutely vital to getting off a good hard shot. Too many young players have that puck far out in front of their body and as a result they’re reaching at it when you reach at it we don’t have very good contact.
We can’t take advantage of the recoil effect of the stick mentioned above and as a result we just end up sort of flipping the puck towards the net instead of really shooting it with power and speed.
The puck position is right in the center of the stance absolutely important to have that puck in the middle of the stance from there we will ensure that we have good contact.
Overview on how to take a slap shot
In closing, we want to start with body position, knees flexed hands shoulder-width apart, we’re going to transfer that weight stacking the weight up on the back skate and then transferring through at the same time we’re taking our back swing nice and steep.
You will want to get that stick close to parallel and then we drop the stick right down towards the ice keeping that bottom hand nice and straight.
In the center of the stance, push down with that bottom hand as we come through into the shot activating the stick and the recoil effect and then simply follow through towards your target.
If you follow these slap shot tips you will see an increase in shot power and speed.