Good protection is very important for the safety of hockey. Shin guards and mouth protection are obligatory to wear these days. Next to these two, a hockey glove is used more and more by players as well. Here some information about these categories.
Shin Guards
Because of the fact that the ball we play hockey with is very hard and small, shin guards are obligatory in the game and very necessary in our opinion. The players are allowed to play the ball until the height of the knee. It can happen that the ball hits to your shin and without shin guards this can be very painful. This is why shin guards in the hockey sport should reach from above your shoe to just under your knee for good protection. Next to your shin, shin guards also protect a part of your ankle. Shin guards are made from soft foam and/or harder material like plastic.
Mouth Guard
To wear a mouth guard is important for the safety of the sport. It works as a shock absorber for your teeth. Therefore it reduces the chance that your teeth break or your jaw breaks when you get a ball in your face for example.
We have two sizes of mouth guards, senior and junior. It is important that your mouth guard fits well and is well connected for the best protection possible. When a junior mouth guard is too small but a senior mouth guard is too big, you can cut the back part of a senior mouth guard off to make it a bit smaller.
If you buy a mouth guard in the shop, you should mold it to your teeth. You do this by putting the mouth guard in boiling water and let it soften. Then, you put it in your mouth and bite in the mouth guard so it fits your teeth. Make sure you push the mouth guard well into your teeth so the mouth guard fits tight for good protection.
If you still have questions, feel free to ask us anytime.
Gloves
A hockey glove is used by most hockey players. In field hockey it protects you against abrasions of the fake grass and/or hits of the ball and stick. Indoor gloves are used even more than outdoor, because with indoor we play very low to the ground with our hand on the ground. You wear the glove on the left side because this is the hand on the top of your stick and the hand that will touch the ground first.
There are different kind of gloves. To divide them in two categories, we take thefull hand gloveand thehalf finger glove. The full hand glove covers your full hand and fingers. This glove is mostly used in indoor hockey, but sometimes outdoor as well. In our opinion a good glove in indoor hockey is necessary. This is because the ball is only played over the ground and we play low to the ground with a horizontal stick. The half finger glove covers your knuckles and half of your fingers. Because of this the ball feeling is optimized and your hands are protected as well. The half finger gloves are more used in field hockey.
Next to the left hand glove, there are also right hand gloves. The right hand gloves are mostly full hand gloves and used with penalty corners. This is for extra protection in the pc. After the pc the right hand glove is taken off again.
