The Beer Leaguer
The podcast for the discerning beer league hockey player. We cover all things adult recreational hockey from folks that never played professionally, but just want to have fun and get a little better every game.
The Beer Leaguer
Do I Really Look Like That?!? Watching Yourself Play Hockey
This episode is all about recording yourself doing that hockey and watching it back. What can you get from doing that? What should you look for? Is there any reason to not watch yourself?
All these questions answered, along with multiple ways to record and watch yourself, from super easy to my crazy set-up.
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Music by RomaRecord1973 via Pixabay
So this episode is all about watching yourself on video. Why you should do it, Why you shouldn't do it, how you can do it, what can you get from it? All that good stuff. Future me here, and I wanted to mention that I really, in this episode, focus on recording yourself, playing during a game. But most of this stuff also applies to recording yourself. when you're in your basement, you know, shooting or practicing passing or in your backyard or at a stick in park or something like that. So even though I mostly focus on stuff that is going on during a game, a lot of these things are also relevant for really any time you're on the ice, off the ice or doing hockey activities, you can record yourself all the different ways I feel talk about and you get some of the same benefits. Obviously not being able to see yourself in a team context if you are just by yourself in your backyard shooting pucks, but you can still analyze how you shoot. It's actually a super handy and useful way to do it. I have videos of me trying to analyze my shot and stuff and it's actually how the pros do it. I mean, the pros are doing it, so obviously it is a good way to check that stuff out. Like I say in this episode, so again, just because I'm focusing on recording yourself, playing games does not mean that is the only time you should record yourself, recording yourself and watching playback of, you know, any time you're doing hockey activities can have some benefits. So gonna to start with. The positives. Why should you watch yourself on video? There's a lot of good stuff you can get out of it. Number one, you can evaluate your skating, your shooting, your positioning, all that stuff. It's kind of like having a third person, you know, out there watching you, but it's you. So even if you look ridiculous and you look like an idiot, it's just you watching yourself. But also to usually you're your own worst critic on things, which in this case could be a good thing because you will probably pick apart things like your shot and your skating stride and stuff like that. More so than somebody else will. You can also take a look at what you didn't see while you were on the ice. Hockey is a fast game even at the big league level. It's fast, but it seems way faster than when you're playing it, than when you're watching it. So you can see, you know, did you miss somebody that was open? Did you have time with the puck? You know, should you have skated it more? Should you have gotten rid of the puck faster? Should you have rimmed it around the boards versus trying to carry it out? All that stuff is you can see yourself now and, you know, evaluate with what you were thinking if what you thought you saw was what was actually there. You know, that's a super useful and handy thing to have there because it can also teach you to kind of where to look. You know, maybe you're, you know, like me, I usually play defense, take the puck around the back of the net, look up. And generally when I'm playing, I look up and I real quickly take a snapshot of where people are. And I think, okay, I got to, you know, throw a puck out to, you know, see the left wing. And I think that's the only thing that was open. This person was open. I might go back and watch the video and go, you know, I really could have skated it out more. You know, I could have skated another ten feet up and maybe had a different play or or if I had reversed it back around the other way, I had another another play to do it. Or maybe I just completely missed somebody that was wide open. You know, it it kind of reinforces the head on a swivel thing that I know a lot of people know. You should always be looking around. You should always be aware of where everybody kind of is. But let's let's be real as leaders, especially lower level people, we're not doing that real well. So it's very helpful for that to reinforce some of these habits that, you know, we probably don't have. It's also a great way to watch your teammates and see the kind of things that they do, see what they're thinking, see what their tendencies are, and kind of get used to that, you know, So you kind of do know what you should look for with the people that you're on the ice with. You know, if somebody tends to always, you know, circle back in the middle before they hit the boards or vice versa, or just go straight up the board or something, you know, you can kind of see those tendencies and learn them. And it's easier to do this when you're not playing just because it's usually a different angle, a little bit better to see. And it's not in the rush in the hurry of the game. So you can stop rewind stuff and go back and look. But by the same thing, you can look at your opponents and see what their tendencies are. If you're playing in a league and you play the same people, you know, multiple times a year, like I think most of us do, you can learn what they do. I mean, maybe they all do this. You know, somebody does the same move over and over again, you know, with the puck or maybe they always break out the same way or something like that. You notice those things. If you watch one of your games, watch multiple of your games, you'll tend to see these patterns. And once you kind of start seeing these patterns on video when you go play, hopefully you'll recognize these patterns and figure out a way to stop them or tell your teammates how to stop them. You know, it's super helpful. This is what pros do. I mean, you know, obviously it does something if this is what the pros do and they spend a lot of time in video. And honestly, the thing I think we all watch video for is highlights, you know, watch highlights of yourself, highlights of your team. You know, if you had a great shot going, made a great save. If you're like me and you get really excited about having a really good nonna racing dump out of the zone, you can watch highlights of all that stuff. And who doesn't like watching highlights, that stuff. That's that's part of the biggest reason people go and watch video of themselves is for the highlights. Why would you not want to watch yourself on video? Probably the biggest thing is you're going to be really, really disappointed when you watch yourself. That's always the biggest shock when I hear about people watching a recorded game for the first time of themselves is just how slow they look. Just how poor their form for everything looks that that is. If you never watch yourself on video the first couple times you see it, you're going to be shocked. I know I also scorekeeper games in my league and you know, so I'm sitting there watching the games and I always think, wow, it looks so much slower sitting there, not playing against people that I play against. You know, I go, wow, they look so slow. And then I think of, well, I just played against them two weeks ago and they were blowing past me. It seemed like they were flying out there. It's that but tenfold and with literally everyone. When you watch videos of your game videos of yourself. So just be prepared for it. You're going to be shocked by, you know, how slow you are, Hustle everybody is, how bad your shots look, how bad your skating form looks. You're going to be shocked at the stuff that you didn't see when you were out there. You know, you you might not have seen somebody. You know, you have the puck and you didn't see somebody wide open or you didn't see a shot that you should have taken or you didn't see open space, you should have gone to you didn't see the pass that you should have covered on defense When you watch video, this stuff is so just in your face. So just be ready for it. I mean, I think it's a good thing for that. But be prepared. If you've never watched video of yourself, just be prepared for that shock. So I do videotape all of the games with my main team, and I've been doing this for years and I have a lot of takeaways of things that I have found. Hopefully they have made me a somewhat better player. It made me that much better, but it has helped, I think, a little bit. So a couple of things that I have noticed from watching myself that one of the big things I know for me is when I kind of watch and see, like if I if I made a mistake during a game, like a turnover or something like that. And it's not just like a a physical limitation, I'll say, versus a mental screw up, like a physical limitation is something of I just can't catch somebody cause they're too fast, you know, something like that. Like if it's not something like that and it's, hey, you know, I thought there was a play to be made somewhere. And I tried. It didn't work. One of the things I've learned from watching is a lot of times I'm seeing the right plays to make. I'm just way too slow and literally every aspect of the game to make that proper play. So that's an encouraging thing and discouraging thing for me, but it's something for me to know that, hey, I'm generally seeing the right thing to do, just not generally able to do a lot of it. So that's kind of made me rethink some of the stuff that I see out there on the ice and some of the stuff I try and do that, Hey, you know, getting a more realistic expectation of how quickly I can do something, you know, everything, how quickly I can get a pass off ugly. They can skate, get to a pocket cetera. That that's been a big thing for me also, no matter what I think and I know I'm terrible at this because I just have terrible skating form because I have never actually learned proper way to skate. And I'm coming from years of roller hockey before playing ice hockey, which is not really the same kind of thing, Is ice skating for as awful? I'm very stand up ish. I don't bend nearly enough. My my knees are not nearly bent enough and I can tell the games that I'm a lot more conscientious of getting a better bend in my knees and everything. Because after those games, man, my knees will be sore and my hips will be sore. But that's what you're supposed to do. That's how and I'll watch those games back like, wow, I looked, you know, not good, but significantly better. And it's I can feel it. So it's a thing that I've tried to make sure that I'm feeling it in games. And I notice if I'm not feeling that that, I know how I look, I look awful. I look like I'm just kind of waddling out there almost nothing. I don't know how this helps necessarily, but it is something that I've definitely picked up on is pretty much everyone on my team and most people I play against, I can recognize them by their skating stride or how they hold their sticks, all kinds of stuff like that. I had no idea how distinctive all these things are with people and that that's something that I've definitely, definitely picked up on. I think it does help a little bit, you know, from getting some out of the corner of my eye. I probably a better chance of recognizing who it is which is helpful. But that's a big thing I've noticed with watching, watching all the video I have of games is you recognize all these little tendencies that people have and little intricacies of, like I said, their skating stride or how they hold their stick or how they shoot. Or one of the big things that I try and focus on is noticing when people are getting ready to shoot, especially for my opponents. So that way, you know, I kind of know if they're going to shoot or not, if they're still planning on carrying the puck or trying to do something with it or if they're shooting it. That's something I try to focus on. And video has helped that a ton another thing that watching video has I don't know if taught me, but really reinforced it is the whole concept of the puck has eyes. If you know that concept of you know you stand there with the puck on your stick and you're looking at whatever, you know, so you're looking at the net. What you see is not really the same thing as what the puck sitting on your blade sees, especially if you have your puck. You know, the puck in the blade are further away from your body, you know, if you're like, so you're getting ready for a shot that looks way different than what you see and watching on video really, really reinforces that. You know, there's a lot of times I know for me when I shoot, I'll see somebody they're not in front of me. And I think immediately my head goes, Take the shot. You're clear, when in fact they're right in front of the puck. So I just kind of hitting them in, you know, in the shins or whatever, that that's a big thing that it really reinforces, you know, for me and I wouldn't say I've gotten a ton better with it, but it really forces reinforces it that it's a thing and it's definitely something to try and learn and get better at the puck. Having eyes. Also, it helps me learn what my teammates are doing at big league, especially at lower levels. Everybody kind of thinks they know what they're doing, you know that they're doing the right thing. And you know what somebody else thinks is doing the right thing versus what I think doing the right thing is, are generally not the same. They might be close, but they're probably not the same. But when you watch that, you know, video of stuff, you do get to see what your teammates has been doing and what they expect, you know, So when they say, yeah, you know, I came back to get the puck here and you're thinking, No, no, I want you to you know, I'm expecting you to come back to the face off. That's to get a park, let's say, like, yeah, I came down far enough. And in your head, you know, you didn't come anywhere close, but. And you watch everything go, you know what? They came down and they circled through the face off circle, and I didn't realize they came down that far, you know, because I'm looking for them in one spot and they're not there. So that that is a really good thing to actually also learn from watching video, seeing what your teammates think are the right things to do, and trying to put that together with what you think is the right thing to do. So you know what they're going to do because guess what? Probably everybody that's playing barely unless you're playing at a very high level, not doing the right thing anyways, almost nobody's doing the right thing. You know, you all think you're doing the right thing, but it's not. And if you at least know not necessarily what the right thing is, but what other people are going to do, it's probably as good as you're going to get versus, you know, having a coach come out there and instruct everybody how to properly break out a park and set up a, you know, proper offense where everybody's supposed to be on defense and, you know, doing all that stuff and reiterating it and doing it, you know, over and over and over again. Sure. To of doing that. Watching video games is a good way to learn kind of what people do. So it helps. All right. So if I've convinced you that watching yourself play while, shocking you with how bad you're going to look, can actually be helpful. How do you go about doing it? Well, there's probably three main ways that I know of to do it. One private, easiest way to do it is if you have someone that comes to games, have them record you, you know, they can do it their phone or they can be like one of those iPad parents that stands there recording on an iPad or tablet, whatever, or camera. You know, they just record it ever. You see it. A lot of kids games. You'll see parents with like tablets especially it seems like tablets on tripods set up and just kind of recording everything. And, you know, you can either pan it back and forth or they can follow you or just record in your on the ice record the whole game, whatever. You know, that's I think, the easiest way to do it, you know, and have that recording. The probably next easiest thing as far as what you have to do is something like Live Barn. If you don't know live Barn and there are other live barn alternatives, other rinks. Live barn is just the one that's used around me and I know is a I think the largest kind of one that's used multiple rinks. And U.S. and Canada. And what they have is they have a camera system set up at the rink and you subscribe, do you like a monthly or yearly subscription and you can either live stream games, which is nice. If you can't make your games, you want to see what's going on. You can either live stream games or you can go back and watch the games. They record the game. So you either watch old games, you can also do clips depending on your subscription level. You can do just short like 32nd clips or full games and record them and whatnot, but it doesn't require you to do anything. So pay for that subscription as long as your rink has it. Also, if you are a new live barn and you know, make sure your rinks have it, most rinks have signage up somewhere that they have live bar, they're advertising. They want people to pay for it. And usually most rinks have some kind of a discount code for signing up. So if you're going to find one, those discount codes to sign up for it, that's a super easy way requires nothing else besides paying that subscription. And then you can go watch your games. You know, and then you can make clips and stuff or just sit and watch them, you know, on your computer, watch on your phone, whatever. Really, the way to do it. The third way to do it is have a camera that you yourself use. So kind of the the two main ways I see this is, you know, getting yourself an action camera. So I'm going to say GoPro because that's what I have. And they're like the big name in action cameras. But it by no means are GoPros the only action cameras out there you can use. There are now a number of other GoPro clones basically out there that all have their different, you know, positive negatives for each one of them. You know, so so do your own research on what what works best for you. But I'm just to say GoPros because it's like the generic term for it for cameras. So you can take those and you could be the guy that puts it on your helmet during a game and record what's going on. It's handy because you get, you know, a nice recording if you angle it right to, you know, exactly what you see for a nice first person perspective of stuff. Plus you can hear everything you hear. So it really is like you being on the ice and kind of seeing everything. But the downside to doing that on your helmet is, one, you have GoPro on your helmet, which basically is just a giant target for everybody to try and hit. I think that's number one. So that's not great. Also, you know, I mean, it's on your helmet. It's, you know, something there, there all these cameras are pretty light. But it's still ads on your helmet. But also it only gives your point of view. So you're going to lose out on some of the benefits that you get from watching recorded games. So you're not going be able to see the stuff that you didn't see because it's just what's in front of you. You're not going to see what's there. So off to the sides or especially not what's behind you. And depending on how you angle the camera, you literally might just see the ice in front of you and not down the ice. That can be tricky to kind of get that right. So I do not recommend putting the GoPro on your helmet like that. I just I don't recommend that for stuff. I think for goalies maybe. Definitely not during a game for goalies, maybe you're going to like a stick in park or shootaround or something like that. With goalies it might be good, but yeah, I don't like the camera on the helmet set up really at all, except for like a fun, neat shot, not for any kind of trying to evaluate anything that's going on. Another option is put the camera on the board somewhere and you can put them on from the side of the glass and playing at one end of the ice. Or if you have try and get it as wide as you can to get as much ice as possible, or if you have like a 360 camera, you know, something like that, and that'll catch everything, you know, Or if you have a36 camera, they could set 280 degrees. So cats is just one end of the rink to the other. That would work as well. And you just put that on the side of the rink. You can also put the camera on one of the end boards. That's something that I used to do is put up like behind the goalie, kind of as far up as I could reach and point it down. And that's actually a really great angle to see what's going on in the end of the rinks. I think that's one of the better angles you can get with like a GoPro kind of camera to see what's going on. But the downside of that is it really only works for one end of the rink. It does really good from kind of the blue line and usually about that, but definitely not for the other side of the rink. So unless you're going to move the camera between periods, which means, you know, having to go outside the rink, don't put your cameras inside the rink. Don't be those people. You're just asking again, for people to hit them or have something happen. Yeah, don't don't do that. Also, don't put your cameras in the back of the nets. I've seen people put cameras like behind the goalie again. Cool. Like single shot thing. If you want to do that in warm ups or something like that or you know, if you're at a stick and puck and you want anyone to get some neat shots but not during a game, now don't do that during a game. Also, your goal is during a game or goal is going to block it most of the time. So you're just going to you know, if you're doing a game, you're going to have a great hour long video. Your goal is ask mostly, Yeah, that's what you're going for. Great, but not going to be all the time that's going on with most of the game. So what I used to do is I started with one camera head on the end and I would do it on the side that my team was playing offense on twice and, you know, so I'd get two periods of good kind of offense, look out one period of defense. Eventually I switched to two cameras, one on each end was really good. I really liked that setup, but that was a lot of, you know, getting the cameras going and having to go, you know, put them on the glass, start them up. And, you know, I wasn't going to leave them out there. Like when I got, you know, I was going be like, hey, get to the rink. Let me go put the cameras up, go change, come back out, turn them on. And I wasn't about to do that. So it would be, you know, right before the game. But, you know, trying it out there early before warm ups and get the cameras on there and turned on. But then after the game, you got to go pick them up and some of the rinks, you know, you can't get out both ends or they don't have skate safe surfaces to get to. So not everyone could you do that, too. So that's tough to think about with that. That's, you know, but that's and then ice requires two cameras, you know, finally, I mentioned this in one of the sports episodes was something called the Ewok. You h.w. K that was a really cool helmet camera that unlike like the gopro, the other action cameras, it was made to be mounted to the front of the helmet. So it was small and compact and kind of look built in and rc a lot of people didn't know I had one of them and a lot of people didn't know that I had it on my helmet until I pointed it out. You know, you wouldn't really notice it. It was a black that kind of matched the black helmets. And once once somebody noticed the yeah, you could see it, but people generally didn't notice it was there, which was nice. And that gave kind of that POV shot for, you know, for games and actually use that in combination with the GoPros on either end of the ice and it gave a cool thing, It was a cool different perspective of stuff. But again, not always the most useful perspective for things because it's only your point of view. So it was great to show like what you were doing or what you saw, but not the stuff you missed or anybody else was was really doing. And on a side note too, that there is a new, you, a hawk supposedly coming out hopefully sometime soon. And that would be great because there were some downsides with the hawk. But yeah, like I said, it mentioned a little bit more in one of the shorts videos where I go a little bit more in depth on that, but I'll put a link for that video and for you Hawk and stuff like that in the shownotes. So check it out. So how do I record games? So my current setup has evolved. Like I said, I started with a single GoPro on one end of the rink, eventually got a second GoPro that I put one on each side behind the goalies and what I would do with that was having two feeds than is I would take them home. I would go into my video editing software and I would actually manually edit every game to switch back and forth between the two cameras. And it took forever. It was a giant pain in the butt. So I had figured out there had to be a better way to do that because yeah, would just manually switching for, you know, which camera was kind of the better one because when you were like center ice area, neither camera really picked it up. Good. So it's kind of like one, you know, somewhere in there switch it. But then if there's a turn over there, you guess what? You back and it took forever. I was generally spending for a our games are 315 minute periods. They usually take a little over an hour so say for around an hour of footage that I was had, I was probably spending four or 5 hours editing a single game. I didn't really think that was worth it. So I switched to the setup that I have now. It's a three camera set up, but it's all in kind of one form factor. I do have a another YouTube video that I kind of go over this whole setup so you can get a visual of it again, I'll link that and shownotes if you want to see what it is. I have a suction cup mount for GoPros, then a little bar that sits on top of it that there's two cameras on top, one on the bottom, the bottom camera just films center ice. These are all also older GoPros because they don't need all the fancy new stuff. The GoPros do. These are four versions behind their GoPro eight. I think they're up to 12 now, so you don't need to get the new cameras for doing this kind of stuff. That's a nice way to save some money to is, you know, go find older action cameras. You know, I don't need all the image stabilization and low lighting stuff and things like that. I don't need that. I mean, the cameras don't really move a whole lot unless, you know, the boards get shook really bad and even then doesn't really do much to them. And, you know, lighting is the lighting at the rinks. You know, you don't I'm not doing anything outside at night with them. So that is another good way to save money. And the camera that I have pointed at center ice, it just sits there and it kind of does. The center ice area that's an even older I think it's a GoPro five. It works great. It's gets a great job of that. And then the other two are just like on top of those little bar mounted and they point to either end of the ice because it is mounted on like the side. I usually mount it between the benches, you know, like where the scorekeepers are or something like that. It doesn't do a great job of getting, you know, the very corner is of both ends, kind of misses the one corner on each side a little bit. But hey, it gets mostly everything and all I do is I take all three feeds in my editing software and I just put them all up at once. I just kind of the videos for my team just show all three feeds all the time. You know, I don't switch back and forth. It makes it really easy to put the editing together and to get those done. It doesn't look as slick as what it kind of used to, but it makes it go a lot quicker and it lets you still see pretty much everything that's going on. It's you, you know, all the stuff I said, you can watch yourself skating really well, watch self shooting, watch teammates shooting and skating. Kind of see where people are setting up, where they're going, see what your opponents are doing. You know, watch goalies, see what they do is, you know, they don't do let you see all that stuff. So I don't really well, it's far from perfect. You know, a nicer thing would be having something up higher in the air, you know, to get a better perspective of stuff, you. Yeah, because that's what they do, you know, for TV broadcasts and stuff. But this is something that I can just have in my bag take take out on the ice with me, you know, after you know, when warm ups are going on, I go, just suction up this thing onto the glass, turn on all the cameras, do a quick check, make sure they're recording, and they're getting generally a pretty good image. And that's it. And then I'm done. I just go, you know, make sure I take it down. That's to me. Any things for a setup like that, not working great at showing everything and not being perfect for getting every inch of ice. It more than makes up for it with the ease of use and setup. So that that's what I do. I would recommend, you know, if you have any interest in, you know, watching yourself play, watching the stuff. Yeah, you could try try out live and like I said, they have yearly and monthly subscriptions get a month to it. See what you think you know. See, see if you do like watching yourself, Steve, pick up anything right away. See if it's useful for you. I think that's, you know, kind of the lowest barrier to entry. Unless you can have somebody come to your games and record things. That's really the thing to do already have, you know, some kind of action camera set up or something. Take it out, you know, put it, put it up, mount it up somewhere. You know, you can if you if you don't have a suction cup mount, you know, something like that. If a little tripod put it with the scorekeeper, why not? I'm sure they're not going to care, you know, have it set up right there, you know, have it kind of angled one way or the other. I mean, hey, if no scorekeeper, maybe they can even move it a little bit for you during the game. You know, just something like that. Give it a try. I can't stress enough how useful I think watching yourself is on video. Also, I can't stress enough about how shocking it is to watch yourself because you don't look nearly as good as you think you do. I mean, maybe you don't look nearly as bad as you think you might, but it's there's a lot of different ways to do it. You don't have to spend a bunch of money for it. I mean, you know, you can also just take your phone, set it to record video. Like I said, go free. Even if you have a little tripod, just take your take your phone out, you know, And if you do want to record from the bench, put it behind, you know, like I said, where the scorekeepers are or in the penalty box or something like that, and just have it leaning up there and record your game. You know, that's that's a really easy thing to do. That's a super easy way to do it, just to get some kind of documentation of what you're doing and watching yourself. I think it's totally worth it. It's not hard to do. You don't have to, you know, go by the brand, you know, brand new GoPros and go get expensive editing software and do all kinds of, you know, great color correction on the videos. Everything looks exactly right. And you don't have to do any of that. You know, a quick little video on your phone that that's a great place to start. You know, it's better than nothing. So, yeah, I would say do that. Start with something. Give it a try. You know, if you know if somebody's coming out to your games and you try to do it yourself, that that is probably the lowest barrier venture way you can do it. Use your phone, set it up somewhere, hit record on it, you know, that's it. So make sure your phone starts up, you know, so you actually get this amount of recording on it. That's it. Not too hard to do. Totally worth it. See how much you like it. See how much it helps if you keep doing it. Maybe that's the time to invest in something, you know? Hey, maybe your teammates love the idea and they they want to see more of the videos and you guys can get together and buy some sort of a camera to set up, you know, for games, you know, buy one of those, like I said, like 360 cams because those all get everything. And it's one camera, you know, something like that, and set it up and set it up for the game and then you're done. That pretty easy to do. So there you go. Let me know. Do you want your cell phone video? Have you seen yourself on video before? If you have, what have you seen? Good, bad out there from watching yourself? If you haven't, why not? You know, I just told you a bunch of easy ways to go do it. So get out, Do it and let me know how it turns out. And everybody, as always, they appreciate any kind of likes subscribers or reviews of the podcast. Those will help it get out to people so more people can hear this fun stuff and as always, catch in the next one.
