Last week at shinny I realized that when you are teaching yourself a new sport, natural consequences definitely motivate you to figure out the correct behaviour.
The learning process resulting from behaviour, reward, and punishment arises organically in an informal situation like shinny. If you can figure out what the correct behaviour is, you will get more passes, more shots on net. The whole game will be more fun, and you will be motivated to make more correct moves. If you are not stubborn enough to figure it out yourself then you won't get any passes and you might think quite negatively of your whole experience. This interactive learning works well when you are among the weakest players in the shinny group, and there are enough skilled players for a speedy game.
The learning process resulting from behaviour, reward, and punishment arises organically in an informal situation like shinny. If you can figure out what the correct behaviour is, you will get more passes, more shots on net. The whole game will be more fun, and you will be motivated to make more correct moves. If you are not stubborn enough to figure it out yourself then you won't get any passes and you might think quite negatively of your whole experience. This interactive learning works well when you are among the weakest players in the shinny group, and there are enough skilled players for a speedy game.
(Of course, if you have a coach, you are given advice, and if you implement it correctly, you should be rewarded with more success, so the same reward/behaviour cycle takes place. But the behaviour piece is much simpler when someone is telling you what to do.)
I've been playing with the same group on Wednesdays for three seasons now. There are lots of good players for me to watch, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of figuring out what to do by observing them. Some of players also like to give me pointers, if I ask them - though at times I'm not sure what question to even ask.
Lately I have been watching carefully when we are breaking out of our own zone because they never used to pass to me. Obviously I was doing something wrong. But now they have started passing to me, and not "mercy passes" either. What gives? I think I figured out the correct behaviour, and they are rewarding me. I enjoy it so much that I am motivated to do the correct behaviour again and again. Simple psychology!
So what is the correct behaviour when the defenceman has the puck behind the net, and is looking for someone to pass to? It turned out that the forwards who are moving at the right time, preferably toward open ice, and are in a position to accelerate once they have the pass, are the ones getting all the passes. I learned to keep moving early on but still wasn't getting too many passes, until eventually I was able to start getting the timing right. If you start moving too soon you'll be too far away, if you start too late, you're useless for moving the play up the ice. You also need to be in a different spot from your other forwards, not all bunched up. Once I got the hang of this I started getting passes and being able to do something with the puck once I had it! This turned out to be so satisfying that I am working even harder to keep doing the right thing on the breakout. I'm starting to get a feel for what each of the individual defencemen is looking for, and tailoring my response accordingly. The other players also see me successfully receiving passes and moving the puck up the ice, so they trust me, and are more likely to pass to me on subsequent occasions.
And so my game gradually improves, by the interaction of behaviour and reward.
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