Transitioning to new pads

Originally Posted by GoalieInGlasses

5-hole still needs some work, either the upper part of my pads keep colliding and hindering my butterfly drop, or my knees aren't tight enough and there's a gap. I need to spend some extra time practicing dropping down in my butterfly until I get the feel of it just right.

You might also try getting in the habit of "tucking" one pad behind the other like this:



By doing this your pads won't bump into each other awkwardly and will go down into the butterfly quite nicely.

So week 2 of my new pads, and happy to say that my pads are 90% the way I want them now. Tweaked the strapping a little more, and now they feel just the way I want them to. The flexability of the pad is mostly where I want it, the benching method helped a lot. I still need to bend the upper outside corners a bit to eliminate the small V when doing a butterfly, but it's not significant and overlapping fixes that too.

Also, I finally broke my losing streak. Now that I'm not so focused on how my pad feels and how to move them, I'm back to only thinking about that next shot coming my way. My 5-hole was way better on Sunday's pickup games too. I only got beat there a couple of times out of a lot of shots down there. I can shift my attention to working on my blocker side now...been getting beat a lot there lately and I think it's because I'm drifting too far left (over compensating on my weak glove side) and not getting my angles right.