Field hockey helps developing essential social skills like team work, communication and individual persistence, and proves an enjoyable and rewarding physical activity that builds up speed, hand-eye coordination and cardiovascular performance. Playing field hockey is a great way to improve your fitness.

Many people grow up with field hockey at college and it can offer a lifetime of both social and sporting opportunities for players, administrators and officials alike. However, clubs welcome new and inexperienced players who are willing to give the sport a go.

The aim of field hockey

The aim of field hockey is quite simple — to use sticks to dribble, pass, and shoot the ball along the pitch in an effort to score goals. The rules are very similar to those of soccer except that players use sticks instead of their feet to move the ball. A goal counts as one point and is scored when the ball, having been hit by a player inside the ‘striking circle’ (also known as the ‘D’), completely crosses the opposing team’s goal line.

The 11 players on a team include a goalkeeper, defenders, midfielders and attackers. The only player that is allowed to kick the ball with their feet or touch it with their hands is the goalkeeper. Field hockey is played on a 100yd x 60yd (91.4m x 55m) pitch and each player has a stick which is about 3.3ft (1m) long, has a rounded head, and weighs about 0.75 to 1.75lb (340 to 790g).

The health benefits of playing field hockey

Field hockey is a fast-paced sport that improves its players’ pace, agility and lower body strength. Here are some of field field hockey’s prime health and fitness benefits:

• Field hockey helps in reducing body fat. Playing field hockey is a fun and effective way of burning off calories with its fast pace requiring short bursts of sprint energy, along with long-term stamina over the course of a match. The average field hockey player is said to burn approximately 0.061 calories per minute, per pound of body weight (0.136 calories per minute, per kilo of body weight).

• Field hockey helps develop the body’s cardiovascular system. The sustained energy and holistic muscular strength required in a field hockey match help develop the body’s cardiovascular system. This system, made up of the heart and lungs, feeds muscles with oxygen. A stronger cardiovascular system will therefore improve both your breathing and general sports performance by pumping more oxygen around the body.

• Field hockey improves lower and upper body muscle strength. Playing field hockey is a great way of developing your body’s leg muscles, including the hamstring, hips and calves. It also improves the endurance of shoulder muscles, triceps and forearms.

• Field hockey builds coordination skills. Field hockey relies on good coordination between the eyes and the hands and improves the reflexes and reaction times of its players. Practicing the game develops the body’s coordination abilities through quicker hand-eye reflexes and reactive, nimble feet.  

Facts about field hockey

A field hockey match usually lasts 70 minutes, made up of two halves of 35 minutes each. In Olympic competition, any match that ends in a draw goes to extra time (15 minutes in total if required). In extra time the first side to score a ‘golden goal’ wins, but if there is no goal within the extra 15 minutes, a penalty shoot-out results.

Men’s field hockey entered the Olympic Games in 1908 and has been an event continuously since 1920. Women have competed at Olympic level since 1980. The name field hockey is thought to have originated from the French word ‘hocquet’, meaning a crooked stick or shepherd’s crook.