Field hockey and Ice hockey both require a very strong hand eye coordination and balance. There are a lot of basic differences that we can focus on, but we will also talk about the difference in skills that come with this both.

One of the most basic differences seen obviously is the place where they play. Field hockey is played on a well cut grassland or artificial grass field. Field is as long as 100 yards long and 60 yards wide, where Ice hockey is played on Ice Rinks that are 200 feet by 85 feet which are less smaller than the field hockey.

Along with that their equipments also differ. The hockey sticks are similarly shaped for both. Field hockey uses a plastic ball and Ice hockey uses a vulcanised rubber puck.

The skills differ variedly in both of the sports. Both sports are high endurance and require a lot of stamina, a good hand eye coordination and a lot of practice.

Ice hockey is fast paced action and hard hitting. While field hockey shows the abilities of tactical game play and precision.

Field hockey is as brutal as it can get with the aggressive and fast thinking needed on the court. Along with that, physical fitness needs to be to the top as quick actions and sprints are done with little to no recovery at times.

Ice hockey requires athletes to be top notch in five skills - skating, stopping, stick handling, passing and shooting. In field hockey, athletes also require five skills - first touch, leading, passing, hit and flat stick tackle.

In ice hockey athletes need to know how to ice skate, have great body balance and great stamina. Ice skating is the most important skill needed and they have to be excellent in it. There are different types of techniques that they require to do their dribbling skills with like crossover, backward skating, edge work.

For field hockey, first touch becomes the essential skill needed. First touch is basically the athletes ability to receive, move the ball at the necessary pace, which will create the space between the player and the defender.

In the other four important skills of ice skating which includes stopping, stick handling, passing and shooting. In these atheletes, need to know how to stop perfectly on time while skating, along with learning how to control the puck, when and how can the puck be passed accurately to your team, getting the puck back from the opposite team and shoot it with utmost accuracy to go through the goal.

In the same way for field hockey, all the other four steps come consecutively along with first touch. When getting better with first touch, the athletes get better practice at leading, passing, hit and flat stick tackle skills as well. As discussed before, with first touch you learn the ways of handling the ball, which gives space for leading, passing, and hitting the goal. Flat stick tackle is to make sure there is a clean tackle while getting the ball back from opponents.

Where injuries are common for both sports, field hockey has less guards used to protect athletes. Field hockey usually provides arm guards, leg pads, teeth protectors, chest guards mostly to goalkeepers. The athletes running on the field do not necessarily use these as it can increase weight which can hinder their speed while sprinting. Whereas for ice hockey, due to the higher risk of injuries every protective gear that can be given to the athletes.

Now it does not matter whether you like ice hockey or field hockey, both of the sports have their charm to include sports fanatics in their world. Hockey no matter what kind provides us with invaluable life lessons like communication, teamwork, better leading skills, decision making abilities, better sportsmanship all of which helps in both personal and professional life.