In this video, we share the techniques we use when training our players to skate forward and get the most speed and stability possible.
We’re going to start by looking at our body positioning from our head all the way down to our toes.
OUR HEAD
The first thing, our head and shoulders have to be square, with our elbows by our sides. We want to be in a good hockey player position. This means we have our head up. We want our back straight but leaning slightly forward to have our shoulders over our knees. Lastly, we want our knees bent so our knees are over our toes.
A lot of times when players are skating, they look down at their feet or at the ice. We want to make sure that players keep their heads up so they’re aware of what is going on around them on the ice. But also, by keeping their head up, they’re also keeping their shoulders up, allowing them to keep their back straighter and taller. When you put your head down, that pulls your shoulders down, arching your back and causing a bend at the waist which is going to make you a lot less efficient when skating.
WHAT TO DO WITH OUR ARMS WHEN FORWARD SKATING
Next, you see a lot of players with their arms pumping side to side with their elbows out. Try to focus on the blade of your stick. Make sure that blade is travelling up and down your body side by side instead of flopping over and back. You can help do this by tucking your elbows in by your sides going back and forth, not having them way out and swinging side to side. Because we push out on a corner with our feet, we’re going to have to come through our body a little bit with those arms on a push. But we want to make sure we aren’t crossing the midline of our body.
LOWER BODY POSITION WHEN SKATING FORWARDS
When we look at our lower body, we want to focus on our base. Having a wide base means our are feet way outside of our shoulder width. Or we can have a tight base with our feet about shoulder-width apart. The wider our base gets, the shorter our stride gets. The tighter our base is, the longer our stride is. So, we want to try and keep our base tight so that we can get a nice long stride as we’re skating.
We also want to make sure that we are pushing our stride out to the back corner of our stance. So, if we drew a box around our stance, we want to make sure we are pushing to the back corner of that stance instead of out to the side or straight back. That’s going to give us maximum power when we’re pushing out at a good angle out to the corner of that box. We also want to finish that push with the toe of our skate as the last thing touching the ice before we snap our leg back to the middle.
KEEP YOUR HEELS DOWN
One common thing we see on that push is that players kick their heels up on the way back in. We want to keep that heel as low as possible to be as efficient as we can in getting that foot back to the neutral stance position. When we snap our toe, we can come right back to that midline. But when we kick our heels up, we have to bring our foot back down first before we get back into that tight base before we can stride with the opposite foot. This will help us to get nice fluid strides as we’re skating down the ice.
When I’m striding out, my glide foot – the foot underneath my body – is absorbing that weight and my stride foot is pushing. We want to keep that glide foot bent underneath us to lengthen our stride and to keep us nice and stable through that stride. Once we snap our toe back to the middle, then we switch our glide foot and stride foot and push with the other leg.
SKATE IN STRAIGHT LINES
Lastly, we want to try to skate in straight lines. If another player and I are skating at the exact same speed, but he’s skating in curvy lines and I’m skating in a straight line, I’m going to beat him every single time. He’s having to cover more distance on the ice by skating in a curvy line than I will have to just skating in a straight line. We need that glide foot to stay nice and straight underneath us, pointing our toe up the ice and not out to the side, which would force us to push out into corners which is what will send you skating side to side down the ice.
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Looking for help to practice more of your skills? Check out the rest of our videos here.
