night-timer said:
For me it's backwards crossovers, pivots and flat-out speed.
I also have trouble with one-footed stops on my weak side. I think I need to dig my foot/leg into the ice harder.
I prefer having my skates a little blunt, but someone tells me that sharper skates will improve my speed. Any tips on good backward crossovers?
To improve my backwards crossovers I've worked very hard on balancing on my outside edges (skating backwards in circles). Another thing that I think helps is to force yourself to do it faster than your balance will allow. You'll feel out of control, and may fall a few times, but it will force your body to adapt, and as you gain muscle memory, you will be able to acheive those high speeds in controlled skating.
I'm with you on pivots, with the exception of the basic inside-edge to inside-edge stuff I can't really do them. I'm trying to teach myself to pivot from an ouside edge on a backward crossover to an outside edge on a frontward crossover (I believe this is a standard pivot when playing defense and the winger tries to beat you to the outside.) But I have not been able to do this even at very low speeds.
As far as flat out speed, I would guess that it's simply an issue of leg speed... Maybe some plyometric stuff would help
I've found that absolute top end speed is not really that easy to increase.
If anyone feels like helping
me out. My two biggest issues are the pivoting issue I mentioned above, and acceleration from zero. I don't feel like I'm explosive enough on my starts, and I'd like to know what I can do to improve it.
EDIT: Great topic BTW