Advice: Improve skating

sverige

Registered User
Nov 4, 2014
66
2
I recentely started playing organized hockey and have had the best time of my life, without a doubt the greatest decision I have ever made. But as the ultimate competitor I give myself a hard time when other guys circles past me due to my lack of skating ability. I regularly go to open skating sessions to improve but I often find myself wondering what I should work on, it's not just one part of my skating that needs the be polished but every aspect of it.

I realize I have to start somewhere but I'm uncertain of what area I should be perfecting and working on the most to become a decent skater. Is it the forwards crossovers, the backwards crossovers, the mohawk, transitioning, outside edge, inside edge, etcetcetc. Do you guys have any advice for me to become a good/decent skater?



TL;DR

Beginner needs advice on most important skating skill to become decent/good sakter.
 

Goonzilla

Welcome to my house!
Feb 18, 2014
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The rink ..too often
I don't think there's any easy answer to that question, especially without seeing you skate.

Generally the more you skate, the better you get, but there's no shortcut, it requires hundreds or thousands of hours.

Obviously turning and stopping proficiently are right up there, but the biggest thing I see with self-taught or people trying to teach themselves is their skates not laced up properly/poorly fitting skates that they ordered online without trying/being fitted and poor body position or stance and way too upright with little knee bend and hence generating little to no power; and poorly balanced.

There'll be some things that come naturally or more easily, like turning or doing crossovers or stopping one way; and it's very easy to focus or rely on what you can already do or what is easier, but if you ever want to be decent, you've got to work on that other side or foot and even up your weak side. Always be working on that weak side, starting with plenty of gliding.
 
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BruinDust

Registered User
Aug 2, 2005
24,281
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I don't know what part of the world you are playing in, but I've heard from some beginners that taking some group skating lessons from a coach or instructor can be of great benefit if something like that is available in your area.

It's like trying to analyze someones golf swing to correct it, your at the stage where you probably need someone who knows a thing or two to look at your mechanics and try and pinpoint things you may need to change or work on. Hard to correct what they can't see.

Baring that, maybe ask one of the guys/gals you play with to watch your mechanics and see what they think. Doesn't have to be the best player in your group, but try to find one who would have an aptitude for instruction and constructive feedback.
 
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Elias Pettersson

I'm not a troll
Jan 22, 2014
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Dunno how beginner you are, but generally a good step of actual skill progression from "never touched the ice" can look like: forward stride, beginner turns (slow), stopping (snow plow/1 foot snow plow), backwards skating (slow), stopping (2 foot hockey stop), backwards C cuts, forward crossovers (work on these for the rest of your life), tight turns, transitions (forward&backward), backwards crossovers, mohawks, etc. From that point on you have all the basic necessary skills, it's just about doing more edge drills and getting faster/cleaner/better at every technique.

Hopefully that helps.
 

puckpilot

Registered User
Oct 23, 2016
1,228
880
As mentioned, it's hard to give you specific advice without seeing you skate, but there are some very common mistakes that beginners make.

First is they don't bend their knees enough and get down into that deep crouch. It can be a tough thing to overcome, because it's a bit of an unnatural pose to hold for long periods. But this impacts almost everything you do as a hockey player.

If you don't bend your knees enough, it shortens your stride, so you're slower. It raises your center of gravity so your less steady when you turn and try to maneuver and it makes you easier to knock over. It makes it harder for you to flex your stick, reducing the power of your shot. It makes it so you'll tend to use a stick that may be too long for you, affecting your stickhandling.

Second, develop your outside edges. If you don't learn how to use your outside edges, it pretty much cuts your potential in half because you're only using half the tools available to you.

The proper crouch and developing your outside edges go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, developing your outside edge can be tough. Like the crouch, this affects all parts of your game from balance to shooting to speed.

Lastly don't rush things. Walk before you run. Start with the basics, drill those in before moving on to the advanced stuff. I see so many people at the rink who are just starting off, and they try to do advanced drills and movements when they can barely even make a proper turn. It doesn't help. In fact, IMHO, it hurts more than it helps because they just end up doing a half-assed version of the drill, reinforcing improper technique.

Short story. A few years ago I got sick. The end result of that sickness made it so I could barely even stand on my skates let alone take full strides.

Any ways, in terms of skating I was pretty much back at square one and had to teach myself how to skate again. I started from the basics and slowly started to regain my abilities, and at the same time, work on eliminating some of my old bad habits.

But at times I was impatient and tried to speed things up before I was ready and tried to jump into advanced drills that I just didn't have the strength to do properly. I mean after all, I wasn't really a noob. But I just ended up wasting my time.

I learned that the simplest drills are often the most effective, and that putting more focus and effort into the basics did me far more good than a lot of the fancy advanced stuff. I found the degree of difficulty in doing the basic drills was directly proportional to the speed in which I tried to do them.

So some things were quite easy to do if I did them slow, but once I tried to do them at game speed, they weren't so easy.

Youtube is a great resource for information and drills. I found it helped me quite a lot.

Any ways, I'll stop now before I write a novel.
 
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sverige

Registered User
Nov 4, 2014
66
2
Thanks for all the advices, much appreciated! I was thinking about hockey rollerblades? Can those help develop skating if ice time is insubstansial?
 

Goonzilla

Welcome to my house!
Feb 18, 2014
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The rink ..too often
I haven't rollerbladed in a long time (doesn't do it for me) and I may stand and am happy to be corrected, but I don't think it would do much for developing on ice skating, though certainly it may aid conditioning/fitness.

Most inliners I see on ice usually have good hands, but their ice skating at least is pretty ordinary.
 
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puckpilot

Registered User
Oct 23, 2016
1,228
880
I haven't been on inlines in years too, but I think inline does help a bit. But it's more in terms of helping you with the broad strokes of your stride and building strength.

I'm not sure it'll help you much with edge control, because well, no edges. And it will instill in you inline skating movments, which can be a lot different than ice skating movements.

I've heard about this new type of chassis call Mars Blades. They're supposed add a kind of faux rocker to inlines, making them feel and react more like ice.

Not a replacement for skating on ice, but if you have nothing else, it's better than training on shoes. You can at least practice separating your hand movements from your skating movements.
 

LeifUK

Registered User
Jan 2, 2018
131
39
I am a novice hockey player and I've faced the same issues as you. You've had good advice above and PuckPilot's statement to focus on the basics is very good. In my view the following are important:

  1. Practice, practice, practice. There is no substitute. Public skating sessions are essential.
  2. If you have a friend or friends who can observe you, and comment on your technique, all the better. It's easy to get bad habits.
  3. Keep your knees bent, and adopt the hockey stance.
  4. Practice everything in both directions. Public rinks often only do ACW and sometimes ban CW skating. Ask the staff if they can reverse the direction for a while, or go into the middle area away from the others, and practice CW moves. Be careful, going against the flow is dangerous since oncoming skaters could fall beneath your skates.
  5. Practice the basics. You Tube has lots of good videos.
  6. Edges are key. Practice forwards inside edges and forwards outside edges. Backwards too if you can do that though that might be a bit advanced. Edges underpin almost everything else.
  7. Core skills are forwards skating, hockey stops, snow plough and crossovers. If you can't do hockey stops (yet) make sure you can at least snow plough.
  8. Backwards one foot stops. This is when you skate backwards, and then turn one foot sideways to act as a brake. It's a simple stop, and you need to be able to stop backwards!
  9. Core skills but backwards, along wtih forwards to backwards transitions and vice versa.
Once you get better you can do advanced skills such as forwards one foot hockey stop on an outside edge, backwards hockey stops, tight turns, forwards to backwards pivots, and so on. I found outside edges tough. And it took me a whole year to learn a good forwards hockey stop on my left foot, and 6 more months for the right foot.

Then of course there is stick handling ...
 

LeifUK

Registered User
Jan 2, 2018
131
39
And a couple of points I forget:

  1. Make sure your skates are correctly sharpened. In my experience most sharpeners cannot be trusted and bad edges will mess up your skating. I have a BAT gauge so I can check the sharpening.
  2. Make sure your skates fit you properly. Too big can cause problems. Laces too lose can cause problems.
 

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