Throughout the season we will be covering different aspects of Skating, the most important skill required to play Ice Hockey. We start the Skating component of Coaches Corner with the most basic but also most important element......Balance.
Skating 1 - Balance
Skating is the most important skill in Ice Hockey. Skating
lets you out-run the opposition, catch up to the opposition, shoot better,
get up when you fall, stop yourself from falling in the first place,
reduce your risk of injury because you have more control, give and take
body checks more effectively, keep control when under heavy pressure,
move quicker from side to side as a goaltender, and many, many more
things. Skating ability is the first thing assessed when trying out
for state and national teams - being brilliant in any other skill will
not help if you do not have the basic skills.
Skating ability starts with balance. Players often begin to learn to by using what is called a 'T' push, whereby one foot points in the direction that you want to go, while the other starts behind the first, at a 90 degree angle, with the heel of the front foot positioned at the instep of the rear foot.
This 'T' position, lets the skater push with the rear leg and glide forwards balancing on their front foot. The player should bend their knees substantially, to put them selves in the best possible position for Hockey.
Believe it or not, bending your knees is by far the most important lesson to learn when skating for Hockey. Knees should be bent around 90 degrees (yes that's a long way), with your knees over your toes, your shoulders over your knees.
From this position, you are not bending too far forward
from your waist, which would make you feel as if your are going to fall
forwards, and your back is not too upright (at least when skating forwards)
so you should not fall backwards. All forward skating is performed from
this basic stance.
When learning the 'T' push, try staying in this stance the whole time. Push with the rear leg, but keep the front leg bent - your body should not move up and down, your leg rear leg is the only thing that should move.
Glide forwards on one foot for as long as possible, before setting the rear leg down next to the other, and then push with the other leg.
Once you have built up some speed, try and crouch down, bending your knees as far as you can, until you end up sitting on the top rear part of your skates.
You must keep your shoulders over your knees or you will fall backwards - this is much harder than it sounds.
Some more interesting balance exercises involve jumping while skating. For example players can skate around the rink and practice jumping over the lines on the ice, either taking off and landing from two feet or, for more advanced skaters, jumping and landing on one foot.
The previous exercises are all about learning to balance correctly. It is very difficult to be an effective hockey player without good balance. Once some basic balance skills are achieved (i.e. The player can glide on one leg and crouch down) then a proper hockey stride can be introduced.