Skating 7 - Sprint Starts
The ability to take off quickly from a stop / standing start is crucial to rise above the average. Players often do not vary greatly in their top speeds, and even those that can skate at a fast pace do not often get enough time to achieve this speed for long. What is important is how quickly you can get to your limits. Hockey tends to be a game of short, quick movements, and so players need to be able to read and react to the play, making their decision and executing the technique without any unneeded delay. If it takes you a second longer than the opposition player to get to your maximum speed, in a short race, you will lose.
Once you have reached your top speed, strides can be executed as described in the striding articles, with long, complete strides, starting at the heel of the skate moving towards the toe, with full, gradual, extension of the hip, knee and ankle joints. This technique is not, however, the most efficient for taking off. Long hard strides require considerably more effort a slow speeds or from a stationary start. It is, therefore, necessary to shorten the stride length at this point. Short, quick steps are in order, effectively 'running' on the (out turned) toe of your skate for three to five strides before settling in to the longer power strides.
Important points to remember are that you are not trying to glide in these initial moves. A common training technique is to lay down some (preferably old/broken) hockey sticks in a ladder type pattern (see right).
Players start at one end of the ladder and have to start in the position described above and then sprint to the other side, stepping between the sticks. Obviously if you glide, you fill find that you start to hit the sticks, so practice at getting the steps right!
Another method of starting a stride is when the player begins side on to the desired direction (crossover start). Actually this seems more different to the other method than it actually is.
The player starts side on. Crosses the outside foot around the front of the inside foot. This step becomes the first step from the method described above. The inside foot will the take its step, and so on.
