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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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| The most advanced version of the previous exercise is to crouch right down, and then extend one leg forwards, so that you are gliding on one leg - this is called 'shoot the duck'. From this position, try and bring the extended leg back in, and swap it for the other. You can also try this backwards |
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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.
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