Learn 3 New Skating Techniques for Next Season

One of the most important aspect of the game is your Skating skills (speed, balance or technique), and to improve that aspect you need to learn new techniques that will help you move around the ice.

Today we will be showing you 3 great skating techniques that will improve your game and help your team win.

One-Foot Stop & Accelerate

In this video, we are going to focus on the one-foot stop & accelerate. This is really good to train your balance, power and your upper body energy. To properly execute this drill, you need to glide moving forward on one foot, stop completely with this foot, then open up your hips and push off in the other direction. This puts a lot of pressure on the outside leg your stopping on, so this will build great power and strength. The most important part here is keeping your balance, as it requires balancing on one foot for the whole drill. Having the proper technique remains crucial for this drill, as this will work your core, balance and power.

Side Step Stop

This time we are going to focus on the side step stop drill. This drill essentially works on quick transition from a stopping positioning and moving laterally explosively in the opposite direction. The first step is having a great weight transfer and pushing off with the outside foot in the opposite direction. From here, you crossover your legs and stop again. The goal here is to always keep your balance, and the more efficiently you do that, the more explosion you will get. Also, its important to work on shorter strides in order to really target the burst movement. When this becomes to easy, you can do two step overs in a row than stop, this will increase your conditioning as it makes you work that much harder.

The same thing can be done going backwards, so you really need to focus on proper technique and balance. You can start with the one step up, and then when you feel more confortable and want to challenge yourself, you can go with the two-step up in a row. Finally, when you really want to go outside the box, you can do the over-under, in which case you start with going over then you go under. You can do this drill going forward and backward as well. Make sure you take a considerable amount of rest time between each set, as this drill is very tough on your conditioning.

Forward to Backward "Mohawk" Transitions

In this video, we are going to focus on teaching the forward to backward mohawk pivot. This allows players to transition forward and backward without really losing any speed on your stride. Now to do this properly, you need to start in a stride positioning. So, for example if I have my right leg in front, you need to return your left leg close to the right, open your hips and turn around. Basically this is a three-step process, so stride, turn and step. This will eventually become a complete motion and can be done without losing any speed. It’s important to know that when you are teaching this, make sure players are in a low stance to keep their balance and control.