One question that hockey players and performance skaters often find themselves asking is how they can possibly learn how to skate faster or otherwise improve their performance on the ice. Regardless of how good a particular hockey player is, they are constantly going to try to improve their capabilities on the ice so that they can improve their game. The faster that a skater is, the better they will perform on the ice during a game. Speed is a dominant key when it comes to hockey, and there are definitely a number of ways that speed can be improved. Here are three tips that are going to help you learn how to skate faster in no time at all.
1 – First and foremost, you should be optimizing your stride in order to optimize your speed. Skating is a rather finicky thing if you think about it. A slight imperfection in your stride can make a truly large difference in the results that you achieve. When you skate, you should make sure that you are avoiding short and choppy strides. Only your first couple of strides should be quick and choppy in order to get you up to your top possible speed. Then you should be focusing on achieving long and powerful skating strides. You want to keep the entire length of the skate blade on the ice when you are pushing yourself forward for the best possible results.
2 – Next, you should take care not to move your arms side to side. This is a relatively simple step for you to take, and yet many players do not make a point to keep from doing this and it ends up hurting them. When you swing your arms from one side to the next while you are skating, you are bleeding off your energy in the wrong direction – The direction opposite of where you are attempting to move. This is also going to negatively impact your balance control. When you are skating, you should take care to keep your arms brought in close, and you should work on pumping them back and forth rather than side to side.
3 – You should work on your skating capabilities in the gym just as much as you work on them while on the ice. If you are truly interested in becoming faster when skating, then you need to be working on the process in the gym just as well as on the ice. Fitness is one of the most vitally important factors of playing hockey, and skating is absolutely no exception to the rule. The absolute best thing that you can do when you are working out in the gym is to focus on a hockey specific workout routine capable of targeting the muscles that you need to excel on the ice.
Keep these three tips in mind when you are learning to skate faster and you will surely be able to increase your speed.
