A Beginner Hockey Player’s Skating Speed

This is about a note I took as I watched my beginner (or Mighty Mites) team play one day long ago…

Let me start by stating that my kids seemed as though they already skated faster than most opponents.  What caused me to jot that note, however, was that I knew my little guys could be much faster, and that I’d want them to be far, far faster as we got deeper into our season.

As an aside here, I think this might be a way of conveying how helpful note-taking can be — for a coach like me, for a player, or for a parent.  I mean, in this case I’m aiming at a long-term goal, and not one that’s going to be a one or two practice deal.  Probably making this point even better, I recently watched one of my teenaged guys play in a scrimmage with his high school squad, and I noticed an area of his game that still needs some work.  The fact that I recorded that in my diary when I arrived at home later didn’t help him at the time,, since I wouldn’t get to work with him again until the next spring.  What would help him was the fact that I placed it among my future notes, with it then acting as a reminder to design some things that would help him (and other like skaters) with that problem.  In the case of my Mighty Mites, my notes went under the next several Sundays, since that’s when we’d be practicing.

Anyway, here are a couple of things I began doing for the sake of their skating speed...

I hope you appreciate that skating speed can’t be solved by just one drill. As a matter of fact, beginners tend to move around the ice better and better just from gaining more and more experience on their blades. That said, there were a few things I felt I could do to hasten their development in this area.

If you haven’t done so already, I suggest members review two earlier posted videos (“21 Must-do Skating Drills for Beginners” and “24 Must-do Skating Drills for Intermediates”) as prerequisites to what I’m about to cover…

Going back to their earliest times on the ice for a moment, understand that most first-time skaters walk rather than skate, and they usually do this by inching their way along on the “flats of their skates”.  In other words, they don’t immediately thrust with one blade and glide on the sharp edge of the other.  No, again, they basically march or walk around the ice.

So, do you want to know what will ultimately encourage the desired push-offs or thrusts?  The answer is to introduce some form of resistance against the skater’s movement down the ice.  And, for beginners, I find their attempting to push a similarly sized partner down the ice on a chair works awesomely.

What you should know is that this kind of exercise almost adapts itself to the various player levels — or, should I say, the players from each level tend to use the exercise differently, and we can also coach it a little differently according to the players.

In the case of my Mighty Mites, I eventually viewed them as intermediates.  Ya, while they were still very young, my little guys got around the ice really well at this point.  So I kinda pushed and prodded them a little (not meanly or anything, but still trying to get them to work harder and faster), and I looked for increasingly more speed with each repetition, and with each week that passed.  (Some footage of this drilling in action can be found near the middle of my video on “24 Must-do Skating Drills for Intermediates”.)

For the next step, it would be extremely helpful if you review my video on “Analyzing the Forward Stride“.  For, in that analysis, you’ll see that a player’s arm — or shoulder — motions can help a great deal in adding rhythm, power and efficiency to his or her forward movement.  And, this all translates to better forward skating speed.

Anyway, over the ensuing month, I had my kids regularly practicing pumping their arms (without sticks) — while standing in place and while moving down one side of the ice. In the beginning we could expect a real forced, uncoordinated movement. But, over time, even the youngest ones ultimately put things together. And again, when they did, you could expect that they’d skate far faster than when their arms and legs were out of sync. (Please see the first video to observe my kids in their earliest attempts at coordinating the arm/shoulder pumps with their skating push-offs.)

I hope you appreciate how much getting the sticks out of this drill really helps the kids concentrate on their arm and shoulder swings. As as matter of fact, I eventually had my older guys practice their striding without sticks on a fairly regular basis. (Oh, as you’ll also notice, some of these little ones are already getting it. Actually, as I just watched that video again, I thought to myself, “Aren’t they cute!!!” Ya, but putting things in perspective: These kids are adorable, but they also want to be taught to be successful.)

I’ve also added a second video of that group, this one in slow-motion, so you can see how much of a difference the arm-swing makes in a young skater’s forward movement.

Now, I can’t say enough about the benefits of holding competitions when working on skills that will ultimately require some urgency in a game.  For example, the group we’re studying now frequently engaged in races for loose pucks, with the winner getting a chance to continue on towards the goal for a shot.

By the way, I also had these little guys do other sorts of races, sometimes with a little trick required in the middle.  In one such competition, I found it very appropriate for kids at this particular level to race down the ice, do a belly-flop at mid-course, and then recover as quickly as possible to sprint for an end-mark.

Even later, however, I’d add a competition to the arm swing thing.  In other words, my kids would engage in short races — again without sticks — while also needing to pump those arms like crazy.