A Great Hockey Skater Is Suddenly Falling?

Aaaaah…  I love it when folks toss their hockey problems my way (even if I’m not sure I can answer them)! 

Okay, so not long ago I received the following question (which might just be a huge challenge for me).  Please take a read…  This actually came by way of Twitter, but I thought it worthy enough to address here.  Here’s the question verbatim:

“my son plays in a novice select team is 8yrs old…a great skater..but is falling alot of late…..Why  ??“

Hmmmmmm…  Why, indeed.

Quite obviously this is a difficult one to answer without being able to see the boy.  (I surely wouldn’t mind receiving a short video clip of the youngster — and I ask others to send me one along with this type of question, just so I might do a lot better than I’m going to do right now.)

That said, the best I have to go on are the following assumptions:

1) the dad says he’s a pretty good skater;

2) it sounds like the level the boy is playing is pretty decent;

3) it also sounds as if the youngster’s frequent falling is something that’s just started happening very recently.

The reason I wanted to state all that is because it probably at least makes it possible for us to discount the kid being an awful skater who ought to fall plenty anyway.

That established (I hope), my educated guess is that we have to look in two separate areas for an answer…

A) Equipment-wise, I’d look at the skates.  Has there been a change in these important pieces of gear —  either in a switch to new or different blades, or is there something wrong with a recent skate sharpening?  (To be honest, I don’t think new boots would make a player fall, but something being drastically different about the blades or sharpening surely could.)  And, of course, it would be nice if it was that easy to resolve the boy’s problems — by  just fixing a piece of gear, I mean.

B) After that, we obviously have to consider a physical problem of some sort, and this I’ll question on several fronts:

– if recent skating problems happened about the same time the boy joined the current (select?) team, it could be that many pretty talented opponents are causing him to have difficulties keeping-up (having to change directions quickly, etc);

– I don’t usually associate growth spurts with kids far younger than puberty, but a sudden change in one’s body can surely bring about some difficulties with fine motor skills;

– God forbid, but I very long ago had a really talented student of mine start having some similar problems, and this was later diagnosed as a very serious health issue.

Okay, that’s where I am right now — suggesting that the dad work his way through that short checklist, first starting with the possibility that the whole thing has to do with an equipment (or mainly a skate)  issue.

I’d also invite him to work with me on this, so that we could go back and forth to troubleshoot things.  So, I’m going to reach out to the dad — if I can locate him, to see what he thinks of my list.  I might even ask that he send me a short video clip.

Finally, I’m sure the dad won’t mind that I opened this discussion to others.  Ya, I think it would be helpful if anyone else has an idea they think ought to be included in the checklist I’ve plotted so far.

So, let’s get something going down below, huh?

In reference to the above photo, member Glenn B. sent us the following: 

Hi Coach Chic, 

This is in response to your post about the great skater who suddenly began falling all of the time.  I’m sharing this photo with you as an example of what I hope is the situation with the young skater mentioned  in your post.  Earlier this year, I sent my son’s extra set of blades for a profile sharpening pictured above.  He could not use these blades at all.  He kept falling repeatedly.  We brought the blades to our wonderful local pro shop to get his opinion on this situation.  As you can see, the blade is not level and that was the reason why my son kept falling.  This happened to me once as well.  I kept falling everytime I made a sharp turn, I kept blowing out into the corner.  It turned out I  was the recipient of a bad sharpening.  It happens!!  Hope you find this  useful.

In answer to Glenn, I found his comment better than interesting.  In fact, I’ve seen these things numerous times, and I’ve experienced something similar to the problem he described at the end…

So, let me add this tip for all members:  if you notice a skater falling only while cutting in one direction, you can be almost sure one of the skate edges that is supposed to support such a cut is “missing”.  (I mean, as Glenn’s picture shows, it would be the edge that is far lower than the other I’ll describe as missing.)  If the skater is falling as he or she cuts to the left, we can be sure either the outside edge on the left skate or the inside edge on the right skate is practically nonexistent.  If the fall occurs when cutting towards the right, the cause is almost always because an edge is missing on the outside of the right skate or the inside of the left skate.

Then, a lot like Glenn personally experienced, I once started struggling on the ice because my “radius” had been misshaped over time.  In my case, it wasn’t so much the sharpener’s fault, but more the fact that numerous free hand sharpenings had gradually magnified a slight imperfection in the blade’s intended shape.  In other words, a little at a time, the middle of my blades had been worn away, which had me trying to pivot or cut on two points towards the ends of my blades instead of on one at the middle of each blade.  The solutions?  First, don’t have your skates sharpened at a time when the sharpener is extra-busy (or when there is a long line waiting for sharpenings), because he is going to be rushed, and he is likely to not reshape the grinding stone as often as he should.  He is especially likely to skip dressing that wheel if he is working on a bunch of lesser quality recreational skates.  The sharpener who pays more attention to his girlfriend on the phone than your skates is also a no-no.   Lastly, though, if you want to avoid the problem I’m talking about here, just ask the pro shop guy to check your skates’ radius maybe once per month.