Backward Skater’s Steady Upperbody

I’m sure I sometimes sound a little snobbish — like today in social media when I posted:

“I got so tired of watching current day hockey coaches teaching backward skating wrong — and I mean REALLY wrong,  that I decided to start a video on that subject for my Mastermind Group.   Ugh.”

Truly, guys, I can’t help myself.  Supposed gurus are telling totally wrong or totally unscientific things to unknowing youth coaches, parents and new adult players, and those poor people are going to think their guidance is right.

Before going further, I need to refer back to the three videos I posted for you — as in so many “Must-do Skating Drills” for beginners, intermediates and advanced skaters.  Let me tell you, that I worked on those lists of drills for a number of years, and I whittled them down to “THE” most important ones, and “THE” drills that influence playing ability the most.

Let me also point out the title of my latest book, “The Nature of Our Game – Ice Hockey”, because its purpose is to describe what it’s like to play our game, and how unique our preparations have to be in order to play the game effectively.

With that, I’d like each member to think for a moment, and consider the reason a player skates backwards in hockey.  (It’s an exercise most of the hockey gurus out there seem not to use.)  

Ready to think a bit?

My hope is that you eventually came around to appreciating that backward skating has been deemed a good way to handle offensive attacks by the opposition.  Ya, think about that for a few seconds, too.  

As an aside here, consider that any of our players could go on the attack without a lot of concern for posture and such.  At an extreme, an attacker could even fall on his face or be put on the seat of his pants without a lot of damage being done to the team.  Sure, his ego might suffer, but the team probably won’t.

In contrast, a goaltender can’t fool around, nor can a defenseman do anything that would put his handling of an enemy attacker in jeopardy.  

And that’s where I’m troubled terribly by what I see throughout social media.  Coaches are putting their players through the same kinds of paces without regard for whether those players are skating forward or backward.  And, they’re allowing a ton of the poor postures I finally described in the above video — about skating backwards and defending against opposition rushes.    

I think that’s it for now, but I’d appreciate members letting me know if I’ve left anything unexplained, either here or in the video.