What Hockey Players should learn from Speed Skaters
Hockey is a sport where the ability to skate is combined with an invasion sport. (Soccer and lacrosse are good examples of invasion sports.) I’ve addressed the fact that hockey is really two sports in one before (Ice Hockey: 2 Sports in 1), so I’ll skip that here. But, I do want to tackle our ability as hockey players to learn from sports, and their athletes, that are dedicated to just skating. (And, to steal their knowledge, techniques, and approaches to skating so that we can apply those to hockey.) Next up, speed skating.
Speed skating is exactly what it sounds like — skate as fast as you can to cover a given distance in the shortest period of time. With speed skating, you can both short track and long track events. And, you get individual events or relay events. There’s obviously more to the sport than just this, but that simple description is enough for our purposes.
Speed skating is all about skating with ‘speed’. As defined by physics,
speed = distance / time
So, to increase a skater’s speed, that skater can either increase the distance she can cover in a given period of time, or decrease the rate at which she can cover a given distance. Hockey players want skating speed too. But, sometimes this gets lost among some of the others skills we have to master — passing, stick-handling, shooting, tactics, etc. It’s times like this when it makes sense to just steal what others do well to make yourself better.
Increase Distance
There’s a number of different ways to increase the distance covered in a given period. The athlete can increase the amount of energy (or power) that her legs can generate, or better apply that power in the right direction. (Technically, ‘speed’ is a vector, which means that it has a directional component. This is where we discuss the right application of ‘direction’ to increase ‘distance’.)
More Power
Increasing the distance achieved over a given period of time means having the athlete put more power to the ice with every stride. Technique does come into play when doing this (to make sure that all the power is applied in the right direction), but the athlete herself has to be able to generate that power leg power.
One of the most successful Olympic speed skaters of all time was Erik Heiden, who won 5 gold medals at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid. The amount of power he was able to put to the ice during each of his strides was legendary.
Eventually, details of how Erik Heiden would train for speed skating races, and more specifically, how he has able to generate as much power as he did with his legs began to be known. Now, ‘Heiden Jumps’ have become a component of many hockey players’ training programs. One of the converts to this exercise is the Blackhawks’ Duncan Keith.
Better ‘Direction’
One of the ‘things’ that speed skaters do much, much better than hockey players is to focus on how to perform long, powerful strides. (I think it’s because hockey players have more things to learn — 2 Sports in 1.) That’s why as hockey players, we can benefit from the focus that speed skates have on this, by stealing the insights they’ve gained from years of hard work. So, let’s take a look at how they skate.
It’s very subtle, and you definitely have to know what you’re looking at to pick it up. I want you to watch that video again, but this time watch how much extension they get with every push, how they ‘snap’ their ankles to get that final push, and how they swing their arms.
The ‘long strides’ they have allow them to get every single bit of power they can generate with their legs to propel them forward. They start with their legs completely bent below them and their quads contracted. The full extension of their leg allows all that power stored in their contracted quads to help them mover forward. Only then will they bring their foot back below them to get ready for the next push.
(For those of you who are observant, you’ll notice that the full extension of the legs only happens after they get up to speed. This has to do with the technique speed skates have developed for quick starts. I go more into this technique under ‘Decrease Time’ below.)
The ‘ankle snap’ is incredibly subtle, and may require you to watch the video a few times before you really ‘see’ it. At the end of their leg extension, these skaters are pushing hard from their heels to their toes to get every last bit of power out of each stride. Don’t believe me? This is the reason they invented ‘clap skates’ for speed skating. The pivot point at the front of the skate allows the blade to hinge as the speed skater pushes from their heel to their toe, increasing the amount of time the skate blade is in contact with the ice, and thus the amount of power the speed skater can generate with each stride. I was skeptical when I first heard of doing this for hockey. But, by applying this technique to my own skating, I bet you I’ve increased my top end speed by 15%. Just try it. Let me know how it does for you.
(I will warn you. It’s a little difficult to remember to do it every time when you start. Plus, your calves end up getting very sore very quickly. But, once you have the technique down and your calves are used to it, the speed gains are definitely noticeable.)
‘Pumping the arms’ has long been known in many sports to increase speed by increasing the amount of power that can be applied. If you’ve ever played baseball, you have no doubt had a coach tell you to pump your fists towards your chin to help you run to first base faster. Over years, speed skaters have figured out exactly how to pump their arms in order to generate the most power. For hockey players, copying this exact movement would be challenging, because we do have to carry a stick. But, incorporating some arm pumping into our skating is definitely beneficial.
Decrease Time
‘Decreasing time’ is a tricky proposition. When looking at running, a big part of how quickly you can get your feet to strike the ground has to do with your genetics, and more specifically the fast twitch muscles in your legs. (If you’re between the ages of 7 to 9, you’re in your first ‘speed’ training window. You actually can make some tremendous speed gains, and improve the performance of some of those fast-twitch muscle fibers, which will provide speed gains for the rest of your life.) So, if you can’t tremendously alter your physiology, how can you decrease time?
It all comes down to better technique. When watching the previous speed skating video, you have have noticed that the skates employed a different technique at the start of the race than when they were “up to speed”. This is how they ‘decrease time’. The video below shows a speed skating start in slow motion. See if you can pick up on what they’re doing.
During the quick start, the skaters are moving their feet ask quickly as possible. Think of this as sprinting on ice. This technique decreases the time between pushes. Each time their foot strikes the ice, it does so in such a way that the skate has maximum grip to the ice. The skate is angled to the side so that the blade digs best into the ice.
As the skater’s speed increases, this technique will no longer help increase speed. This occurs because the skater’s forward momentum does not allow the skate blade to generate as much grip with the ice, thus increasing the percent of ‘power’ applied by the skater that ‘slips’ (as opposed to pushing the skater forward). At this point, proper skating technique takes over due to the greater top end speed and energy efficiency it provides.
Applying this technique to hockey can show some immediate gains. Just remember to lengthen your stride gradually as you increase your speed.
Words of Caution
Stealing techniques and training methods from speed skating is a wonderful idea, so long as you know where to properly employ what you have stolen. Knowing a little bit more about speed skating, and how it differs from hockey, can help greatly in this endeavor. In speed skating, all the speed generated is applied in a straight line, or in a broad curve. This is best understood by looking at the tracks for both short track and long track speed skating.
Short track speed skating takes place on a rink similar in size to a hockey rink. The skaters do laps of the rink.
Long track speed skating takes place on an ice surface that is much longer than a hockey rink. In fact, some facilities fit four hockey rinks “inside” the long-track speed skating circuit.
By taking a look at the images of both tracks, you’ll notice that all the skating is done while moving forward, and that all the “turns” are very broad.
During the course of a hockey game, there are many changes of direction, which involve tight turns, starts and stops, and skating backwards. So, let’s make sure to apply what we learn from speed skaters to what they know best — quick starts and applying (and developing) power with each stride. But, let’s make sure we look elsewhere when it makes sense.
You should avoid copying a speed skater’s overall skating stance. They skate hunched over to maximize aerodynamics and increase the length of each stride. As hockey players, skating while in a hunched over position is detrimental to us. Firstly, we’re limiting the space we have to stick-handle, pass and shoot. Secondly, hunched over is not the most stable skating position and we tend to get ‘bumped into’ as hockey players. There’s a few more reasons, but these are by far the most important ones.
Wrap-Up
Speed skaters are great at accelerating quickly from a dead stop. As hockey players, we should learn their technique — up on our toes, quick chops into the ice, eventually lengthening our strides as we gain speed.
Speed skaters are also very good at putting a great deal of power to the ice. As hockey players, we need to be able to do that too. So, let’s steal some of their training methods, and learn their technique for when we are skating at top speed with full strides.
