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The Physics of Hockey Skating: Part 2

By Andy Blaylock, 06/09/17, 3:30PM CDT

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What is Hockey Skating Instruction Missing Concluded

Acceleration Requires Force, Not Magic

In the first part of this series, we established that the fastest hockey skaters leverage an increased stride rate to gain their speed advantage over their slightly slower peers. 

They do this with a slightly shorter stride length than those peers. How can this be? Shorter stride length should lead to a slower stride.

Let’s think it through. If they have a shorter stride length, were these skaters not reaching full extension? No! Full extension is still key. In order to gain anything from an increased stride rate, you should not shorten up your extension (except with the possible exception of the first few strides during a start). 

Without shortening up the extension, are there any other technique based strategies we can use to increase our stride rate?  There is one and it has already been alluded to in the first part.  I call it "abbreviated recovery".

Increasing Stride Rate

To increase stride rate, preserve full extension and shorten recovery slightly.

These skaters were shortening the recovery phase of the stride by recovering to the point underneath the hip of the recovering leg. This also shortens the extension phase of their stride, but not the all-important final moments of the extension phase where maximum horizontal force is produced. 

Instead, they were shortening the beginning of the extension phase where forward force is limited as it is almost exclusively driven by glute flexion as opposed to later in the extension phase where the entire leg can get involved.

By eliminating this time where forward horizontal force is limited, they increased the percentage of time where they were producing large amounts of productive force.  This creates more forward horizontal force on average over time paving the way for more speed and acceleration.

There are a couple of things to note about this abbreviated recovery strategy.  First, this is not a "Railroad" stride where recovery is abbreviated too much.  Second, to do abbreviated recovery correctly requires tremendous skill and athleticism. 

Only polished skaters with high athleticism and skill are ready to make this adjustment (although it is hard to really call it an “adjustment” because most of those who do it just learned it that way as opposed to having been guided to it by an instructor). 

Abbreviated recovery is one speed enhancing strategy that decreases stride length. Consider that there are many speed-increasing technique strategies which lead to longer stride lengths. 

This is why instructors should use stride length as a teaching tool. In most cases it is a key concept for skaters to focus on to improve their stride technique and habits.  

Practice Habits Translate Into Games

While our habits can never be greater than our capabilities, it is our habits, not our capabilities that we use in a game.

Should a player be thinking about these technique issues during a game? Of course not.  A player in as complex of a multitasking environment as the game of hockey has no room in their mind even for a concept as simple as lengthening their stride. 

The player needs to focus on the tactical and strategic options that they, their team, and the other team will bring to the game.

With that said, if during the learning process players want to change their stride, they should focus on a concept related to their stride that they can understand in order to master that concept. Once mastered, they will be able to execute it automatically. Then, we can build on it with a more complex concept.   

This small adjustment to the recovery phase of the stride and the debate it incited among hockey skating experts demonstrated a lack of deep understanding of the forces that actually matter in skating among the most knowledgeable hockey skating minds in the world. 

The thought that more understanding was needed led me to analyze the physics behind many parts of the hockey stride. 

Building from that approach, we could develop a comprehensive understanding of how the physics involved in the skating stride should dictate analysis of

1.      What specific movement details are actually necessary

2.      Which are tolerable individual characteristics

3.      Which are wasteful or harmful

That comprehensive understanding is what is missing from hockey skating instruction. This is because relying on “received wisdom” from the previous generation of skating coaches can only get you so far. 

This was clearly illustrated by the way that the model stride preached by the experts during the 2005 Hockey Skating Symposium did not hold up against the very evidence presented there.

Don’t get me wrong, most hockey skating instruction is on the mark in terms of what the student needs. However, the knowledge that the instructors are working with is founded on explanations of best practices their mentors and their mentors’ mentors going back to the early days of skating thinking. 

This is to say that today’s skating coaches gained most of their understanding of the skating stride from their skating coaches who did the same a generation before from their skating coaches. 

This is a great foundation on which to build and does give the vast majority of students what they need, but an overarching framework to tie it all together would help with fine detail refinement for high level skaters and would eliminate some ideas that only “seem” to be true in hockey skating.

I’ll be providing a few more parts to this series to tackle additional concepts around the hockey skating stride, and, in particular, some areas where focusing on what works for the sport of speed skating, which is a common practice in hockey skating instruction, can actually lead us astray.

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