I recently finished reading Kevin Neelds book Ultimate Hockey Training. This book is a great resource for any coach, strength coach or parent/player looking to improve their off-ice training for hockey. It is full of great information on improving strength, power, speed and conditioning for hockey players. But I’m going to focus on one area, and that’s speed.
Skating speed can be broken down into 2 components: stride length and stride frequency. Put simply:
SPEED = STRIDE LENGTH X STRIDE FREQUENCY
By improving performance in one of the two components, speed will increase. By improving performance in both, speed will increase even more. In order to maximize your speed, you want to maximize your stride length and stride frequency. Let’s breakdown each of these two components.
STRIDE FREQUENCY
Stride frequency is how quickly each foot turns over, or your foot speed. Having quick and short first 5 strides is important for acceleration skating speed (Budarick et al., 2018, Buckeridge et al., 2015). This is a trade-off of stride length for stride frequency to maximize acceleration. However, once the transition to steady state skating occurs, a player needs to maximize both length and frequency to reach top speeds. Using quick feet drills such as ladders and reaction time drills can work on the timing of the first few strides in the acceleration phase of skating. Sprint training will also improve foot speed and develop type II fast twitch muscle fibres to improve the stride rate.
In order to maximize stride frequency in steady state skating, a player must maximize the rate of adduction and flexion in the recovery phase. The recovery phase of the skating stride begins when the toe is lifted off the ice after pushing into abduction and extension. The player must return the leg from an abducted/extended position to a neutral/flexed position. The faster a player can return the leg under the body, the faster he/she can begin the next stride, increasing the stride frequency (Buckeridge et al., 2015). Thus, the player would need to maximize the rate of adduction/flexion. Here are two exercises to improve the rate of the recovery phase to increase stride frequency.
STRIDE LENGTH
There are 2 ways to increase length in the skating stride:
- Increase stride range of motion
- Increase propulsive force
There are a few different reasons why some hockey players lack stride range of motion. For some, especially the younger players, they stand too tall on the ice. This decreases the amount of range of motion that is available at the hip, therefore decreasing the length of the stride. To fix this, try cueing the player to bend their knees a little more and to stay low throughout the full stride. The caveat is that a player can be too low, which will add too much length to the stride, and inadvertently decrease the stride frequency. There is an optimal skating depth that is different for everyone. Try a few different ones to see what feels right for you and what helps improve your skating speed.
Another reason a player may lack range of motion in their stride is from not having the available range of motion of certain joints, for hockey players that is usually the hips. The adductor group (aka groin muscles) are muscles that are used a lot in skating (Chang et al., 2009). They work with every stride to stop the leg at the end of the push off phase and bring the leg back under the body during the recovery phase. Because they are used so much, they often get tight and dense. This will decrease the abduction range of motion for the player, which has been shown to one of the traits that can differentiate high caliber from low caliber skaters (Buckeridge et al. 2015). Here are 2 exercises to improve your adductors and increase your abduction range of motion:
Just like the rate of adduction helped bring the leg back under the body during recovery, the rate of abduction will help push the leg away from the body to increase propulsive force. It has been shown that high caliber skaters have greater rate of hip abduction motion (Buckridge et al., 2015). The stronger and faster the player pushes, the greater the force production into the ice which will help propel the body at a higher rate. A more powerful push off will also use more abduction range of motion and create a longer stride as previously discussed. In order for the stride leg to create a powerful pushing motion, the other hip must remain stable. Just like shooting a canon from a canoe would not be very successful, pushing off of a stance leg that is not very stable will not create energy leaks, reducing the amount of force transmitted to the propulsive rate of the body. Therefore, incorporating single leg exercises as well as force producing and force absorbing exercises will help develop a stable stance leg.
There are many other ways to maximize skating stride off the ice. These are just some ideas to help you improve speed on the ice. But above all else, skating technique is key in developing breakaway speed. Do you think Usain Bolt would be a fast skater? Even though he is the fastest runner on the planet, he does not have the technique to perform at the same rate in skates and on ice. Perfect your skating technique first, then maximize it with these exercises.
Matt Kelly, MScPT
References
Budarick, A. R., Shell, J. R., Robbins, S. M., Wu, T., Renaud, P. J., & Pearsall, D. J. (2018). Ice hockey skating sprints: run to glide mechanics of high calibre male and female athletes. Sports biomechanics, 1-17.
Buckeridge, E., LeVangie, M. C., Stetter, B., Nigg, S. R., & Nigg, B. M. (2015). An on-ice measurement approach to analyse the biomechanics of ice hockey skating. PloS one, 10(5), e0127324.
Chang, R., Turcotte, R., & Pearsall, D. (2009). Hip adductor muscle function in forward skating. Sports Biomechanics, 8(3), 212-222.
Neeld, K. (2012). Ultimate Hockey Training: Transforming Effort Into Ability!. BookBaby.