Fundamentals of Skating

In Game Support

During games, our coaching and management team will help with skate tying in the locker room, but for practice, its important parents know what to do and that they encourage their player to learn how to dress and tie their skates themselves, practicing at home really helps.

Correctly tied skates help promote balance and stability, its really important we get this right from the get go as it helps with your players development.

Sharp skates are also important, blunt skates means the edges of the blade do not grip the ice and provide the player with the control they need – as a rule, for new players we would suggest skates are sharpened once every 6 weeks. Every player is different so this is only a guide

Parents and Players Videos – consolidating learning

At BJIHC our key focus during the Learn Hockey programme is building a foundation upon which your player will develop into a competent ice hockey player.

The foundation stone of every hockey player is skating, and we focus on technique and learning the correct way to skate a lot during both Learn Hockey development blocks. Without these skills your player will never fulfil their potential as a hockey player. You could be the world’s trickiest stick handler but if you can’t skate, that skill will quickly be rendered useless by an opposing team.

During learn hockey 1 you will note that we spend a lot of time skating players without sticks, this is normal, as a coaching team we want your kids to learn agility, balance and control (ABC) and the stick can actually hinder some players and it acts as a 3rd leg. Learn to skate on 2 legs then adding the third improves the ABC’s and promotes fast twitch muscle control essential to playing ice hockey.

We want parents and players to learn together, especially those who don’t have a hockey background. We have put together a top 10 list of videos to help consolidate on-ice teaching. Please take some time to watch these with your player; use them to have a discussion on how they are doing and encourage them to adopt the correct skating style.

This is all work kids can put in on a public skate, and public session skating is really important to kids practicing what we teach during learn hockey and these drills can all be done safely on a public session. Please Remember - putting in work now, will pay massive dividends later in their development.

Drop us an email at learnhockey@billinghamjuniorstars.co.uk for more information and to join our hockey family.