Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 March 2015 15:50
By Diane Ness
In the previous article, I noted the importance of getting a strong push to the side while executing a stride. I would like to stick with that same concept and discuss in a little more detail about recovery as well as injury prevention tips.
Prior knowledge of stride recovery was always thought to recover directly underneath the hips after the push was extended. It was commonly thought to pull the pushing leg straight in during recovery. Seems simple enough, but when further examining the actual technique of recovery, pulling the leg directly underneath puts an extreme amount of stress on the groins as well as the hips. If you can picture an explosive skater pushing out and pulling directly back in as fast as possible, you can imagine how much torque is being pulled from your “hockey muscles.” It’s no wonder we have so many groin injuries in hockey.
Understanding recovery is so important, not just from an efficiency standpoint, but also from an injury prevention standpoint. This was some of the best information I received from Olympic speedskating coaches prior to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. After every skater finishes their push out, the skate must recover somehow. The best way for this to happen is to have the skate finish “around and through.” This means the skate extends in a natural range of motion in a circular motion. An easy way to think about this is have the skater think, “knee to calf.”
You will notice in the photos of Matt Cooke and Anders Lee that both skaters have their skate coming back underneath their body as their knee is at their calf. This is a much more natural way to bring the skate back to recovery. The key is to remember to still have a low recovery when executing this skill. Performing this simple step will save on muscle stress as well as unwanted injury.
Making sure the legs recover under the skater’s hips is also crucial in recovery. The only way to load your leg is to simply have your legs underneath you. Does that mean your heals will come back and “click” each other? No, that is not realistic to think at game speed you are going to bring your feet so close together they actually touch. Again, the key is to make sure they recover under your hips to provide power to each push.
Hopefully these simple techniques will help you understand what a stride should feel and look like. Sometimes it is just making simple tweaks that will make a huge difference in performance. The key is not only to understand, but also to repeat to form good habits. Good luck.
Diane Ness has been a full-time professional skating coach for over 35 years. She has coached both figure skaters and hockey players alike and is a former U.S. gold medalist in figure skating. She is the Director for the Pro Edge Power hockey camps and the Learn to Skate program at Highland Park Arena. Ness is the skating coach for the New Jersey Devils, the University of Minnesota men’s and women’s hockey teams and the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey Team. She has trained players in the NHL, AHL, NCAA, USHL and NAHL.
