Learning to skate

[Chartrand]

All of you who have issues shaking just need ot go out ans skate a ton.

"So there's a cure, you say?"





































Okay....that was low, even for me. I'm ready for my punishment.

 

[lunchbox]

"So there's a cure, you say?"

Okay....that was low, even for me. I'm ready for my punishment.

 

[Chartrand]

I've been a bad boy.

 

[Kubrick]

Where?

Ice Skating at Valley Ice Center

 

[Mr. Irreverent]

All of you who have issues shaking just need ot go out ans skate a ton. Work on your crossovers and skating backwards first. After you get that down work in reverse crossovers. Then work on puckhandling while doing a crossover forwards and backwards. Skate around the circles, forwards and backwards with crossovers for the entire length of the ice. Then do it with a puck after you have confidence in the drill.

Get the basics down and skate like hell. That is the only way you will get better. Don't just play pickup. You will develop bad habits. Every time you play pickup, you should be doing at least one sticktime.
There is no substitute for this development if you want to skate well.

Perfect advice. I did stick time on Wednesday here at TSc and I've improved a great deal. I also did public skate this morning and I felt really good. Remember to keep your weight on the ball of your foot when doing crossovers and to lean forward with your knees bent.

skating around the circles is the best drill for speedy development. right now I'm stuck doing backwards crossovers. Very tough.

 

[daxx]

Daxx giving skating advice.

awesome!

and now, some dancing milk
:dancing_milk:

Hey Leather-boy...

1) Go f--- yourself!
2) Is the advice I'm giving incorrect? Nope
3) Go f--- yourself!

Just giving you crap.

If we come up with a LGK game are you going to play, or just say you will/won't 437 times?

 

[mudfisher]

Who's leatherFace? Who is this person..Should I know who this guy is?

 

[Leatherface]

If we come up with a LGK game are you going to play, or just say you will/won't 437 times?

haha! yes, in the Fall. I promise I'll be back.

 

[Defgarden]

Backwards xovers are really tough right now for me. Forwards I'm decent at them. I can skate backwards without falling, but I'm not great by any means. Weeeeeee!

 

[seabass45]

This thread has a lot of info, hopefully its still valid.

Im 34 and I'm gonna start playing hockey. Better late than never, right?

 

[tullskull]

I would like to give some advice as well to all the great comments that have been made on here. I have had four kids play and I didn't learn to skate until my 40's.
Just to survive financially I had to become an expert on gear and also learn cost effective ways to improve.

My first comment is basically a moral argument to support your local dealer. I was an audio dealer for many years and experienced similar situations to this often. So I say that for someone to go to a hockey shop to try on skates with the notion that you will buy them elsewhere at a discount is fine unless you are asking for help or advice from the personnel. That is stealing. Sorry just had to get that off my chest. Deceitfully using the hockey shop's wisdom and experience costs them and you will be very sorry to lose that resource for help when you really need it.

You need proper instruction. You need examples of people correctly executing the strides and moves. You are not going to get this without lessons... unless you are willing to become a student. That means studying...Duh!

So instructional tapes, (Robbie Glantz, Laura Stamm) websites that concentrate on coaching, and careful observation will go a long way to help.

Why would I say this?.........................................................

We have all heard the saying "practice make perfect". Well nothing could be more wrong than the thinking behind that saying. "If I just practice enough I will greatly improve."

NO. NO. NO!!!

"practice only makes permanent!"


Only perfect practice will make perfect. Most of us who started out as adults trying to skate went out there and basically tried to become as comfortable as possible with all these new feelings of skating. I would describe it as the principle of the path of least resistance. The problem is as many have stated , that path will lead you will pick up many bad habits.

I my case I had to relearn how to skate on parking lots, and stick times and free skates and in front of mirrors and I put a lot of time into it. This was roller but the same holds for ice. You need to know in your mind what a good stride looks like and copy that in spite of how it feels. The feeling will follow in time.

I can tell you this works as in my fourth season playing in a roller league I was the top scorer (mostly assists) and it was after about a year of skating. I could do all my transitions on both sides with and without the puck because that is what I practiced. Same with stick-handling. Practice correctly and go s-l-o-w. All my problems had to do with impatience and trying to fake it enough to be able to play but when I played I didn't have much fun because I couldn't actually do much and thus didn't help the team much. So I had to relearn many things.

Gear is another story but I am sure I have already tested your patience enough. Simply what is right for you is what is right. If you feel good in the best gear, save up or find last years' best. Believe me everything is a compromise. I can confidently say that middle of the road gear now is as good or better than top of the line stuff less than ten years ago, but it doesn't last the same.

Hope some of this will be helpful.

 

[motalare]

A number of years ago I took my wife to a sticktime, and had her videotape me practicing. While watching later, I picked out so many flaws, that it was at first really disheartening, but ultimately helped quite a bit.

 

[Anjin-san]

Even though this thread was last responded to almost two years ago, i'll put in my story

I played mostly roller hockey until about 12 years ago when I hurt my back. I'm 43 now and have decided to start playing again.

I went to a public skate this past weekend and for the 1st 10 min it felt alien to me and actually made me wonder if buying new skates was a smart thing to do. After awhile it started slowly coming back to me but I was still a little tentative to try anything like a crossover or hockey stop.

I'm going to stick and puck this afternoon just to get a feel for the gear and try to gain some sort of comfort level on the ice. One of the benefits of where I live in Colorado is I have 3 rinks within 15 min of my house so I have the opportunity to get ice time every day which i'm going to try to take advantage of.

 

[Peggy_GKG]

So it's been two years since the last post in this thread, I guess that means it's time for a new one!

At the ripe young age of 41, I've decided to become a hockey player. The first step in this journey for me has been learning to skate. I have literally zero experience prior to a couple months ago, not even roller blading. The first thing I did was to just get on the ice...I live in Anaheim so I started going to KHS since they have public skate sessions on weekend for $5, can't beat it. After about a month I was able to get up and down the ice OK without falling. I bought a cheap pair of skates to get me started...some Bauer Nexus 100's for $45 at Hockey Giant, figured they would be good to at least start learning on.

I've also been taking "Learn-To-Skate" classes at the Anaheim Rinks. These are kind of iffy, basically it's a 30-minute group session once a week and then the rest of the time is public skate where you're supposed to practice what you've just learned. Usually it's too crowded to do any real practice though. Had I known I might have started with the Adult Beginner class, as it is I went for the Hockey Class which is slightly more advanced. Basic stopping, turning, cross-overs, backwards skating, etc. 5 weeks in and I'm still getting my hockey legs but the progress is there.

And, although it's purely visual I do think there are some good videos out there, the "How To Hockey" channel on youtube has really given me some good info on stopping when I was having trouble with that.

The in-person coaching of course is very valuable even though there's not a lot of time for 1-on-1 instruction. I'm very anxious to get my skill level up and actually be able to use it but it's a slow process and I know I'm nowhere near ready yet. I watched a few minutes of a rookie league game the other night and while the skill level varied there were definitely some skaters who were less than graceful.

Anyway not sure if anyone will read or give a crap but figured I'd add a little something. There definitely seems to be a lot of resources available out there for people of all ages and skill which is nice to see. I guess we'll see how it goes and maybe before too long I'll be posting in the Beer League thread...

 

[jammer06]

So it's been two years since the last post in this thread, I guess that means it's time for a new one!

At the ripe young age of 41, I've decided to become a hockey player. The first step in this journey for me has been learning to skate. I have literally zero experience prior to a couple months ago, not even roller blading. The first thing I did was to just get on the ice...I live in Anaheim so I started going to KHS since they have public skate sessions on weekend for $5, can't beat it. After about a month I was able to get up and down the ice OK without falling. I bought a cheap pair of skates to get me started...some Bauer Nexus 100's for $45 at Hockey Giant, figured they would be good to at least start learning on.

I've also been taking "Learn-To-Skate" classes at the Anaheim Rinks. These are kind of iffy, basically it's a 30-minute group session once a week and then the rest of the time is public skate where you're supposed to practice what you've just learned. Usually it's too crowded to do any real practice though. Had I known I might have started with the Adult Beginner class, as it is I went for the Hockey Class which is slightly more advanced. Basic stopping, turning, cross-overs, backwards skating, etc. 5 weeks in and I'm still getting my hockey legs but the progress is there.

And, although it's purely visual I do think there are some good videos out there, the "How To Hockey" channel on youtube has really given me some good info on stopping when I was having trouble with that.

The in-person coaching of course is very valuable even though there's not a lot of time for 1-on-1 instruction. I'm very anxious to get my skill level up and actually be able to use it but it's a slow process and I know I'm nowhere near ready yet. I watched a few minutes of a rookie league game the other night and while the skill level varied there were definitely some skaters who were less than graceful.

Anyway not sure if anyone will read or give a crap but figured I'd add a little something. There definitely seems to be a lot of resources available out there for people of all ages and skill which is nice to see. I guess we'll see how it goes and maybe before too long I'll be posting in the Beer League thread...

AWESOME! The more ice time you can get the better and I wish you good journey, its worth it.

 

[Peggy_GKG]

Thanks. I'm certainly enjoying being on the ice when I can, even though it can be frustrating at times.

 

[Peggy_GKG]

So last night was the "evaluation" to see if we could move on to the stick-handling class. I'm not ready yet (most of the class isn't), so I have to take the skate class over again. I've got some good basic fundamentals but definitely need to work on a lot, specifically backwards skating and stopping then switching directions.

Sucks that I can't move on, and I'm definitely anxious to actually start playing some semblance of hockey, but I also realize that everything will be better and ultimately I'll get more enjoyment out of the whole process if I actually know what I'm doing on skates first. Looks like I won't even be able to get into a rookie league until Spring 2016 now. That's discouraging, but if it were easy then it wouldn't be worth doing, right?

 

[beedee]

Thats crazyness, but I can sort of understand their reasoning of building the skating foundation first. I highly recommend going to do "stick times" at rinks and you can skate with pucks all you want, ability level there doesn't matter.

 

[Nyssa42]

^^^what beedee said...keep going, Peggy!! you can do it! but it is good to have the solid skating foundation, because it is a million times harder when you get the stick in your hand. I figure skated my whole life, started playing hockey at 28, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done, even with the solid skating skills (although had to make some transitions from figure skating, too....I probably still skate wrong as I never actually took a hockey skating class).

 

[Peggy_GKG]

Thats crazyness, but I can sort of understand their reasoning of building the skating foundation first. I highly recommend going to do "stick times" at rinks and you can skate with pucks all you want, ability level there doesn't matter.

Yeah I'm definitely going to start doing this. I've been slowly acquiring gear little by little, now I have a hockey bag full of equipment and I'll be damned if it's going to sit there unused for a year. Plus I think it will be good just to get the feel of skating with everything on.