Jump to content
Slate Blackcurrant Watermelon Strawberry Orange Banana Apple Emerald Chocolate Marble
Slate Blackcurrant Watermelon Strawberry Orange Banana Apple Emerald Chocolate Marble
Sign in to follow this  
HockeyMech

Learning to stop off ice?

Recommended Posts

So I have an issue where I can't seem to learn how to stop. Half of the problem is ice time, the other half is the typical fear of falling. I have trouble getting to my rink outside of game's to properly learn how to stop and I feel like it is holding me back. 

Is there anything I can do at home sans-ice to help me learn how to stop? Would getting synthetic ice help me at all? It's is bugging me so bad.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Synthetic might help, but I find it harder to stop properly on synthetic then real ice.  Maybe watching some videos and get a slide board to mimic the motion/sensation?  Unfortunately, imho, there's no real substitute to skating on ice to learn how to stop.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Falling on synthetic ice is hardly better than falling on real ice, I think you just need to protect yourself and trust the pads. Short of working on leg strength and stability, I think you just need a little ice time per week

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think there's a substitute for real ice. But I do think there are some dryland exercises that will help you along at least a little.  Here are some links below to videos of them. The exercises are mainly for agility and to work on crossovers, but they strengthen your legs and get them used to the feel of the lateral forces that they'll deal with when you stop. 

You'll still have to learn how to do the stops. Another thing that might help is to let your skates go dull so they slide along the top of the ice more easily. And make sure you learn the two foot stop and distribute your weight over both skates. IMHO It'll be better for your skating in the long run if you learn that early on. The one legged stop is easier to learn and be satisfied with, but it's only half the solution if you want to be the best you can be.

Hope this helps.

 

 

Edited by puckpilot

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had (or have) this same problem.  I played a lot of roller hockey growing up but have only been ice skating for the last year and some change.  A lot of the other mechanics transferred over pretty well but stopping was a completely different beast.  Only recently have I been able to start stopping on my right side pretty well.  There are a lot of great YouTube tutorials but to echo what others said, nothing substitutes quite like practice.  Working on T-stops separately was also helpful for me to get a feel for that outside edge.  The progress will come with time if you stick to it!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

 

I don't think leg strength training has anything to do with it, because it's all in the neural connection about balancing and distributing weight onto your edges (and getting past the fear of falling). I do agree that this would help a lot, because there's definitely some level of dullness that will allow you stop on both edges. (I'm not saying that stronger legs aren't better for almost every skating skill, just that when it comes to balancing on edges, strength or lack of strength isn't the issue at all.)

On 4/9/2018 at 6:53 PM, puckpilot said:

I don't think there's a substitute for real ice. ... Another thing that might help is to let your skates go dull so they slide along the top of the ice more easily.

The problem is if the only ice time you get is playing, you probably won't be able to play with edges dull enough that you can stop on them. Short of that, just hold the boards facing them and practice shaving ice one leg at a time. That will help tremendously with your inside edges, but you can't really use that for your outside edges. The only dryland training I can think of that might help would be sliding around on a slide board (or smooth floor in socks) just to get used to the sensation. It won't translate directly to ice, but at least it's the same sensation to try to get used to. To whatever extent you're able to improve on each "edge" on the slide board, that probably will benefit your progress somewhat when you work on it again on ice.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, YesLanges said:

 

 

I don't think leg strength training has anything to do with it, because it's all in the neural connection about balancing and distributing weight onto your edges (and getting past the fear of falling). I do agree that this would help a lot, because there's definitely some level of dullness that will allow you stop on both edges. (I'm not saying that stronger legs aren't better for almost every skating skill, just that when it comes to balancing on edges, strength or lack of strength isn't the issue at all.)

If you can walk, run, hop, skip and jump like any other normal human then I agree with you. However I have recently had first hand experience of this when I blew my achillies, had surgery and was in a boot for 3 months. When I finally got back on the ice and attempted a one foot slalom on the foot I had surgery on, I fell flat on my face, couldn't hold an outside edge, just not strong enough.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 hours ago, Vet88 said:

If you can walk, run, hop, skip and jump like any other normal human then I agree with you. However I have recently had first hand experience of this when I blew my achillies, had surgery and was in a boot for 3 months. When I finally got back on the ice and attempted a one foot slalom on the foot I had surgery on, I fell flat on my face, couldn't hold an outside edge, just not strong enough.

I think we've been through this discussion before in a different context, but you're not actually disagreeing with me at all, by virtue of your first sentence above. If the issue is whether or not increasing leg strength will help someone learn how to balance on an edge, we're not talking about the difference between what you refer to as "normal human" strength and sub-normal (atrophied) human strength for a given individual; we're talking about varying strength levels in a normal (meaning uninjured, non-atrophied) individual. Those are two totally different animals.

I agree that you definitely would not be able to skate on your edges the way you could before if you haven't yet recovered 100% from a traumatic injury, or before recovering 100% from the associated muscle atrophy, and before fully recovering your fine motor control. That's absolutely true; but losing your balance the way you describe really doesn't provide any evidence that strength is the critical variable at all. if it were genuinely a strength issue, you'd have collapsed at the joint rather than losing your balance. The fact that you couldn't balance yourself after your injury (even assuming that you were also weaker than normal for you), doesn't necessarily mean that you fell specifically because of your reduced strength level. It's much more likely that you'd recovered most of your motor skills but not yet your finest motor skills involved in balancing on an edge. 

Further, if leg strength were really the important variable, then anybody who can already skate reasonably well would automatically become a better skater (meaning better technically, not endurance-wise or speed-wise) anytime he increased his strength level. That's just not the case. Using myself as just one example, when I last skated at age 29, I was a pretty dedicated gym rat, routinely squatting 315 lbs for 15+ reps and/or 275 lbs for sets of 20+ reps (on my "light" leg day) in very good form. After 24 years off skates, I returned to the game in my 50's and at least 15 years since lifting any kind of heavy weights at all and at least 20 lbs lighter, of which a disproportionate amount came from less lower-body muscle mass, specifically. According to the theory of a correlation between leg strength and (technical) skating skills (like edge-work), I should be a much worse skater now that I'm so much weaker in my legs. Finally, in that regard,  and what's probably much more important, was that I started weight training after I could already skate and nothing about the transition from "civilian" leg strength to gym-rat leg strength a couple of years later improved my skating (except speed) even one iota. (And yes, I also trained my lower legs and even had my own seated calf machine at home.)

Now that I've skated enough to recover from my long layoff, I've really only lost speed and I'm the exact same skater now with no less technical ability than before when I was much stronger. If anything, I'm a slightly better skater now (technically), although much slower, because I've been less lazy about working on stuff that exposes my technical weaknesses instead of cheating to my strengths in practice the way I did  when I was younger. Moreover, for the first few months after coming back, I was also acutely aware of which skating muscles hadn't been used in decades, but that awareness manifested itself in the soreness (and horrible night cramps) in those muscles in between ice times, not in worse skating until they came back. Now that I'm using them regularly again, I never experience any of that, but the point is that really didn't affect my skating, and I was already skating as well as I used to long before those muscles stopped feeling unusually sore and crampy. In other words, my skating came back before those muscles did.

 

 

 

Edited by YesLanges

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, YesLanges said:

I think we've been through this discussion before in a different context, but you're not actually disagreeing with me at all, by virtue of your first sentence above. If the issue is whether or not increasing leg strength will help someone learn how to balance on an edge, we're not talking about the difference between what you refer to as "normal human" strength and sub-normal (atrophied) human strength for a given individual; we're talking about varying strength levels in a normal (meaning uninjured, non-atrophied) individual. Those are two totally different animals.

 

We are on the same page, just looking at it with different perspectives. My issue was strength, my foot and ankle muscles were not strong enough to hold the edge, the ankle collapsed. As I continued rehab and when I got enough strength back to a do a simple one foot calf raise, I could then finally do a one foot slalom again without face planting on the ice. Strength isn't going to make you a better skater once you are strong enough to do the basics, but as you advance towards elite levels of skating and want to make incremental gains in your performance then strength does start to come into play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As silly as it sounds, if you have a wooden floored corridor, try running down it and skidding to a stop. I find when I do it. I always stop on my strong side, left foot forward, right slightly behind, and I lean back over towards the way I ran from. I might try it so I face the other way. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 4/9/2018 at 4:54 PM, HockeyMech said:

So I have an issue where I can't seem to learn how to stop. Half of the problem is ice time, the other half is the typical fear of falling. I have trouble getting to my rink outside of game's to properly learn how to stop and I feel like it is holding me back. 

Is there anything I can do at home sans-ice to help me learn how to stop? Would getting synthetic ice help me at all? It's is bugging me so bad.

Well, I can just recommend going to public skating times where people are there for recreational skating, no hockey. There you work on all your skating skills, stopping, turning, going forward and backward. 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...