KelpFries

@z1ggy Thanks! I'll throw a pic up in the morning.

This is a bit of an older thread, but I figured i'd throw my 2 cents in as i've frustratingly dealt with over-pronation and maybe someone might read this and it may help them. I am by no means an expert, i'm not an podiatrist either, but what I do have is experience with just this type of thing. I've thrown money around and wasted time trying to overcome it. I've only been skating for about 9 or 10 months now, and the first few months were ridiculously infuriating, to the point where I was going to give up my dream of being able to skate well enough to play some hockey because I was not getting anywhere with my learning process and was being ridiculously limited in my ability to do certain things because I just could not gain an outside edge, my skates were just leaning inward too much. So here's what I learned in my trials and tribulations. There are 2 things that can help with over-pronation, a short term fix and a long term fix, and I would recommend both. The long term fix is a second on the advice from Vet88 who helped me along the way and gave some great advice just as he's done in this thread. I still use a short term fix when playing in games, but use the long term fix doing practice skates. 1) Short term: Wedges and inserts. I must have read a million threads and a million articles on over-pronation and fixes for it for ice skating. However, every single thing I read related to wedges and insoles were completely wrong. I even read an article where one bloke was going into detail on how to create wedges out of a flip flop to fix over-pronation in a skate, and it was completely wrong missing the point of the mechanics. I spent hundreds or even thousands for wedges, inserts and even $700 for custom orthotics and all of these not only did not help fix my pronation, they made it worse. It's about the mechanics of an ice skate. You can help with pronation by using inserts and wedges designed for over-pronation, but only in a shoe or trainer. In a shoe your foot lays flat, in a shoe with a flat sole, on ground that is flat, Your shoe is not going to rock from side to side, it remains flat, so if you have an insole in your shoe that raises the arch in your foot, it's going to raise your foot all the time and will help alleviate issues with over-pronation. And I do recommend inserts or wedges in shoes or trainers for anyone dealing with a pronation problem, especially if the pronation is causing foot pain. However, in a skate, you do not have a flat sole resting on solid ground, you have a thin piece of steel that will allow your foot to rock side to side. Your foot is going to be in the position it wants to be in when you put pressure on the skate. If you have over-pronation your foot is going to cause the skate to rock inwards because your foot wants to be in a specific position when you put pressure on it. Now add an insole or wedge that is trying to raise the inside of your foot. When you put pressure down on the skate, your foot is still going to want to be in a specific position regardless of the insert or wedge underneath it, and because the skate can rock from side to side, when you plant your foot it will force itself into the position it wants to be in and will only cause to skate to rock inwards even more and you have now exacerbated your pronation issue. In a skate, for the short term as a quick fix, you need to deal with over-pronation from a wedge and insole perspective as over-supination. I still use wedges that I created in my skate, but only during games and will continue until I have reached a point that I do not need them anymore, which is rapidly approaching, however, I use the wedges as if I was trying to fix an over-supination problem, on the outside of the foot. I created wedges to lift the outside of my foot in the skate. This may sound silly and counterintuitive, but it's about the mechanics of a skate. I know that my foot will force itself into a position it wants to be in. By adding wedges to the outside of my foot in the skate my foot still goes into the position it wants to be in, but now because of the wedges my skate tilts outwards and allows the blade to sit squarely on the ice and allows me to gain an outside edge. No matter what you do, your foot will still position itself in the way it is naturally going to be regardless of what position the skate is in. With wedges or inserts it's not a matter of fixing the over-pronation, that's just not happening with wedges, inserts or even insoles, it's a matter of getting the skate into the position it needs to be relative to the position of the foot inside it. Think of it like this, your foot will always remain in the same position relative to the ice, with over-pronation it will be tilted inwards on an angle relative to the ice surface, you can't change this short term. The only thing you can do is try to get the skate around your foot to be positioned differently. If you use pronation wedges or insoles you're not going to change the position of your foot, you'll only change the position of the skate around your foot, so if you use pronation wedges or inserts on the inside of your foot, you'll only push the skate inwards more and your problem will be even worse. With wedges or insoles for the outside of your foot, again, you're not going to change the position of your foot relative to the ice, but what it will do is change the position of the skate to make the skate lie more outwards which will help align the skate to the ice. You can also accomplish this by shimming, which would move the runner into a position square to the ice. I personally never went for this route though simply because I felt it would hinder me in the long term because the whole boot is still in a rocked inward position, only the runner is square. And also moving the holder laterally is an option, but I also never wanted to do this either because I wasn't comfortable having holes drilled into my skate or having the center of gravity moved inward relative to my foot. With trial and error and different thicknesses, I created an insert (I formed one out of plastic and tapered so I cannot feel it) for the outside of my foot that gave me the correct adjustments I needed in order to be able to gain an outside edge and get my skates into the correct position. As I have been strengthening I have been grinding the edge down thinner and thinner as needed. 2) Long term: Ankle and arch strengthening. I took the excellent advice from Vet88 and have been gradually skating with eyelets open during my practice skates, i'm now down to 4 open eyelets and damn is it hard. But it does work wonders. I do this as much as possible, along with doing arch strengthening exercises constantly where I scrunch up my toes which brings up the arch in my foot, hold it for 5 seconds and release for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, release for 5 seconds. I do this over and over, all day long. These 2 things have made a massive impact on my pronation problems. I hope that no one goes through what I went through, especially beginners, even at my old fart age, because this is a great game with great people and for anyone that has to deal with pronation issues it can be an extremely frustrating problem, so frustrating that some people my actually just give up, just as I almost did, and they'd be missing out on the fun of this wonderful game. One other thing, the skates you wear are also very important when you have an over-pronation issue. If your skates are loose in anyway, it will cause the skate to roll inwards more. Make sure you try on every skate you can and make sure they are snug, not cripplingly tight, but snug enough so that your foot does not move around in them. I drove the sales guy crazy when buying my latest pair of skates, absolutely crazy. I was trying on skates for hours. Every line from both Bauer and CCM. Different sizes. I would try a size and style and walk around for 30 minutes, getting into my hockey stance, walking around in a hockey stance, yes I was the crazy old fart walking around in skates crouched down like I was mental, I didn't care. It's a lot of money to plonk down and the most important piece of equipment you'll buy. I finally settled on CCM Ribcor's for a couple of reasons. Firstly, man oh man are they comfortable, like slippers. Locked my heel in really nicely, zero pain or foot aches from day one. Secondly, CCM's 90 day return policy. Can't go wrong, don't like them, bring them back. Thirdly, Ribcor's have great lateral stiffness which helps with pronation, however, they have unbelievable forward flex, even when all of the eyelets are tied. This helps my pronation immensely because I could never tie the top eyelet in my other Bauer Supremes as there was no forward flex when tied all the way up to the top and I would constantly feel as though I was on my heels. In my Ribcor's I can flex forward all the way and get my hockey stance down without any effort while still having great ankle support from having the boot tied all the way up.

Thanks! I'll have to take a peek and see what it looks like.

Ah ok. So stick time is generally beginners? Thanks for the link by the way. There is one rink on there that has a clinic on a Sunday morning that is about 50 minutes away from me, that might work for me.

Thanks SirJW! There's one rink by me that has stick and puck sessions, Howell Ice Arena. Is that what you mean by stick time? Not familiar with stick and puck. The arena I go to which is right next door to my office is the Jersey Shore Arena. They have open hockey sessions. I've sat and watched a couple of these to see just how good the people attending are. Some are pretty good, there are a couple of guys that aren't that great there though. I myself am not quite up to the standard of "not that great" yet so it'll be a little while longer for me to drop in on an open hockey session. I think once i'm able to do backwards crossovers without looking like I just got terrified by a poltergeist every 4 or 5 strokes I might consider dropping in on an open hockey session.

Does anyone know of any Adult Hockey clinics or Adult Learn To Play sessions in Central Jersey? I'm in my second round of Learn To Skate lessons and doing pretty well. From there i'd like to get some at least basics of hockey down before I attempt to drop in on an Open Hockey session so I don't look like a complete knob out there and start pissing people off because I have no idea what i'm doing! I've called every rink around me and not one of them has any type of hockey instruction for adults, not one. The closet place i've found from Googling is an hour and a half up north from me on a Sunday morning. I can't believe that there is so little interest in learning Hockey in my area that no rinks have any kind of classes for adults! I've looked into private lessons and while I can get those, i'd much prefer it to be a class with other people, that way you can have practice scrimmages and you'd be able to practice the things you're learning in a real sort of game. If anyone knows of any type of Adult hockey classes around the central Jersey area please let me know! I'd appreciate it!