Sean Skinner skating dvds

[usahockey22 0]

For that amount of money, you could go to a power skating clinic and get firsthand instruction for skating.

[Tailboard Jockey 25]

I just ordered 3-7.

[ktang 34]

DVD 4 - Backwards Edges and Crossovers

This one has all the difficult techniques that I've had problems with (e.g. one-foot toe pushes down the ice, backwards). But, the good thing is that there is a skill progression that leads up to the difficult techniques, so if you have the patience to do them properly and in sequence it should get you there.

He points out that the backwards stride is NOT a C-cut, but rather a push-out (sharp), and then a recovery. It's similar to Huron Hockey's explanation about the backwards stride recovering in the middle of the other skate, rather than behind it (and causing a stop or loss of speed).

There is one demonstration where a really talented skater (not Skinner, in this case) goes down the ice, one footed, forwards and backwards (always on the same foot). He stops and starts back towards the first goal-line one-footed.

He shows the 2 types of backwards crossovers: with the outside leg staying on the ice, and with the outside leg crossing over.

He also uses markers on the ice to show the backwards stride, similar to the diagram in Laura Stamm's book.

DVD 5 - Forward Stride Speed / Over-speed

This DVD has more theory than DVDs 3 and 4. Skinner talks about the forward vs static knee-bent positions, the different push angles for different speeds, and the different stride recovery positions for different speeds.

There are a lot of drill progressions, but these should be easy to do for most experienced players. If you are teaching somebody, or if you are learning yourself, then these drills are very good (we use a lot of them when we do our refereeing power skating over 4 days).

Skinner talks about the different types of arm swing, and again makes the claim that the forward-backward arm swing favoured by North American power skating coaches does not make the players faster than those using the traditional arm swing. He shows how to swing the arms with one hand on the stick and with 2 hands on the stick. I liked this section a lot because it cleared up a lot of things for me.

This DVD, more than the others so far, showcase a lot of training aids, e.g. bungie cords, harnesses, e.g. tow ropes. There is also a section on overspeed training aids (bungie cords, skating treadmills) that you will either agree with or not. There is another section about testing speed, which is more useful for coaches (I think), although there is an impressive backwards start sequence in there by a player (outside leg crossing over).

The last section talks about skating with the puck without losing too much speed. I guess that is Skinner's specialty, and he explains and demonstrates it well.

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Yes, I could spend the money for power skating lessons (or a lot less when it's subsidized by our refereeing association), but I like having the DVDs because Skinner spends more time explaining the theory (a power skating coach wouldn't want to waste the ice time), and because I can review the sequences and progressions later and in slow-motion.

[ju87 0]

Thanks for the info !

[ktang 34]

These 2 DVDs were the best ones in the series for me. These deal with quickness, which my kind of game needs more than outright speed.

DVD 6 - Acceleration Starts & Stops

There is a nice analysis of forward starts. Skinner notes that there is no difference in acceleration if starting on the toes or starting on the flats of the blades. He shows you how to analyze your starts' ice markings to see if you are slipping instead of applying the power to the start.

Then he shows all the different kinds of forward starts, and the skill progressions for each of them.

There are some 2-player drills, and other ones using ramps, bungie cords, etc. There are some sequences that are repeated from the earlier DVDs.

Then he shows the backward starts.

The last set of sequences deal with forward stops, from beginner techniques to expert ones (including Glantz's type of stopping), and then backward stops.

DVD 7 - Agility for Hockey Skating

He shows all the variations of tight turns, with some nice diagrams. Traditional power skating instructors won't like his analysis of the quickest tight turn, with the skidded inside skate, e.g. Gretzky turns, but I have always felt that this is the tightest and fastest way to do tight turns.

Then there are team drills for tight turns, good for coaches to use.

Next, he demonstrates the lateral movement drills, with individual and team progressions.

Then there is a section about gap control and backwards to forwards pivots, and another one about angling when forechecking. These sections are pretty good, and provide more game-like drills for developing backwards crossovers and pivots.

He uses a lot of Paul Vincent's and Jack Blatherwick's drills.

His next sections on pivoting (fwd to bwd and bwd to fwd) are extremely detailed. I think this is usually a weak area for players, so the way his skill progression addresses this area would help a lot of players.

There is a section for using an agility ladder on ice. I think this kind of footwork could be done off-ice, but if you have the ice time this could be useful.

There is a short section showing some skating moves with the puck, Skinner's specialty.

[SolarWind 23]

thanks for yet another comprehensive review - nice!

Skinner notes that there is no difference in acceleration if starting on the toes or starting on the flats of the blades.

Interesting he says this - is he explaining it in any way?

I always thought that the theory behind toe starts (that Stamm advocates for) is pretty solid - when staying on the front 2" of the blades the area of contact is much smaller then when staying on the flats, and so the pressure would be higher, which in turn should allow edges to dig deeper & prevent slippage?

[ktang 34]

thanks for yet another comprehensive review - nice!

Skinner notes that there is no difference in acceleration if starting on the toes or starting on the flats of the blades.

Interesting he says this - is he explaining it in any way?

I always thought that the theory behind toe starts (that Stamm advocates for) is pretty solid - when staying on the front 2" of the blades the area of contact is much smaller then when staying on the flats, and so the pressure would be higher, which in turn should allow edges to dig deeper & prevent slippage?

I think that as long as the skater isn't slipping, then landing on the flats is OK. Skinner shows how to analyze the skate marks to see if there is any slipping.

Bjorn Kinding (on one of Skinner's skating symposium DVDs) analyzed Paul Kariya's starts (on the flats), and he concluded that starting on the flats is quicker.

I think that there are quick skaters that use both techniques (Roenick does the toe starts, and he was a very quick starter when he was younger), so Skinner is saying that both ways work.

This is against what the traditional North American power skating instructors have been teaching (toe starts). Skinner notes in one of these DVDs that a lot of the North American power skating techniques are lifted from track-and-field sprinting (e.g. arm swing straight forward and back, toe starts), whereas European hockey skating techniques are taken from speed skating (e.g. starts on the flats, arm swings more diagonal).

[orangecrush10goflyers 0]

Anthony,

Yeah..I got an email. I would like to improve my skating but an worried that I'll need "tons" of equipment to do the plyometric or off-ice drills. I was wondering also if these drills/excercises would apply to roller also. Plus $300 for all the dvds is quite a bit of $$ (at least to me)

You should see how much he wants for the skinner shooter device.

[SolarWind 23]

I though I'd continue building Kevin's legacy with regard to Skinner's DVDs reviews :)

My initial impression from skimming through a few disks was not extremely positive - comparing with Sean's old Stickhandling DVDs the man is definitely aging, and it almost looked like he just received his new skates (since he switched from his old CCM Tacks to U+) - somehow stops looked choppy, transitions weren't smooth etc

But after actually watching these DVDs in order they really grew up on me: the progression of drills is very logical & detailed, and explanations are also comprehensive & make sense.

While especially in the DVDs 1-5 Skinner definitely didn't look like the best skater out there it almost seemed like he got used to the skates or something, because when it came to DVDs 6 & up he looked pretty good.

He claims that if someone completes all the drills from the videos he or she would be able to skate at the NHL level. It's a pretty bold statement, and again while I've seen DVDs with much better skaters (namely Stamm's powerskating DVDs where Doug Brown who is 15 years NHL veteran is showing the drills) this set is much more complete comparing with Stamm & Glantz.

The only one thing I found the DVDs are missing is a technique called 'rubber crossovers' described in Barishevtsev 'Victory on Ice' DVD [see ~ 3 min mark here:

] which really is just a combination of a heel turn immediately followed by a crossover into the same side as the turn.

now on to the review - there's nothing left to add to DVDs 1-7 - Kevin has covered pretty much everything.

DVD 8 - On-Ice Power & Plyometrics

The dvd as usual starts with easy stuff: bunch of 2 legged squats, followed by one legged squats with the free leg either behind or in front (what's known as 'shooting the duck' drill)

Skinner then moves to all sorts of jumping drills starting with the basic 2 foot over the line, progressing to two footed lateral jumps both stationary & while skating in a straight line & around the circle, and finishing with some funky jumps with turns & jumps into stops - good times. This btw is done both forwards & backwards.

Then of course after 2 feet it comes time to one-footed jumps (forwards & backwards) - very similar to what he had in his Stickhandling DVDs. The only real difference is that before we was emphasizing jumps for width only, now he's also including jumps for height & length as well. Once again while Skinner might not be the most smooth skater out there he is very strong on his edges which is evident in jumps.

For some reasons multiple drills are repeated through different sections making the overall duration of the video longer.

Anyhow - Skinner goes on to breaking the myth of the importance of pre-game stretching (something that any strength athlete knew for ages) by saying that it not only increases the risk of injury (stretching cold muscle) but also reduces the power potential by up to 20%. After that he demonstrates a series of dynamic & static stretching exercises.

There's also a section advertising maximum edge sharpening with Bob Allen (sp.) & benefits it brings + very basic descriptions on hollow, profile etc - good for someone who wants to wrap their head around the basics. reinforce some concepts such as negative pitch = bad, they call it "skating uphills". Profiling = good because factory blades aren't "set correctly" yada-yada-yada...

Overall I couldn't really figure out why this DVD was called plyometrics since I didn't see any real plyo exercises which include muscle preload before an explosive contraction (such as jump off a box & jump out of the hole or something).

so all in all this DVD is a nice summary of on-ice jumpimg/hoping drills, some of which are quite unique and entertaining.

[SolarWind 23]

Ok - it's time to continue :)

DVD 9 - Dry-land training

the DVD opens up with Skinner talking for ~10 mins about how great this DVD set is. He then once again talks about the importance of dynamic warmup that should NEVER include any strething - he provides the exact same explanation as in DVD 8.

He then demontrates a special dry-land training shoe "he developed in 90s" which is just a regular skate with a sole attached to it instead of a holder/blade. The reason for that is because Skinner believes that doing dry-land training in regular running shoes would not allow to train 'hockey specific muscles' (he even says it'd be 'almost a waste of these exercises') since regular shoes allow bending at the ball of the foot, while in skates it's not possible - the only bending point is at the ankle. While this sounds good in theory I've never seen anyone stress this particular point - in fact all dry-land training from Kovalev or Twist is always done in runners...

Skinner goes through what he says is 'every single product available on the market for dry-land training' - while some products are relatively inexpensive (such as gliding disks from glidingpro.com) & can be useed at home, others require specially equipped facilities - such as skating threadmills or 'total hockey training centres' from totalhockeyusa.com. It's probably for them Sean goes through different models of artificial ice available - but then again - some people use even that at home :)

After there there's a really long section dedicated to sliding boards of all sorts - from traditional ones where you just skate left-to-right, and some much larger rectangular ones I personally haven't seen before - they allow gliding in all sorts of directions + prachice the natural striding at 45 degrees rather then straights sideways as with traditional boards. There're some pretty cool exercises that Skinner demonstrates such as sliding & crossing that imitates stopping on the outside edge etc.

Then Sean goes to talk about rollerblading demonstrating mostly same techniques as skating DVDs: all sorts of starts (the technique translates well between the ice & acphalt, especially for starts on the flats), rolerblading uphill etc.

At the end there're sections about usual dry land bodyweight exercises - interestingly enough Skinner perform these in runners, not in skates as he initially advocates for. :))

To wrap it up Skinner strips down to a pair of very skinny shorts, and goes to show his "squat record" - 480 for 5 & 528 for 3 - which would have been quite impressive considering that he goes raw (no belt or knee wraps), except that it's not even a 1/3 ways down!

All in all a good DVD, but for me personally not terribly useful.