Can someone explain this?!?

[puckpilot 312]

2 hours ago, the_game said:

Don't worry guys, I think I might be a good Guinea pig for the muscle memory/neural pathway discussion. I'm 2 weeks post op from Neck fusion surgery where my spinal cord was severely compressed and I had nerve impingement. I can already notice subtle differences with how I am walking, doc said its my body adjusting for the abnormalities and is now getting back to a new normal. We'll see what happens when I finally get back on skates. I guess I'll have to mess around and start taping my tendon guard too so I can include that variable in my experiment, ha.

Yikes, anything to do with nerves is a scary thing. I developed a pinched nerve in my shoulder last year because of a muscle imbalance and it was three months of hell. 

Any way, I might be able to add something to this muscle vs neural pathway discussion. A few years back, I developed a hyperthyroid, and because of it, I lost about 25lbs of muscle in the course of about a month. Before this, I hadn't been off skates for more than 2-3 weeks in 15 years.

When I finally got back onto the ice, it was for a public skate. Figured it'd be a nice way to get my legs back under me after a three month layoff. Stepped onto the ice, and I was like Bambie. I couldn't get into a proper crouch, and when I tried, my legs wobbled. Couldn't corner. Couldn't even take a full stride for fear of falling. After 15 minutes, my quads were on fire, and I was exhausted. I'd loss so much muscle that when frying eggs for breakfast, I had to use two hands on the frying pan handle to pour the eggs out for fear of dropping it.  

It took me around three weeks of going skating every other day  to get me up to being able to take a decent stride and feel steady enough to put start training with equipment on. Took me another two months of hitting the rink 2-3 times a week with equipment to get back up to around 75%. The major muscles came back pretty quick, but the smaller stabilising muscles were taking really long to return. I remember trying to jog across the street. The stabilisation on lower legs were so weak that my feet felt like they were floppy clown shoes, which is how I felt when trying to accelerate from a dead stop.

Took me about six months get back to maybe 90% Another year to get to 95%. That last 10% is mostly about speed and quickness. I definitely lost at step and my explosiveness took a huge hit. In addtion, I lost something in my stickhandling. I used to be a pretty good one-on-one player. More often than not, I was able to pull pucks between peoples legs, and get by people in tight, but now, it's reversed. Most of my one-on-one move attempts fail. And it's pretty damned frustrating.

This isn't to say i don't think I can get it back, but progress is slow. In some ways my overall skills are better for having to come back from this. In other ways I'm worse off.

Just my 2cents. Take from it what you will.

[YesLanges 126]

Re. Puck Pilot's Experience:

I'm not suggesting that extreme muscle atrophy won't affect your skating at all; obviously, it will. But as to the question of where skating balance memory resides, the test isn't how well you can skate after significant muscle atrophy. Muscular strength is what we'd refer to as a "necessary but insufficient condition" for good skating. Mark Wells (1980 USA Olympian) provides an example of how badly severe muscle atrophy (also) affects skating. He endured decades of back problems, pain-med addiction, severe atrophy, and bed confinement. When he got back on skates in 2014 (for a 60 Minutes segment about him), he looked like he'd never skated. I believe that if he spent 1 year doing intense physical rehab, he'd be able to skate again, and much better than any adult who's been learning to skate for a year, precisely because his skating memory is still in his brain.

The two logical ways to test the hypothesis (that learning to skate optimally has an age-related window of opportunity) would be:

1. Take a group of strong, healthy, athletic non-skating adults and a group of kids and teach them both to skate and then compare their skating a few years later. The hypothesis is supported if the adults can't skate as well as the kids after a year or after however many years you want to wait for the results; and it's unsupported if most of the adults end up skating just as well as most of the kids after a year or two of learning.

I believe we have a lot of anecdotal evidence just on this board that very few adults can become elite (amateur) skaters when they learn later in life and that most adults who learned as kids skate much better as adults than adult learners, even after the adult learners have been skating for 10 or 20 years.

2. Take a group of proficient skaters and keep them off the ice for a year or for several years and then see how well they skate the first time back on the ice and how long it takes them to get back to skating as well as they did before their layoff. The hypothesis that balance memory is stored substantially in the muscles around the ankles would be supported if they were unable to skate again until they spent time rebuilding those muscles; and it's unsupported if they can step onto the ice for the first time in years and still skate pretty well, albeit with less speed, smoothness, stamina, endurance, and comfort than before the layoff . (Because a year or two is much more than enough time for those small muscles to deteriorate or atrophy from non-skating.)

I believe we have a lot of anecdotal evidence on this board (including my experience with a 24-year layoff) that people who once knew how to balance themselves on skates don't forget, even after decades of non-skating, which is more than enough time for any skating muscles to have atrophied. The fact that someone can still skate after all that time (and recover full skating ability much quicker than learning how to skate from scratch) suggests that it's not in the muscles, especially since anything that is a function of muscular development (like trained strength) all but disappears completely after just a few months off, let alone decades.

 

[crazyhick 19]

On 1/11/2017 at 1:07 PM, chippa13 said:

I've heard tell of one of Steve Heinze's brothers going entire high school practices without tying his skates.

Yes I've seen Andy Heinze come out for a men's league game with his skates untied

[Zac911 317]

6 hours ago, the_game said:

Don't worry guys, I think I might be a good Guinea pig for the muscle memory/neural pathway discussion. I'm 2 weeks post op from Neck fusion surgery where my spinal cord was severely compressed and I had nerve impingement. I can already notice subtle differences with how I am walking, doc said its my body adjusting for the abnormalities and is now getting back to a new normal. We'll see what happens when I finally get back on skates. I guess I'll have to mess around and start taping my tendon guard too so I can include that variable in my experiment, ha.

oh man!  Best of luck on a speedy recovery.  I had a nerve impingement in my lower back / hip area that I worked through for nearly three years.  No matter what I did I was in agony... In the car for 12-14 hours some days,  flat on my back in bed... Anything-  No relief.  You just grind on your teeth to get through it.  I hope you aren't in as much pain anymore.  Living with pain sucks.

[chippa13 1844]

3 hours ago, crazyhick said:

Yes I've seen Andy Heinze come out for a men's league game with his skates untied

Couldn't remember if the tales were of Andy or Peter. Just went against Andy on Tuesday.

[StinkyPinky 11]

I made a big jump from 90's CCM Tacks to Bauer Supreme one100 with an extremely rigid composite boot. I always tied my skates tight, and in my old skates always went for waxed laces for water resistance and keeping them tight. Only after completely breaking my tibia & fibula in my new Bauers can I recommend: DO NOT WEAR NEW SKATES TIGHT !

The old leather boots will flex laterally as well as allowing for dorsiflexion. The new rigid composite boots do not flex laterally. As such I tie the horizontal section very tight until the ankle (I have an EE boot with heaps of toe space), then allow quite some ankle/leg movement in the last 3 eyelets. When you heat form the new skates you can also be careful not to tie the top extremely tight.

If anything I skate better now... this was all a big mistake based on lacing up new technology with a 80's-90's mindset.

[greyskull 21]

I've gone from The Bauer 4000's of old , then many years off....

Graf 705's,
Bauer Vapor x90's
VH

I think in terms of improving my skating, the Graf's were excellent. Even after the 90's tastic Bauer Supreme's, they STILL felt like skating with the boot un-tied. that being said, they made improving my outside edge skating REALLY hard as I struggled to get the lateral support necessary. The x90's were great, and help a lot to improve my confidence, even if they may have impinged on my actual ability; but I think the VH's really are the butter zone. They are not cut too high, yet are extremely supportive. I'm finding I'm lacing them less and less tight as time goes on, but given how much wrap the boot has, you barely need to tie them anyhow.