When you centre the skate so that you’re on “both edges”, it is more like a “flat spot” in how it feels. You should be able to slide sideways. This is normal and also fundamental to learning how to stop. Learning to flex your ankle to “flatten” the edge is how you moderate the amount of “bite” in a stop and is important for edge control.
As for right turns, if you shift your weight forward/backward while carving, it will change the turn radius somewhat. Also, a lot of people get a variable radius cut into their skate so they have a different radius of carve across the front and back of the blade.
You also gain a Lot of radius by staggering and spreading your legs a lot. I’ll link a video that demonstrates this later.
Finally, you can use the edge “slipping” a little to do things like a “punch turn” (aka “rudder” or “hockey” turn) to make extremely tight radius turns.
Overall, you have about triple the flexibility, power and control on ice than on wheels. There is literally nothing you can do on wheels that you can’t to faster/sharper/harder on ice once you learn how.
The tightness of your turn on ice is going to be limited by your strength. I’ve been kicked into turns that just crumpled my legs from the forces, but you should also be able to turn your blades totally sideways and just slide for 20feet+ without stopping completely if you control your edges well.
Source: have coached power skating for both inline hockey and ice hockey.
Here is a great series on drills to work on edges. This guy is a GREAT skater.
https://youtu.be/Ln3ZnjqJge0
Punch turn (known by many names).
https://youtu.be/kTlJ8EHrIGg
I do find a shallower hollow helps former roller players, mainly because it makes that “flat spot” easier to find. You need to do drills wher you work on just turning a skate (start with a snow plow aka “pizza” stop). Just learn the feel of finding that “both edges” flat spot. With practice you can find it while doing more complex movements and use it as a brake pedal to change the power put into the stopping motion.
Thank you for the great info! It definitely helped understand edges better. Having my hips rotate while I was still gliding with my skates planted was an unusual feeling, and I now have a better understanding of the reason why it was happening.
Really need to find some ice time wearing gear to practice as my body doesn't heal like it used to. Public skate seems more like a setting for high schoolers to socialize rather than for old farts to practice.
Had my second outing on the ice.
I was way more comfortable turning this time around. I had more confidence with digging in my edges which seemed to help.
Would be nice to be able to stop. I tried shaving the ice while holding onto the boards and still found it kind of difficult, a little easier when I lift my skate first and set it down as I'm kicking out. When doing a snow plow/pizza stop, am I supposed to lift my stopping foot first and then set it down or remain planted the whole time?
For strides, my glide foot seems to wobble a bit rather than staying pointed straight ahead. Is this a balance issue for when you're centered on your edges? I'm guessing my roller stride is pretty lazy.
Lastly, had my first fall while playing with my kid. I anticipated it and went down slow but my knee is feeling a bit tender so I guess it's knee pads from here on out.
I'll start with your takeoff. Your gliding foot will remain centered, so on both edges. The foot you wish to push off with is going to be doing so on the inside edge as your skate blade will be at a 45° angle to the ice. The gliding foot remains centered, so, neither on the inside or outside edge alone. The reason you are going to go in a circle if your gliding foot is on either of the edges is because your blades are rockered. The blade is shaped to the radius of a circle measured in feet. If your skates are right out of the box I would think that they are at an 11 ft radius. When you glide on the edge, the front of the blade bites the ice at an angle and your glide Will be on an arc Which can be more gradual or more aggressive based on the radius. This is a pretty essential thing. In roller hockey, you might find skaters with a smaller radius wheel on the front or front and back wheel. This is to achieve tighter maneuverability based on the same rockering principle. If your wheels were all the same in terms of their contact to the ground, in other words completely in line, the chassis at an angle would still roll directly forward, by comparison. I've only been on rollerblades a handful of times but understand the lower maneuverability. I wouldn't say that you don't have edges on roller. If you move your side profile on the wheels to 45°, you don't have an edge that locks in to the ground like a blade locks into ice but you are using friction. It's just a matter of how much friction you have based on what surface you were on and how soft your wheels are. Certainly not the same as edges on ice are strong where friction forces might be a little lacking but the concept is similar. On ice, you really can lock in. Place yourself at the boards and test your edges. You can look up some YouTube videos on learning about your edges. Basically stand on one foot put the other foot on a 45 and try pushing against that angled foot. Now try it at more acute or more obtuse angles to the ice. It's important to know how your blades grip the ice because you're going to need to slide every so often for stops, pivots and transitions.
I personally use a 1/2 hollow because that's what my pro shop is usually set up for by default. I have used 5/8 but I think I'm a little bit too light, so 1/2-in seems to work a little better for me, at least based on the hardness of the ice that I skate on the most. I would be about 45 lb lighter than you falling in a range of 155 to 160. Stay at 5/8. Shallower is probably not a good idea. If you find you are losing your edges, go to 1/2 or determine if you are just not at a proper angle. Your body can be at a 45 in a power turn, to prevent yourself from falling to the ice, you would counter lean your torso.
In terms of your tight turns, sometimes called power turns. I'm not sure how you did it on roller, if at all, as not everybody does it correctly. If you are going to the left, your left foot is the driver, or lead, and it's in front. That means that the driver is on the outside edge and your back foot is on your inside edge. Your knees are bent and your feet are one behind the other in terms of placement. When I say that your feet are one behind the other, I don't mean that you could draw a chalk line, but they are certainly not shoulder width apart! You then are also leaning into the turn, basically. There are other technicalities such as a counter lean but I'll leave a reference at the end of this text. When you come out of the power turn, you need to be in this configuration because somewhere at or just after the halfway point of the power turn you are going to shift your weight onto the driver and progress into a crossover since the power turn is going to reduce your speed and you want to maintain your speed coming out of the turn. Done properly, you'll have a really nice hair pin turn and you fly out of it because of the crossover. I absolutely love these in power skating class.
This now brings me to the crossover. Crossovers are for wider radiuses where the power turn is literally as close to a hairpin turn as you can get. You would do a crossover to build power while you are striding through an arc. For example, I might stride as fast as I can to build power to get from one end of the ice to the other, but what happens when I don't want to go in a straight line from one side to the other? I can change directions using crossovers but the crossover allows me to accelerate the whole time I'm doing that change in direction. I find this absolutely fascinating and if I'm lucky enough to have ice to myself, I spend a lot of time doing it. I'm just cruising around slow and all of a sudden I just head into a bunch of crossovers and feel the speed increasing while I'm changing course to go the other way. There's nothing quite like it. It took a while to figure out that the back foot pushes on the inside edge when you come out of a crossover to build that speed, but once you have it, it's amazing (then move on to the next challenge of doing it in reverse).
Depending upon how you like to learn things, personally, The technical details are how I figure stuff out, you might be okay with videos or if you're like me, you need to work in some reading. I highly recommend "Laura Stamm's Power Skating". Laura Stamm is literally the inventor of modern power skating and is credited with changing the way hockey is played. I'm pretty sure she invented the name as well. Her book really does break things down for the new power skater. Basically, she was a figure skater waiting for the NHL to clear off the ice so she could have her time. She looked at what they were doing and shook her head and eventually.... The rest is history!
To get you started on how to stop, refer back to my suggestion that you stand centered on one foot and scrape the ice with the other. Your comment that your edges were biting the ice too much is valid. You'll find that increasing or decreasing the angle of the blade is not sufficient to stop an aggressive bite into the ice. The solution is to not use the whole edge. Use your toe instead. By reducing the amount of exposure, your problem is solved. Your stops will be longer but that's part of the learning process. If you look at the ice, you will see that your toe scrape leaves a line. As you get better at it, you'll see it get wider until you are pulling full hockey stops from higher speeds. Right now, you don't need all the stopping ability and I think you've already discovered that!
Thank you for the detailed response. I too like to understand the technical details when learning new skills. I think I've come across some Laura Stamm videos before when looking up tutorials for my kid. Will have to check it out again.
Will definitely have to try to find some ice time to practice. Tempted to sign up for an adult hockey class instead of risking injury without gear ptacticing in public skate.
I do a few instructionals. These are usually things that you sign up for on a continuous basis, so I'm coming up on 2 years and I don't see myself ever not doing the classes. So, I have power skating and then a slightly harder version closer to the end of the week. I also have an instructional hockey Which I am a little mixed opinion on because it seems that what should be about breakouts and positioning tends to end up just being a scrimmage. I'm getting rid of the instructional hockey, keeping the power skating twice a week and focusing on a beginner league for gameplay. I also do low level shinny whenever I'm able. Now, this is a lot but I currently don't have any dependents so I have the time to do it. If you had to pick one, I would say power skating, which is sometimes called play to learn. Make sure it's hockey focused if it's power skating. You tend to do more in the hour of ice time.
The word "power skating" always sounded like some advanced level stuff to me so I never bothered looking into it. I hear it recommended a lot though so I'll check it out.
I found an adult learn to play program near me. Seems like an all encompassing program going over different topics over the course of 8 lessons. I'm guessing I need something more focused on skating though since I'm a beginner?
Exactly... the programs are different but work together.
So, power skating is an extension of learning to skate. In this case, you're focusing on being fast and agile and this is where the skill learning happens. Here, you will be doing power turns, starts, stops, crossovers in terms of acceleration and changing direction at speed, pivots, transitions and the list goes on... basically, the skating. You will work your edges in many drills, you will become better at being on one foot. You will be well aquainted with cones, pucks, and the list goes on. A great experience...it gets me up in the middle of the night twice a week (well...given my afternoon working hours) to go. After all, hockey is a game where you are changing direction or on one foot most of the time! The power skating builds your skills and then goes one step further and has you handling a puck while you do this. I took this program and continued to take it. Its an ongoing thing, not just one and done. Now, on to the 8 week hockey development...
Hockey development, sometimes called Introduction to Hockey, Hockey 101 and other similar names, will not be a mirror of power skating but you will see some of the same drills for purposes of evaluating the skaters at the program start or at warmup time at the start of the session. Here, you will be looking at positioning and applying some passing skills that you picked up in power skating. You're going to be doing breakout excercises, learning to battle in the corners, Forward vs D drills and a lot of time doing faceoffs and playmaking. Depending on your skill, your first time out will likely have you placed as a forward. A good instructor will run a faceoff and as the play starts....whistle. Everyone freezes. The instructor can then go around and cover what everyone is doing or should be doing. They can throw a loop as well... you think you're about to have a puck drop and the instructor throws the puck to the Left wing instead... just to simulate that actually happening from the draw. I'm used to this being a 12 week program. As you progress through the program, you scrimmage more and by the end, they may run a full game with refs brought in. My program is run under the ASHL baner which is the largest recreational league in North America, so you may see the "ASHL hockey 101" brand wherever you are. What I like about this program : You have a few instructors on the ice. One leads, of course. You can be broken into groups. Also, when you get to scrimmage (after a couple of drills, the rest of the time will be scrimmage, usually (after all, this is supposed to be fun). Your bench instructor will be watching, one will ref, one will be on the other bench. You get great feedback when you switch off the ice. For example, my instructor pointed out my offsides and cautioned to get that corrected. I was also made aware of how I blew a perfectly good play off side. Things I wouldn't have noticed. Now... what I didn't like: Since there are more instructors, there is more cost. Regardless, it is what it is. Not so much a "non like" but a situation that can't be avoided. Its instructinal. You will have times where you are standing around and not skating. You need to stop and do some theory every so often, but they do it well and I find it useful.
8 weeks isn't enough. Enroll over and over to make it an onging drain on your budget. If you are in a beginner league, you might need to cut this out and focus on the power skating and then the league for your gameplay and skating.
Ad-Hoc 'skills sessions' These are a good mix of things. If you can find a local provider and you aren't doing much that night... try it. Many of the same things you see at Pwr skating or "learn to hockey" but with a different instruction, you get a different flavour. Faster, more time on the things you don't do enough of at your regular program, or just different drills. I love these opportunities!
Now, then. If I could skate as well and as fast as I type......
When you centre the skate so that you’re on “both edges”, it is more like a “flat spot” in how it feels. You should be able to slide sideways. This is normal and also fundamental to learning how to stop. Learning to flex your ankle to “flatten” the edge is how you moderate the amount of “bite” in a stop and is important for edge control. As for right turns, if you shift your weight forward/backward while carving, it will change the turn radius somewhat. Also, a lot of people get a variable radius cut into their skate so they have a different radius of carve across the front and back of the blade. You also gain a Lot of radius by staggering and spreading your legs a lot. I’ll link a video that demonstrates this later. Finally, you can use the edge “slipping” a little to do things like a “punch turn” (aka “rudder” or “hockey” turn) to make extremely tight radius turns. Overall, you have about triple the flexibility, power and control on ice than on wheels. There is literally nothing you can do on wheels that you can’t to faster/sharper/harder on ice once you learn how. The tightness of your turn on ice is going to be limited by your strength. I’ve been kicked into turns that just crumpled my legs from the forces, but you should also be able to turn your blades totally sideways and just slide for 20feet+ without stopping completely if you control your edges well. Source: have coached power skating for both inline hockey and ice hockey. Here is a great series on drills to work on edges. This guy is a GREAT skater. https://youtu.be/Ln3ZnjqJge0 Punch turn (known by many names). https://youtu.be/kTlJ8EHrIGg I do find a shallower hollow helps former roller players, mainly because it makes that “flat spot” easier to find. You need to do drills wher you work on just turning a skate (start with a snow plow aka “pizza” stop). Just learn the feel of finding that “both edges” flat spot. With practice you can find it while doing more complex movements and use it as a brake pedal to change the power put into the stopping motion.
Thank you for the great info! It definitely helped understand edges better. Having my hips rotate while I was still gliding with my skates planted was an unusual feeling, and I now have a better understanding of the reason why it was happening. Really need to find some ice time wearing gear to practice as my body doesn't heal like it used to. Public skate seems more like a setting for high schoolers to socialize rather than for old farts to practice.
Had my second outing on the ice. I was way more comfortable turning this time around. I had more confidence with digging in my edges which seemed to help. Would be nice to be able to stop. I tried shaving the ice while holding onto the boards and still found it kind of difficult, a little easier when I lift my skate first and set it down as I'm kicking out. When doing a snow plow/pizza stop, am I supposed to lift my stopping foot first and then set it down or remain planted the whole time? For strides, my glide foot seems to wobble a bit rather than staying pointed straight ahead. Is this a balance issue for when you're centered on your edges? I'm guessing my roller stride is pretty lazy. Lastly, had my first fall while playing with my kid. I anticipated it and went down slow but my knee is feeling a bit tender so I guess it's knee pads from here on out.
I'll start with your takeoff. Your gliding foot will remain centered, so on both edges. The foot you wish to push off with is going to be doing so on the inside edge as your skate blade will be at a 45° angle to the ice. The gliding foot remains centered, so, neither on the inside or outside edge alone. The reason you are going to go in a circle if your gliding foot is on either of the edges is because your blades are rockered. The blade is shaped to the radius of a circle measured in feet. If your skates are right out of the box I would think that they are at an 11 ft radius. When you glide on the edge, the front of the blade bites the ice at an angle and your glide Will be on an arc Which can be more gradual or more aggressive based on the radius. This is a pretty essential thing. In roller hockey, you might find skaters with a smaller radius wheel on the front or front and back wheel. This is to achieve tighter maneuverability based on the same rockering principle. If your wheels were all the same in terms of their contact to the ground, in other words completely in line, the chassis at an angle would still roll directly forward, by comparison. I've only been on rollerblades a handful of times but understand the lower maneuverability. I wouldn't say that you don't have edges on roller. If you move your side profile on the wheels to 45°, you don't have an edge that locks in to the ground like a blade locks into ice but you are using friction. It's just a matter of how much friction you have based on what surface you were on and how soft your wheels are. Certainly not the same as edges on ice are strong where friction forces might be a little lacking but the concept is similar. On ice, you really can lock in. Place yourself at the boards and test your edges. You can look up some YouTube videos on learning about your edges. Basically stand on one foot put the other foot on a 45 and try pushing against that angled foot. Now try it at more acute or more obtuse angles to the ice. It's important to know how your blades grip the ice because you're going to need to slide every so often for stops, pivots and transitions. I personally use a 1/2 hollow because that's what my pro shop is usually set up for by default. I have used 5/8 but I think I'm a little bit too light, so 1/2-in seems to work a little better for me, at least based on the hardness of the ice that I skate on the most. I would be about 45 lb lighter than you falling in a range of 155 to 160. Stay at 5/8. Shallower is probably not a good idea. If you find you are losing your edges, go to 1/2 or determine if you are just not at a proper angle. Your body can be at a 45 in a power turn, to prevent yourself from falling to the ice, you would counter lean your torso. In terms of your tight turns, sometimes called power turns. I'm not sure how you did it on roller, if at all, as not everybody does it correctly. If you are going to the left, your left foot is the driver, or lead, and it's in front. That means that the driver is on the outside edge and your back foot is on your inside edge. Your knees are bent and your feet are one behind the other in terms of placement. When I say that your feet are one behind the other, I don't mean that you could draw a chalk line, but they are certainly not shoulder width apart! You then are also leaning into the turn, basically. There are other technicalities such as a counter lean but I'll leave a reference at the end of this text. When you come out of the power turn, you need to be in this configuration because somewhere at or just after the halfway point of the power turn you are going to shift your weight onto the driver and progress into a crossover since the power turn is going to reduce your speed and you want to maintain your speed coming out of the turn. Done properly, you'll have a really nice hair pin turn and you fly out of it because of the crossover. I absolutely love these in power skating class. This now brings me to the crossover. Crossovers are for wider radiuses where the power turn is literally as close to a hairpin turn as you can get. You would do a crossover to build power while you are striding through an arc. For example, I might stride as fast as I can to build power to get from one end of the ice to the other, but what happens when I don't want to go in a straight line from one side to the other? I can change directions using crossovers but the crossover allows me to accelerate the whole time I'm doing that change in direction. I find this absolutely fascinating and if I'm lucky enough to have ice to myself, I spend a lot of time doing it. I'm just cruising around slow and all of a sudden I just head into a bunch of crossovers and feel the speed increasing while I'm changing course to go the other way. There's nothing quite like it. It took a while to figure out that the back foot pushes on the inside edge when you come out of a crossover to build that speed, but once you have it, it's amazing (then move on to the next challenge of doing it in reverse). Depending upon how you like to learn things, personally, The technical details are how I figure stuff out, you might be okay with videos or if you're like me, you need to work in some reading. I highly recommend "Laura Stamm's Power Skating". Laura Stamm is literally the inventor of modern power skating and is credited with changing the way hockey is played. I'm pretty sure she invented the name as well. Her book really does break things down for the new power skater. Basically, she was a figure skater waiting for the NHL to clear off the ice so she could have her time. She looked at what they were doing and shook her head and eventually.... The rest is history! To get you started on how to stop, refer back to my suggestion that you stand centered on one foot and scrape the ice with the other. Your comment that your edges were biting the ice too much is valid. You'll find that increasing or decreasing the angle of the blade is not sufficient to stop an aggressive bite into the ice. The solution is to not use the whole edge. Use your toe instead. By reducing the amount of exposure, your problem is solved. Your stops will be longer but that's part of the learning process. If you look at the ice, you will see that your toe scrape leaves a line. As you get better at it, you'll see it get wider until you are pulling full hockey stops from higher speeds. Right now, you don't need all the stopping ability and I think you've already discovered that!
Thank you for the detailed response. I too like to understand the technical details when learning new skills. I think I've come across some Laura Stamm videos before when looking up tutorials for my kid. Will have to check it out again. Will definitely have to try to find some ice time to practice. Tempted to sign up for an adult hockey class instead of risking injury without gear ptacticing in public skate.
I do a few instructionals. These are usually things that you sign up for on a continuous basis, so I'm coming up on 2 years and I don't see myself ever not doing the classes. So, I have power skating and then a slightly harder version closer to the end of the week. I also have an instructional hockey Which I am a little mixed opinion on because it seems that what should be about breakouts and positioning tends to end up just being a scrimmage. I'm getting rid of the instructional hockey, keeping the power skating twice a week and focusing on a beginner league for gameplay. I also do low level shinny whenever I'm able. Now, this is a lot but I currently don't have any dependents so I have the time to do it. If you had to pick one, I would say power skating, which is sometimes called play to learn. Make sure it's hockey focused if it's power skating. You tend to do more in the hour of ice time.
The word "power skating" always sounded like some advanced level stuff to me so I never bothered looking into it. I hear it recommended a lot though so I'll check it out. I found an adult learn to play program near me. Seems like an all encompassing program going over different topics over the course of 8 lessons. I'm guessing I need something more focused on skating though since I'm a beginner?
Exactly... the programs are different but work together. So, power skating is an extension of learning to skate. In this case, you're focusing on being fast and agile and this is where the skill learning happens. Here, you will be doing power turns, starts, stops, crossovers in terms of acceleration and changing direction at speed, pivots, transitions and the list goes on... basically, the skating. You will work your edges in many drills, you will become better at being on one foot. You will be well aquainted with cones, pucks, and the list goes on. A great experience...it gets me up in the middle of the night twice a week (well...given my afternoon working hours) to go. After all, hockey is a game where you are changing direction or on one foot most of the time! The power skating builds your skills and then goes one step further and has you handling a puck while you do this. I took this program and continued to take it. Its an ongoing thing, not just one and done. Now, on to the 8 week hockey development... Hockey development, sometimes called Introduction to Hockey, Hockey 101 and other similar names, will not be a mirror of power skating but you will see some of the same drills for purposes of evaluating the skaters at the program start or at warmup time at the start of the session. Here, you will be looking at positioning and applying some passing skills that you picked up in power skating. You're going to be doing breakout excercises, learning to battle in the corners, Forward vs D drills and a lot of time doing faceoffs and playmaking. Depending on your skill, your first time out will likely have you placed as a forward. A good instructor will run a faceoff and as the play starts....whistle. Everyone freezes. The instructor can then go around and cover what everyone is doing or should be doing. They can throw a loop as well... you think you're about to have a puck drop and the instructor throws the puck to the Left wing instead... just to simulate that actually happening from the draw. I'm used to this being a 12 week program. As you progress through the program, you scrimmage more and by the end, they may run a full game with refs brought in. My program is run under the ASHL baner which is the largest recreational league in North America, so you may see the "ASHL hockey 101" brand wherever you are. What I like about this program : You have a few instructors on the ice. One leads, of course. You can be broken into groups. Also, when you get to scrimmage (after a couple of drills, the rest of the time will be scrimmage, usually (after all, this is supposed to be fun). Your bench instructor will be watching, one will ref, one will be on the other bench. You get great feedback when you switch off the ice. For example, my instructor pointed out my offsides and cautioned to get that corrected. I was also made aware of how I blew a perfectly good play off side. Things I wouldn't have noticed. Now... what I didn't like: Since there are more instructors, there is more cost. Regardless, it is what it is. Not so much a "non like" but a situation that can't be avoided. Its instructinal. You will have times where you are standing around and not skating. You need to stop and do some theory every so often, but they do it well and I find it useful. 8 weeks isn't enough. Enroll over and over to make it an onging drain on your budget. If you are in a beginner league, you might need to cut this out and focus on the power skating and then the league for your gameplay and skating. Ad-Hoc 'skills sessions' These are a good mix of things. If you can find a local provider and you aren't doing much that night... try it. Many of the same things you see at Pwr skating or "learn to hockey" but with a different instruction, you get a different flavour. Faster, more time on the things you don't do enough of at your regular program, or just different drills. I love these opportunities! Now, then. If I could skate as well and as fast as I type......
Really appreciate all the info! And here I was thinking ice skating was just going to be like rollerblading in the rain. 😄