How to Skate Like an NHL All Star
Last weekend was the NHL All-Star Weekend and I’m always so impressed by the fastest skater competition. One of the coolest things I think about is that these aren’t fourth liners; these are the NHL’s best players. So not only are they skating at these high speeds, but they’re typically stick handling, reading plays, and fighting off opponents at those same speeds.
In typical fashion, Connor McDavid walked away with the title, but everyone was impressive in their own respects. Obviously, there’s a genetic component to speed, but these guys didn’t just sit around on their couch their whole career and hope to get faster. They’ve trained for years to be in the top 1%. I walked away thinking about what make these players different from everyone else.
#1 – Skating in deeper ankle, knee, and hip angles
When looking at elite skaters, they achieve larger ranges of motion so that every stride they’re covering more ground.
Players need ankle dorsiflexion, hip flexion, and hip internal rotation on the stance leg, as well as ankle plantar flexion, hip extension, hip abduction, and hip external rotation on the stance leg.
Let’s not forget about the commonly overlooked aspect that thoracic spine plays in the skating stride too. To stay over the stance leg, the upper body needs to rotate away from the push off leg to counterbalance the rotation occurring. The neck then needs to rotate in the opposite direction of the thoracic spine to keep the head looking forward throughout the whole process.
And these are just the ranges of motion needed for linear skating!
As you can see, performing mobility and dynamic warmups prior to every practice and training session is essential for your speed development. Here are two warmup routines that you can follow:
Day 1 Mobility
1. Bent Knee Walk Ankle Mobility: 8/side
2. Box Quad w/ Overhead Reach: 8/side
3. Quadruped Posterior Hip Mobility: 8/side
4. ½ Kneel Short Adductor w/ Overhead Reach: 8/side
5. Spider w/ Arm Arc: 8/side
6. ½ Kneel Pec Mobility: 8/side
Day 1 Dynamic
1. Linear Skip
2. Straight Leg Skip
3. High Knees
4. Butt Kicks
5. Shuffle w/ Arm Swing
6. Carioca (Short to Long)
7. Backpedal (Side Stand Start)
8. Alt. Crossover 3x to Sprint
Day 2 Mobility
1. Anterior Ankle Stretch: 30s
2. ½ Kneel Quad Mobility: 8/side
3. Pigeon w/ Reach Across: 8/side
4. Kneeling Adductor w/ Reach Under: 8/side
5. V-Stance T-Spine Rotation: 8/side
6. Split Stance Cross Body Lat w/ Reach Across: 8/side
Day 2 Dynamic
1. Lateral Skip
2. Lateral Cross Under Skip
3. 2-Shuffle to 1-Leg Stick
4. Crossover Shuffle
5. Cross Behind Shuffle
6. Backpedal Turn to Sprint
7. Alt. Diagonal Bound 3x to Sprint
8. Power Skip (Height)
Another major component of speed development that’s typically overlooked is the muscular endurance necessary to hold low skating positions. Although McDavid finished his winning rep in under 14 seconds, there are many examples of players accelerating in games late in shifts when they’re already fatigued.
Without the muscular endurance to stay low, your depth will continue to creep up, taking inches, or even feet, off every stride you take. At this point, it wouldn’t matter if you have the adequate mobility to get into elite skating positions if you don’t have the strength to stay in those positions.
A simple way to train this is to perform squat, split squat, and lateral squat holds. This can be done after practice so there is already fatigue built up that your body must fight off to maintain your position. A simple progression would look like this:
Week 1: 2x(4x:30/:30)/3:00
Week 2: 2x(4x:40/:30)/3:00
Week 3: 2x(4x:50/:30)/3:00
Week 4: 2x(4x1:00/:30)/3:00
This would be an increase in 10-seconds of holding from week to week while maintaining 30-seconds of rest in between your reps, and 3-minutes of rest in between your sets. The first time going through this cycle you should perform squat holds, the second time you should perform split squat holds, and the third time you should perform lateral squat holds. Then, if you’re really feeling gutsy and wanted to go through these holds even further, you could add a weight vest or dumbbells and start back from the top.
#2 – Linear speed is important, but game changing speed occurs during crossovers
There is this AWESOME overlay of some of the fastest skaters competing at the same time. In this video you can see that during the straight aways, everyone is relatively even, but where McDavid gains his most ground is during the crossovers.
Rarely in hockey are you sprinting from a standstill and it’s even less likely that you’ll sprint without any sort of crossover. You could be racing to a puck from a glide in the offensive zone, changing directions from defense to offense, or crossing over to avoid an opponent.
If you only perform your off-ice 10-, 15-, and 20-yard sprints from stationary starts like ½ kneel starts, 2-point starts, and lateral cross under starts, you’ll hit your highest speeds but, on the ice, you’ll need an extra stride or two to get up to speed. With lots of 50/50 pucks up for grabs throughout the game, needing an extra stride is not going to work in your favor to come out of those situations with the puck.
At the end of your dynamic warm up, adding in 1-2 variations of sprints from crossovers, shuffles, backpedals, jumps, bounds, and changes of direction to improve your body orientation to accelerate immediately.
As you can see, the possibilities are endless in terms of the variations you can come up with to sprint from. Adding these after your dynamic warm up before your max output sprinting (that would occur from a standstill) could be the key to unlocking your game breaking speed.
#3 – The upper body plays a larger role in sprinting than most people know
I want you to try two sprints – one with your hands in your pockets and one normally. I think we all know which sprint is going to end up being faster. Not only does arm swing counterbalance what’s occurring at the lower body, but there’s also connections between your upper body and lower body musculature that isn’t as known.
The body is comprised of fascia, which is this spider web-like tissue under our skin that covers the muscles, nerves, organs, etc. Because there’s fascia everywhere in the body and it’s extremely intertwined with muscles, there are many instances where muscles are connected by the same sheath of fascia. One of those connections is between the glute (the muscle that extends the hip) and the opposite side lat (the muscle that extends the shoulder), and this is known as the Functional Back Line.
When the lat produces more force, the opposite glute will produce more force.
When the shoulder moves at a high speed, the opposite hip will move at a high speed.
When the shoulder extends with a bigger range of motion, the opposite hip will extend with a bigger range of motion.
A simple way to structure how much upper body work you perform is to utilize the 3-5 method:
Pick 3-5 exercises, perform 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, use 3-5 minutes of rest between sets, and repeat 3-5 times per week. At the lowest volume, you could perform three sessions of three exercises utilizing a 3x3 protocol. This could easily be done in-season and would look something like this:
Day 1
Bench Press: 3x3
MB Chest Pass: 3x3
1-Arm DB Row: 3x3/side
Day 2
Chin Up: 3x3
MB Slam: 3x3
Incline DB Bench Press: 3x3
Day 3
MB Scoop Toss: 3x3/side
Split Stance 2-Arm Cable Press: 3x3/side
Split Stance 1-Arm Cable Row: 3x3/side
At the most, you could perform five sessions of five exercises utilizing a 5x5 protocol. This would be a lot for anyone but could be done in the off-season is someone was severely lacking in upper body strength and power development. This would look something like this:
Day 1
MB Chest Pass: 5x5
Bench Press: 5x5
Incline DB Bench: 5x5
DB Lateral Raise: 5x5
Seated DB External Rotation: 5x5/side
Day 2
MB Slam: 5x5
Chin Up: 5x5
1-Arm Cable Row: 5x5/side
Band Pull Apart: 5x5
Low to High Cable Face Pull: 5x5
Day 3
Explosive Push Up: 5x5
Incline Bench Press: 5x5
DB Bench Press: 5x5
DB Front Raise: 5x5
Seated DB External Rotation: 5x5/side
Day 4
Overhead MB Throw to Wall: 5x5
1-Arm DB Row: 5x5/side
Cable Pulldown: 5x5
Diagonal Band Pull Apart: 5x5/side
Low to High Cable Face Pull: 5x5
Day 5
½ Kneel 1-Arm Landmine Press: 5x5/side
½ Kneel 1-Arm Cable Pulldown: 5x5/side
Weighted Push Up: 5x5
Weighted TRX Row: 5x5
3-Way DB Shoulder Raise: 5x5 each
Now you can tell everyone that bench press is “sports specific.” You’re welcome.
As you can see, the best in the world didn’t just wake up one day and become the fastest skaters, they worked for it. If you set your mind to it, put in the work, and never give up, one day you could be skating laps around everyone too.
