Characteristics of High-Performance Skating

Maturity

• Young, inexperienced, hockey players skate more upright using horizontal movements with their skates.
• Performance-skating should focus on developing a fluid action-reaction movement with the arms and legs.
• Young, inexperience, hockey players can only concentrate on one hockey skill at a time.

1. Below ages eight or nine, hockey players generally skate more upright without fluid hip and trunk rotation and have vertical, rather than horizontal, movements of the skates (Marino 1984).
   
   
2. The basic ice skating pattern/technique has been developed by age ten (Marino 1984).
   
   
3. Young hockey players have difficultly coordinating the movement of their arms with their legs. Performance enhancing skills should concentrate on the coordination of arm and leg movement which will enhance performance.
   
   
4. Secondary tasks interfere with ice skating proficiency until players have had nearly eight years of previous hockey experience. Young players should concentrate on one skill at a time (Leavitt, 1979).
   
   
5. To assist unskilled players in performing two tasks simultaneously, the attention demands of one task must be reduced, ie: puckhandling while concentrating on skating (Leavitt, 1979).