A big problem with new hockey players and skaters is learning how to stop, keeping in mind, there is more than one way to stop on ice, but only a few of these different ways are correct. We’ll be showing you how to hockey stop correctly, we’ll also include a video tutorial as well as a written tutorials so you (the view) can decide which you would prefer to use (maybe both)
The hardest and most difficult part of learning how to hockey stop is getting over the mental barrier of stopping, this can be from the fear of turning both feet/skates simultaneously or the thought of your skate blades digging into the ice and you being thrown over. We at hockeytutorial.com have a number of videos and written tutorials on stopping on ice, these tutorials will help build your understanding and confidence of the techniques used when stopping.
Depending if you’re stopping to the right or the left, these next instructions might be reversed. Stopping to the right, you’ll need to use the inside edge of your left blade (skate) and the outside edge of your right blade (skate) want more information about the blades edges? click here. The next part is to bend your knees fairly deeply (giving you a low centre of gravity) this will help you keep balanced when turning your skates 90degrees to stop. One of the most difficult parts of the hockey stop is turning your skates 90degrees, it may seem very difficult to do this without your skates digging into the ice, this is overcome by leaning back together with bending your knees and ankles. Use the leverage from the knee bend to help turn your skates while remembering to lean back. The momentum from the stop will bring your body back to the upright position after stopping.
What edges of the skates should I be using when stopping?
The next part is to understand the concept of shaving the ice, this is the process of shaving or ploughing the ice with the edges or your blades (correct edges).
A great way to practice this is to hold the barriers of the rink and use the edges of your blades to shave the ice to get use to feeling and sound of ploughing or shaving the ice (as this is the same sound and feeling you’ll get when performing the stop. here is a video covering this subject, the video contains everything written in this tutorial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aac7_MpvUTU
