Reply To: Skating Treadmills

[Tim Taylor]

Dr. Mike Bracko has written about skating treadmills, and overall his impression is not favorable.

Here is a link to a presentation he made in the summer of 2012. It has been a month or so since I first watched it, but I think he does make some comments regarding treadmills in this presentation. But, I am not certain.

The presentation is worth watching regardless, especially if you are not familiar with his body of work.
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Tim, I liked that video and thanks for posting the link and your drill. His comment on the skating treadmill was that it is effective if the surface is flat and not uphill and the player handles a puck etc. I worked with Page in Austria, who did the early research in skating. He is a realy student of the game. Bracko lives about 5 minutes from me and I often watch him on the ice just before I play in the mornings. I also presented at the same symposium in Halifax with him.

My view is that it is important for young players to get the side to side motion early and that is why at the beginning you do full recovery and even heel clicks. The player has to learn a totally different movement pattern. Side to side instead of front to back. When we learn anything we over emphasize movement slowly (as a slow motion tennis swing or golf swing). Once they have the side to side motion then work on quick recovery.

Put a finger on the spot of the recovery leg hitting the ice and you will see that each leg hits about the same spot. So if you were skating down the blue line each skate would recover about 1/3 toward the middle of the line and not outside the line. I did this with his video demonstrations. The slow skaters were recovering too far and the skate would have come back over about 60% of the way to the other side of the blue line causing slow push off and recovery. I think Mike misses the point about how close to the midline each foot hits the ice. It is in line with shoulder hip and knee and not the chin but the initial blade contact with the ice isn't very wide apart.

You need to be able to control your skating on all of the edges, turn each way etc. All this has to be done in a hockey skating position like he outlines in his talk.

Interesting thing is I saw Tony Walsh sitting and listening in the video, he instructs on the skate mill for Red Bull and does a lot all over. He has a quiet skating treadmill that is flat that he markets.