Balance and Edges of Hockey Powerskating

Eileen Peerless: I am Eileen Peerless, hockey power skating instructor and coach. I have two students, two of my students with me who would help me to demonstrate balance drills or edge drills. This is Melvin John Nichols (ph) and this is Michael Desau (ph). They are going to help demonstrate how you do edges. We are going to start with Melvin John; he is going to do inside edges for us, inside forward. Inside forward, you keep the feet close together under the body. The shoulders rotate in the direction he is going and look at the deep edge that he has. You want to make sure that your knees are bend; the shoulders rotate in the direction you are moving. We are going to do backward inside. Backward inside is the same thing. The shoulders now rotate to the outside in the arc that you are moving. The free foot stays close by the gliding foot. The next, those were inside edges, alternating inside right, inside left.

Now, we are going to do outside edges. Melvin John is going to do outside. Again, we see the free foot knee and toe is pointing outward. This helps get you on the edge. His shoulders are rotating inward to help place the body over that edge, good. Now, I am going to ask Michael to do backward outside edges. Same thing, when you go on a backward outside edge, the knee and the toe are pointing outward. The shoulders rotate outward because that is the direction you are going. You are on a good outside edge, he is looking backward and the knee and the toe are pointing outwards. The higher you raise your knee, the greater the edge is going to be. I am going to ask Melvin John to do backward, another way of doing backward edges and that's the backward step behind. Here he uses his knee to bring his foot behind him. He rotates his shoulder in the direction he is going. His knees are out; his toes are out. Very good; now, we can combine our edges. We can use inside and outside. These are a little bit more advanced. So, I am going to ask Michael to do an outside to an inside edge. So he is starts off with an outside edge. He switches over to an inside edge. Comes around, switches feet, goes to the other foot to an outside to an inside. Edges are very deep. You notice the knee, up and down movement when he changes from one edge to the other -- very good, thank you. That is the beginning of learning your edge control. Edge control is very important. The better the edges the better the skater, so, practice these edges, become very good on your edges and your entire skating will improve. Next, we are going to move on to backward stride.