The Hockey Power Stop

Transcripts

Eileen Peerless: I am Eileen Peerless, hockey power skating instructor and coach. This is one of my students, Michael Desau (ph), who will demonstrate the hockey stop. He is going to take two strides and stop both feet, turn. As he goes into the stop he will use two edges, an outside edge and an inside edge and feet stay parallel. Good; the body turns, the lower body; I am going to demonstrate that for you to help you understand the elements involved. If you practice these drill you want to take a stick or you can hold your hands straight out in front of you. Feet should be about ten inches apart when you do this or 12. It should be under your hips. As you come in, you rotate the hips to the side that you are going to stop. You have an inside edge on the front skate, an outside edge on the back skate. Your shoulders stay straight. They are going to help you actually stop.

So that when you come in, you're skating, you are going to stop and you turn your lower body, you bend your knees and you sit. Keep your shoulders straight that will help you stop. This is what is called checking your shoulders, so that as you go forward, they check and they do not move. They stay straight, but your lower body is the one that is going to rotate. Rotate to the right or rotate to the left, either way. You are going to use an inside edge and an outside edge. When you do this when you want to practice it is just a scraping on the ice. So you take your inside foot, you scrape on a inside edge then you try and get the back outside edge. You can do T-Stops, where you push and straight with your little toe or eventually you are going to get those edges that you just rotate the hips to the side. Make sure both feet turn together, not just one and your weight is going to be on the front half of the blade. This is what the hockey stop looks like at full speed. Next, we will be talking about the power turn.