Learn more about skating fundamentals as part of our hockey & skating programs.
Improve your skating, improve your game! It’s easy . . .
In most sports, mobility, or the ability to move, is critical to achieving success. In baseball, the fielders must react quickly when contact between bat and ball is made. They run, jump or dive to get to where the ball is going. The batter runs to first base as quickly as possible. In soccer, players are constantly jogging or running to get involved in the play.
While most people naturally develop the ability to walk, run and jump, we understand that some are better than others. The best combine their natural talent with practice to achieve maximum efficiency. Sprinters, for example, spend thousands of hours developing their technique to become just micro-seconds faster. While training is required to achieve greatness, the basic mobility skills of most dry-land sports are developed naturally; we learn to run and jump as children, often before we can even speak.
In ice hockey, mobility is linked to the most fundamental of all hockey skills: skating. Contrary to popular belief, just because we live in Canada, it doesn’t mean that we learn to skate before we can walk! While our ability to walk is perfected by many hours of free “practice”, skating practice is generally limited.
The term “Power Skating” conjures images of drill sergeant coaches yelling at players and making them skate to exhaustion. While this type of practice can be beneficial to athletes intent on improving conditioning, it is in conflict to Action Innovation’s philosophy on skating development. If a player’s skating technique is flawed, copious repetitions only serves to reinforce those bad habits. Instead, Action Innovation understands that “power” in skating comes from a player’s ability to combine balance, agility, strength and command of edges into efficient movement on the ice.
To differentiate our skating development approach from those who offer “Power Skating” in the Ottawa, Ontario area, we now offer “Skating Fundamentals”, a hockey & skating program that more accurately reflects the focus we put on developing the fundamentals necessary to build control and speed into all aspects of skating.
In the Skating Fundamentals program, you will focus on developing strong skating posture, balance, agility and your command of blade edges, in order to improve your efficiency on the ice. Our hockey & skating program instructors select drills that will challenge your current skating abilities, allowing each individual to improve independently. Whether you are an experienced player limited by your skating abilities or relatively new and struggling to catch your friends, this hockey & skating program will help you improve rapidly. You may be surprised at how good it feels to skate properly!
At Action Innovation, we offer skating fundamentals courses to those in Ottawa, Cumberland, Carleton Place, Osgoode, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec.