Skating

Should you tweak your stride? – Slow motion forward stride analysis

February 17, 2016

Seeing something in slow motion is a great way to grasp concepts. I love just watching techniques in slow motion so I can notice minor details. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of good slow motion footage available, so when I had the chance to record my own I jumped on it. In this video I break down the acceleration phase of the forward stride and show you how the stride changes as speed increases. I hope these observations can help newer players understand how to improve their acceleration and speed.

In this video

First we look at the blade contact
- In early strides their is no glide
- As the speed increases glide increases during the stride
Next we look at push angle
- In the first few strides the push is nearly straight back
- As speed increases the push is more to the side
Last we look at arm swing
- In my opinion the arms should counter the legs
- Arm swing starts more front to back, but as speed increases and the push changes more to the side, the arm swing also changes to be more side to side