As a physiologist, if I could write only one bit of advice it would be this...

Dryland skating practice is just as important as skating.   Every skater, from the oldest to the very youngest — the beginners who are just learning to tie their skates — should include some form of dryland training year-round.  

Make it fun, of course.   But that’s your job, not mine.   I have no idea what motivates these little rug rats.   If planned well, dryland training teaches good skating posture and other habits that cannot be taught as effectively on-ice.

Every arena in the world should have an area for dryland training.   I don’t mean architectural monuments that ruin the simplicity of a hockey arena — the gold-plated weight rooms and fitness centers for profit.   I’m talking about space — dingy, dirty space — that can be used for skating, shooting, stickhandling practice — dingy enough that the zoo-keepers won’t complain if there are a few puck marks on the walls.

Remember...every time a youngster steps on the ice, habits are being formed — good or bad. Consider how many months beginners are allowed to develop poor habits before we do something to change that.  Fifteen minutes of dryland “skating practice” two or three times per week will  teach correct skating postures — the number one fundamental.  Exercises like wide lunges with a hockey stick in hand will reinforce this position as the comfort zone.

Dryland skating practice also increases the kinesthetic feeling a skater must have — the feeling of applying force from one leg through the entire body.  This is the same feeling one gets when jumping from one leg (knee bent to 90 degrees) high and wide to the opposite side.

It is impossible to become a great skater without good knee bend and without learning the feeling of efficient, powerful extension — applying force from the ice through the entire body, extended in a straight line.   These positions and feelings are easily taught off-ice, so next day on the ice, the habits being formed with each stride are good ones.

Certainly, the word “strength” for a young skater means something totally different than it does for a college nose tackle or an Olympic weightlifter.   Strength in skating simply means the ability to handle body weight on one leg with adequate knee bend — including while cornering at high speed when centripetal forces are high.

“Loading up” body weight over a bent knee must always precede a powerful extension.  Anyone who doesn’t skate this way is running...not skating — and even some NHL’ers get it done in this less efficient way.   However, explosive skating strides require leg strength that is efficient.   To quote Peter Twist, one of the true experts in this field, who used the phrase in another context, “We need to train ‘smart muscles,’ not just strong muscles.” 

Efficiency means that strength or explosive power is applied in the most effective way.   Here is an example worth visualizing, so it becomes obvious why we must train “smart muscles.”   If we challenge the strongest athlete in the world to push a hockey net the length of the ice — and if he isn’t as smart as he is strong and applies the force off-center, he’ll get nowhere with brute strength.  He’ll just push the net in circles.

To move the net forward in a straight line, he needs to apply force through the center of gravity. In the same way, good dryland skating programs must “teach” the feeling of applying force from one leg through the center of gravity of our body.

Any strength program that fails to do this — in Twist’s words — is developing strong muscles that aren’t smart.  Of course, we’re really talking about neuromuscular learning, not muscular learning, because it is through the intricate coordination between nerves and muscles that repetitions form habits or skills.   But it might be a good idea to adopt this simpler phrase...“smart muscles.”   It’s pretty descriptive.

The bottom line:  Developing “smart muscles” off-ice is nothing more than executing repetitions to form habits of (1) good skating positions and (2) efficent, powerful skating movements.   In order to transform novices — who run around the ice like waterbugs — into efficient skaters we need to add hundreds of dryland skating exercises done with quality execution, not mindless repetition.

What are dryland skating exercises?   Strength movements like squats, plus explosive jumps, each having these characteristics: (a) the range of motion starts from (or includes) a perfect skating position — knees bent, shoulders up at about 45 degrees or more; (b) some are two-legged, but eventually there are many more one-legged exercises, just like skating; (c) for many of the repetitions, force  is applied somewhat to the side, so it looks and feels like skating;  and (d) force is applied through the center of gravity — the entire body (not just the leg) is extended in a straight line at the moment of peak force.

This teaches the kinesthetic feeling and posture that is common to all efficient, powerful skaters.  In other words, this is not just developing strong muscles, but smart ones.