How to Hockey Powerskate

Learn to skate like an NHL pro! How fast do you want to skate? How many goals do you want to score? This information you're about to read will show you the technical aspects you can use to assist your mastery of power skating and hockey posture. These facts, if applied, will make you even faster and give you more energy, balance, and agility.

Steps

1. Get into hockey posture. Bend knees to a position where the lower part of the upper leg is perpendicular to the ice (90 degrees). Skates are shoulder width apart. The back is straight, and the chest upright. Bend at the hips, shoulders back, the upper body leaning forward (50 degrees), and hold your stick with two hands.
2. Hold your stick correctly. If you are right-handed, place your left hand at the top of your stick (the butt end) and place your right elbow to your left hand. That is the standard distance your hands should be apart while stick handling and shooting wrist shots. Hold the stick slightly forward.
3. Keep your eyes forward, looking peripherally at the puck. If you lose sight of the puck, your head and neck might be too far back and your eyes up too high.
4. Master the stride. From a moving position, keep a low knee bend and keep your feet moving. Acceleration becomes explosive because you are already in a stellar position where your knee bend is low and now you just have to move your feet faster. This allows for instant acceleration from gliding speed to top speed.
5. Keep your leg at an angle of at least 90 degrees or slightly lower (at top speed). The upper leg angle from which you can get the most powerful push is not 90 but around 120 degrees. Solid skaters should be in a position to push hardest at approximately 120 degrees (your butt should be really low). So if you retract your leg to an angle of 120 degrees to start from, and open up your knee bend to drive your leg hard, you would be past the knee angle (120 degrees) which will provide you with the most powerful leg drive.
6. Return skates across your center of gravity after fully extending stride. Grab your stick, blade side up, with your right hand, and place it between your chest pads. There you will see your center of gravity: the line from your naval to the floor/ice.
7. Retract your leg to cross this imaginary line after you fully extend.
8. Bring the retracting leg back in underneath and across the center of gravity. When a player retracts his leg across the center of gravity, all the energy he uses to pull that leg back in is used to help drive the other leg out when the retracting leg comes across the center of gravity, almost touching the heel of the other skate. During a sprint for the puck, then the legs should be retracted across the center of gravity.
9. Complete a full extension of the stride. Fully retract your legs.
10. Keep heels as close to the ice as possible while skating for maximum efficiency!