SKATEMILL – TRAINING SKATING TECHNIQUE AND SKILLS
The skatemill: what it is—and what it isn’t
Our skating and skills skatemill has, quite rightly, attracted both praise and criticism. Over more than seven years of daily use I’ve heard every opinion. To answer questions responsibly, coach players with my team, and track measurable progress, I took a deeper look at this relatively new method in the Czech Republic: I studied professional literature (mainly foreign research), ran tests, and compared results on ice.
A frequent criticism in the literature is that skatemill training can under-load parts of the posterior thigh, potentially creating imbalances. Two clarifications are useful:
- similar imbalances occur in many hockey players who never touch a skatemill, and
- performance cannot be built on imbalance—every player must compensate.
That is why we use the skatemill primarily for technique, while expecting athletes to take responsibility for their health with appropriate dryland and gym work.
What our measurements showed
Over a long period I studied skating technique with more than a hundred players and measured their movement and efficiency on ice. Comparing on-ice timed tests between players who trained on a skatemill and those who didn’t, I found deviations of up to 1.5 seconds. A similar test by UK FTVS reported foreign skaters gaining up to 8 metres over 30 metres. I don’t know whether those skaters trained on a skatemill, but I’m confident about the mechanism: the tool helps most when paired with solid physical preparation.
Think of the skatemill as a multiplier. It can turn a well-prepared athlete into a significantly better skater by refining technique. Conversely, even a fit player can underperform if a technical flaw—something as simple as transferring weight too early to the pushing leg—is left uncorrected. In one test with a 25-year-old player we extended the glide by one metre at the same speed simply by lowering the centre of gravity.
Edges, alignment, and stability
I also examined how placement of the skate—especially the outside edge—affects the return phase when the blade re-engages. The key is to keep the “rudder” aligned with the chosen direction. Hockey isn’t only forward skating, and even forward skating shouldn’t look like a sine wave. Our detailed measurements found up to 1 metre of lateral deviation—even in older players.
Pushing through the outside edge mattered less than two other factors:
- timely weight transfer onto the support leg, and
- stability during the single-leg support phase.
Stability derives from controlled body mass over the skate. In battles, leaning into contact by setting the edge matters—but without alignment and timing, you’re giving away speed.
Upper body timing and “stacking” energies
A timely arm swing during push-off increased glide energy by up to 30% in our comparisons (based on speed and distance with proper vs. delayed swing). That surprised even me. So we began mapping all the moving parts: when the push-off leg, shoulder swing, and weight transfer land in the right sequence, the energies add. Players should skate forward, backward, and through turns with the same logic, using both edges for stability. Other details—full leg extension, ankle work at the end of push-off, and torso rotation—also help, especially in the initial sprint where longer push-offs translate into more energy in the glide.
Common faults? “Choppy” steps (running on ice), stomping, poor stability—exactly the problems that lose puck battles to a technically cleaner opponent. A raised centre of gravity often looks trivial but costs real speed. Viewed from above, you should see one line from pushing leg to arm swing; from the side, the joints stack in a straight line. Because games are a blur of directional changes, these mechanics must be automatic—there’s no time to think them through during play.
Why the skatemill helps
The skatemill’s advantage over on-ice practice is simple: the player remains in one place and the coach is one metre away, seeing tiny errors and correcting them immediately. It’s training under a microscope. Most importantly, you can train slowly and deliberately so the player can see and feel their movement. That’s hard to do in team sessions at game pace.
On the skatemill a player can check details in real time—Was the leg fully extended? Did the ankle finish? Were the arms used correctly? Because we’re not at full speed, the athlete can choose what to focus on while the coach adapts the session to the errors actually observed. Depending on the plan we can target endurance in skating, dynamics, or starts—but the foundation is always overall movement control. A coordinated athlete trained in the gym will almost always skate better in the end.
Youth, coordination, and long-term development
If we chase “pure dynamics” with eight-year-olds, we risk neglecting basic coordination and mobility. Those gaps show up later—shortened tissues, reduced glide, high stance, and a broken cycle because the thighs can’t work through the full range.
Conditioning matters, of course. But in my view, technique is still the main obstacle to better performance for many players, given the environment they perform in. We connect off-ice test data directly to skating: on the skatemill we can measure maximum output, a fatigue index, and right/left asymmetries.
Examples from practice
My colleague David Pojkar trained Radko Gudas on the skatemill for several years. His approach impressed me: deliberate, almost slow-motion work. He wanted exact knee and ankle angles, compared push-offs, and measured improvements against belt speed. At 35 km/hhe could push twice and stay in place—that was the point: improve technique without unnecessary curves or wasted motion.
Personally, the skatemill has helped me show many players how to skate better. It’s demanding and can be humbling—some athletes realise they “don’t really know how to skate.” That can be frustrating, but worth pushing through. We all started somewhere; many players have skated “somehow” for years with unconscious patterns (say, left-leg push with a right-arm walk-like swing). Recognising that—and fixing it—pays off.
Ongoing work and thanks
Years ago I committed to this topic. With my team we’ve spent years studying how technique shapes hockey performance. I respect everyone working with youth and adults, and I’d welcome more collaboration so we can keep improving athletes together. I can’t disclose every detail—we value our findings and continue to research with new technologies we’ve acquired—but the direction is clear.
Many thanks to HTC Praha Arena and HDC Czech for their constant improvement and for being part of a unique group helping hockey players develop.
Martin Bauer
HTC Praha Arena