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As a long-time hockey skills coach, I get asked by parents all the time about how their son or daughter can increase their skating speed. Everyone wants that "burning" speed. I do a lot of power skating drills, but when breaking down a player’s stride, I always start with the basics.
Speed isn’t just about moving your feet fast. It’s about mechanics. It’s about power. It’s about efficiency.
Stance/Body Position
There are a few things I look for when it comes to a hockey player’s stance. This is the foundation for everything else. If your foundation is weak, the rest of your game will be too.
First, are their knees bent? Where are their shoulders positioned? If your knees aren’t bent, you don’t have stability. You’re standing tall, which makes you easy to knock off the puck and limits the amount of power you can generate from your legs. If your shoulders are over your toes, you’ll be out of balance. You’ll be leaning too far forward, and your first step will be a stumble rather than a drive.
When a player is in a wide stance, knees bent, butt down, and shoulders back, I refer to this as the “power position.”
Think of your legs like a coiled spring. The lower you get, the more potential energy you have to explode into your next stride. In this position, your center of gravity is low, your base is wide, and you are ready to react to anything.
Pro Tip: You don't have to wait for ice time to fix this. Practicing this "power position" on dryland hockey tiles at home helps build the muscle memory needed for the ice. Spend 10 minutes a day just moving in that low stance on your hockey training tiles. Your quads will burn, but your speed will thank you.
Full Extension/Full Recovery
The perfect stride happens when your skates extend as far out as possible, ending with a toe flick, and recovering back to the starting point, directly under the body.
Most young players cut their stride short. They get "choppy" feet. They think moving their feet faster equals more speed, but if you aren't fully extending, you aren't getting the full power of your glutes and hamstrings. Research shows that true speed comes from hip abduction: pushing hard to the side rather than just backward. That final "toe flick" at the end of the extension is the secret sauce. It’s that last bit of snap that propels you forward.
One stride you don’t want to do is the railroad stride.
This stride is when you extend out, usually not to full extension, and the recovery is minimal with the skate staying on the outside of the body. Imagine a train on tracks: the feet never come back together. This is a massive waste of energy. When your feet stay wide, you lose the ability to generate a powerful new push. You need to bring that foot all the way back under your center of gravity to reset for the next explosion.
Full. Extension. Full. Recovery. Every. Single. Time.
Head Bobbing
Pay special attention to the movement of the player’s head when they are doing hockey skating drills and trying to skate faster.
Does it look like a bobber in the water when a fish is biting, going up and down? If so, this is a correction that needs to be addressed immediately. When your head is bobbing, it means your energy is moving vertically. In hockey, we want our energy moving horizontally: forward toward the net.
Every inch your head moves up and down is energy that should have been used to push you toward the goal. A bobbing head usually means the player is "jumping" into their strides rather than pushing through them. It also makes it a lot harder to handle the puck or see the play developing.
The player’s head should stay at one level the entire time. Think of a speed skater. Their upper body is quiet. Their head is still. All the violence and power is happening from the waist down. Keep your eyes on the horizon and keep that head still. Total. Stability.
Arm Swing
The motion of the arms is really important in skating speed for hockey. It’s often the most overlooked part of a player’s stride.
When the arms go in a side-to-side motion (what I call "East-West" swinging), it slows the player down. This side-to-side movement creates a centrifugal force that actually fights against what the legs are doing. It pulls your torso out of alignment and wastes energy.
To become more efficient, the arms should start at the side of the body and alternate between pushing forward in front and then back to the side. This is "North-South" movement. Your arms are the pistons that drive your legs. If your arms move fast and straight, your legs will want to follow.
Keep your hands relatively low: don't let them swing up past your chin. Keep your elbows tucked. Use your arms to create momentum, not to fight it.
Sharp Skates
Of all the skating tips I can share, this is probably the most important, especially when kids are just learning how to skate.
You can have the best mechanics in the world, but if you have no "bite" on the ice, you’re going to slip. If you slip, you lose confidence. If you lose confidence, you stop pushing hard.
The rule of thumb is to have skates sharpened every other ice session. I know it seems like a lot, but the edges are your only connection to the ice. If young players have dull skates, they’ll develop a compensated stride. They’ll start "skating on their flats" to avoid slipping, and they’ll never reach their full skating potential because they are subconsciously afraid of falling.
A sharp edge allows you to dig in and push off with 100% force. It allows for those tight turns and hard stops that make a player dangerous. Don't overlook the gear. Check your edges before every game.
You can also work on your "Power Position" and your arm swing while stickhandling. Grab some hockey stick handling balls and get on your dryland tiles. Try to maintain that deep knee bend while moving the ball around. It builds the "hockey functional" strength that translates directly to the next shift.
Train hard. Play fast.
Edited in August 2025 from an original article written in 2017 by Coach Lance Pitlick. Based in the Minneapolis area, Lance is a former NHL player with Ottawa Senators and Florida Panthers, played collegiate hockey with the Minnesota Golden Gophers, is a foremost training professional for stickhandling and shooting both in-person and through onlinehockeytraining.com. He is also the founder and former owner of Snipers Edge Hockey.
