I got my hockey stop

Now I haven’t skated much over the years … maybe twice a year since 1995 or thereabouts, so I’m okay, but not great.

I can make it around the ice reasonably quickly, snowplow stop and if you watch long enough (or possibly use a time-lapse camera) you can see me making progress when I skate backwards.  You have to pay attention, though, to the casual observer my backward skating looks remarkably like someone dancing the Twist.

But I have never been able to do a hockey stop. 

I’ve tried, but mostly I just wind up turning or spinning in a circle.

Well, today I got it.  Something clicked and I was able to start getting a feel for it early in the skating session.  I was still mostly turning, but my outside skate was scraping more and slowing me more, then all of a sudden the turn went away completely and became an actual stop.

I can still only do it with my right foot – turning so my left foot is outermost feels incredibly awkward, but I can work on that.

So I spent most of the rest of the session at center ice skating a little between the cones:

Skate-skate-skate-stop, skate-skate-skate-stop, skate-skate-skate-stop.

I’m rather proud of myself, actually.