In this video, Katrina shows us what beginner drills she would do in a practice session. Her student is six years old.
She begins with swizzles in a low hockey stance. The athlete shows Katrina his hockey stance with bent knees, chest up and not leaning his elbows on his knees.
Starting on the red line and doing low swizzles all the way to the blue line, we can easily see that the boy is stronger on one leg than the other. Katrina reminds him that both feet have to move together and he needs to stay upright.
When Katrina says ‘get lower’ the student just tends to lean his shoulders down more and not his hips (a common problem). She reviews the stance with him again and suggests he comes back to the two foot glide to collect himself in between swizzles.
Katrina tells the camera that this common problem of not keeping the chest up stems partly from not having enough core strength.
To review what part of the blade he should be pushing off of (because he was leaning forward so much he’s been pushing off the front of the blade), Katrina has him do a ‘rocking horse’ drill. This helps him collect his weight and keep his head up.
The second half of this video is practicing backward swizzles. Katrina notes that she would definitely not let him use a hockey stick here because she knows he would be leaning on it. Backwards skating is obviously not a skill the athlete has worked on much at his age level, as we can see when he repeatedly falls off the front of his blade.
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