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Unpacking the purpose, function, and structure of a skater’s stride—the primary way 🏒 players generate deliberate displacement across the ice.
goodskate.substack.com/p/thousand-mil…
English
Kyle Unitas
762 posts
Kyle Unitas
@KyleUnitas
Exploring how 🏒 players move, adapt, and play.
Barrie, ON Katılım Eylül 2022
112 Takip Edilen217 Takipçiler
Even highly interactive training
environments routinely produce players who are functional enough to play while still carrying trainable mechanical limitations that likely constrain higher levels of performance underneath.
Occurrence ≠ development.
Kyle Unitas@KyleUnitas
I’d agree that static line passing has limited game transfer if it remains detached from perception, adaptation, and progression. But that’s also a fairly narrow version of simplification. I just don’t think the same limitation automatically extends to all forms of refinement, constrained emphasis, or partially isolated work. Otherwise we run into a familiar bottleneck: How do players progressively stabilize movement quality robustly enough for it to remain available once informational and interactive demands increase? To me, that’s where progression matters—not removing interaction, but organizing it alongside clarification, overload, refinement, and progressively increasing demand. Sometimes that might mean briefly simplifying a movement to stabilize timing, posture, rhythm, or force application before re-expanding it into richer environments. Sometimes it means constraining space, touches, speed, or available options to overload a specific behaviour without removing interaction entirely. The goal isn’t to choose between “isolated” or “interactive.” It’s to organize environments in ways that progressively build movement that remains functional as the game becomes faster, denser, and more unstable.
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I’d agree that static line passing has limited game transfer if it remains detached from perception, adaptation, and progression.
But that’s also a fairly narrow version of simplification. I just don’t think the same limitation automatically extends to all forms of refinement, constrained emphasis, or partially isolated work.
Otherwise we run into a familiar bottleneck: How do players progressively stabilize movement quality robustly enough for it to remain available once informational and interactive demands increase?
To me, that’s where progression matters—not removing interaction, but organizing it alongside clarification, overload, refinement, and progressively increasing demand.
Sometimes that might mean briefly simplifying a movement to stabilize timing, posture, rhythm, or force application before re-expanding it into richer environments. Sometimes it means constraining space, touches, speed, or available options to overload a specific behaviour without removing interaction entirely.
The goal isn’t to choose between “isolated” or “interactive.” It’s to organize environments in ways that progressively build movement that remains functional as the game becomes faster, denser, and more unstable.
English
@KyleUnitas @M_Gurska12 Thanks, Kyle.
Let’s go with that question.
When I line up children to pass back and forth without context, what is more beneficial in terms of match performance rather than coupling that action with the perception required to execute effectively?
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“The defender is the curriculum”
Love this
Todd Beane@_ToddBeane
Ready to examine assumptions? Not easy. Let’s go. “Practicing without a direct opposing defender allows young players to build confidence with the ball, refining their skills under little pressure.” (FIFA) True or a Status Quo Assumption ? ———- ▪️The Brain Learns What It Practices Neuroscience of skill acquisition shows that the nervous system encodes the full context of a movement. A dribble trained without a defender is neurologically a different pattern than a dribble trained against one. —- You are literally building a different skill. —- The FIFA statement may be partially true but largely a status quo assumption that, if over-applied, produces technically comfortable but competition-fragile players. The window for unopposed practice is narrow, early, and should be deliberately short. Extending it beyond the initial acquisition phase in the name of “confidence” delays real development and builds a false technical identity that collapses under match conditions. The defender isn’t the enemy of development — the defender is the curriculum. (Blame Claude 🤔🤣) ——— Hypothetically: What happens if this status quo assumption derails us from being a better coach? Just for kicks, can we entertain this thought for consideration? #TOVO #intelligentfootball
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@csevs19 A structured drill can build real capacity. A game can expose ability or just hide deficiencies in chaos. Good coaching usually requires both clarification and application, not treating one as morally authentic and the other as fake.
cc: @JvanderB78
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Are you coaching for the kids inside the glass….or the people standing outside the glass?
Jorg van der Breggen@JvanderB78
The illusion of learning vs The process of learning
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Kyle Unitas retweetledi
Unpacking the purpose, function, and structure of a skater’s stride—the primary way 🏒 players generate deliberate displacement across the ice.
goodskate.substack.com/p/thousand-mil…
English
Tired: Can you get onto, hold, and trust your edges?
Wired: Can you reorganize over the blade without losing mobility, support, or continuity?
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Much of skating seems to separate itself here at the point where movement either continues stacking or constantly needs to restart itself.
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This is why good skating often looks calm. There’s just enough organization—through posture, balance, edge interaction, and direction—for movement to continue building underneath instead of breaking into constant recovery and correction.
Carlton Salters@CoachCSalt
The orientation change allows you to build speed and depth WITHOUT commitment. Another way to produce speed is to move the bat immediately however, that kills your depth and direction and requires more effort.
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Timing of the step is roughly at hand break. As @CC20rake likes to say, “All cues have expiration dates.” Curious how long Trout will be deploying this.
Pelotero@PeloteroApp
🎥 What is Trout doing when he steps back? Thoughts from @tewkshitting on controlling weight shift
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The body recruits more power when demand rises. My job is to design conditions and requirements that make the right mechanics demand it.
Daniel Berglind, PhD@DanielBerglind
Size principle in practice: 📈 motor units are recruited from small to large as force demands rise. 💪For hypertrophy, sets should be performed close to failure—especially with lighter loads—to recruit high-threshold fibers. ➡️Train hard, not sloppy journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.11…
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Backward stride dependent on c-cuts maintains movement, but limits propulsion. Players can complete the motion—carve a C—and still move slowly.
Mid-to-heel extensions keep the blade connected, applying force as sustained pressure in one direction, producing displacement.
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Kyle Unitas retweetledi
Good coaching doesn’t remove challenge—it organizes it, times it, and makes it meaningful enough that players engage with it.
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@csevs19 Is the issue really “hard,” or is it poorly designed hard?
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2v2 keep away, 2v2 sag. Win and you’re in the sag, lose and play keep away. 4 min rounds. It’s fun but it’s a battle to get to the sag and stay there.
Jeremy Frisch@JeremyFrisch
Do hard things is an Adult thing: Despite what you see online… Telling kids to “do hard things” isn’t how you build resilient athletes. It’s how you make them hate movement. Because most of the time, “hard” just means being forced onto kids. Kids don’t experience “hard” the way adults do. To them, it feels like pressure… stress… failure. And when movement feels like that early on— they start to avoid it. And just because your kid doesn’t want to do your burpee broad jump challenge… doesn’t mean they’re soft. It means they’re a child not ready for adult-defined standards in any sense of the word. What actually builds resilient athletes? Not forced intensity. It’s fun… variety… and freedom to explore. Games… competition… racing… chasing… challenges… exploration. Because when kids enjoy moving, they move more. And when they move more they naturally run faster, jump higher, and build real skill. Here’s the key: Challenge should be discovered… not imposed. The best environments don’t force kids to be tough— they make kids want to try hard. Forced effort builds compliance. Chosen effort builds resilience. #LTAD
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@JeremyFrisch When you say “hard,” do you mean physically demanding, technically demanding, emotionally uncomfortable, or externally imposed? Or are those all the same to you?
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Do hard things is an Adult thing:
Despite what you see online…
Telling kids to “do hard things” isn’t how you build resilient athletes.
It’s how you make them hate movement.
Because most of the time, “hard” just means
being forced onto kids.
Kids don’t experience “hard” the way adults do.
To them, it feels like pressure… stress… failure.
And when movement feels like that early on—
they start to avoid it.
And just because your kid doesn’t want to do your
burpee broad jump challenge…
doesn’t mean they’re soft.
It means they’re a child
not ready for adult-defined standards in any sense of the word.
What actually builds resilient athletes?
Not forced intensity.
It’s fun… variety… and freedom to explore.
Games… competition… racing… chasing… challenges… exploration.
Because when kids enjoy moving, they move more.
And when they move more
they naturally run faster, jump higher, and build real skill.
Here’s the key:
Challenge should be discovered… not imposed.
The best environments don’t force kids to be tough—
they make kids want to try hard.
Forced effort builds compliance.
Chosen effort builds resilience.
#LTAD
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@jakebrydson @adaptingskill 100%. Extension isn’t the goal—continuity is. If reaching full extension forces a reset, the movement breaks. If force stays organized, extension appears and the sequence continues.
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The second part of the paradox is the internal timing of the sensation of triple extension to happen is *longer* than the actual extension itself. It’s entirely preplanned and/or volitional.
If you’re “feeling triple extension” it’s already too late.
betz@adaptSkill
triple extension paradox. triple extension guarantees power thru contact. However, TRUE triple extension means your hips are locked out and youre unable to quickly generate force quickly if the rep continues contact is messy and there is a lot of rotation at play. stay loaded
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Mechanical overload isn’t about making skating harder. It’s about making specific behaviours harder to maintain—then training the ability to maintain them anyway.
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The environment may be meaningful—but meaning isn’t enough. Players don’t just need to perceive opportunities. They need the mechanical and physical capacity to act on them.
A passing lane that can’t be executed isn’t functionally available. Perception can guide action—but it can’t replace the ability to perform it.
Even if you don’t consciously think in meters and seconds, you’re still governed by them. Stride length is spatial displacement. Timing a crossover is temporal coordination. Gap control is space–time coupling. You don’t need to name space and time to be constrained by them.
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