A Skaters Workout Built Around Controlled Lateral Pushes

For hockey players, a useful skaters workout starts with small sideways hops and controlled landings—not the widest jumps you can manage. Pair those hops with lateral lunges and single-leg balance work. The aim is to practice pushing sideways, accepting your weight on the other leg, and staying ready for the next movement.

The exercise usually called skaters or skater hops is a lateral bound: you jump sideways from one foot to the other. It resembles part of a skating stride, but it does not reproduce blade grip or gliding.

How to do skater hops

Use athletic shoes on a level, nonslip surface, with clear space on both sides.

1. Load one leg. Stand on your right foot with your knee slightly bent and your hips back. Keep your chest comfortably inclined forward.
2. Push sideways. Push through the right foot to hop a short distance to your left. Let your arms help you balance.
3. Land on the left foot. Bend your hip and knee as you accept your weight. Let the free leg trail behind without twisting into a deep curtsy.
4. Hold for two seconds. Settle your balance before pushing back to the right.
5. Alternate sides. Count each landing as one repetition.

Start with a distance you can land consistently. If you need a second hop, a large arm windmill, or an immediate foot tap to recover, shorten the bound. Prehab’s lateral-bound instructions emphasize sticking the landing and not sacrificing balance or form for distance.

No-jump option: Step sideways, transfer your weight onto the receiving leg, and pause. Keep the trailing toes down for support if needed. Build control here before adding a hop.

A short off-ice workout

This is a modest starting template for a healthy adult player, not a tested skating-speed program. Begin with one session per week; add a second only if you recover comfortably and it fits around hockey. As a conservative starting schedule, leave at least 48 hours between jumping sessions.

Warm up for about four minutes with brisk walking or marching, shallow squats, and easy side steps. Then work through the exercises in this order:

Exercise	Starting amount	Main cue
Skater hop with a two-second landing hold	2 sets of 4 landings per side	Push sideways; finish balanced
Lateral lunge	2 sets of 6 per side	Sit into the stepping hip
Single-leg balance in a shallow skating stance	2 holds of 20 seconds per side	Keep your trunk steady; use support if needed

Rest about 60–90 seconds between hop sets, or longer until you feel ready to repeat cleanly. Take short rests between the other sets. Allow roughly 15–20 minutes overall; do not race the clock.

For the lateral lunge, start with both feet on the floor. Step right, bend the right hip and knee, and send your hips back while the left leg stays relatively straight. Keep both heels down and the bent knee aligned with the foot. Push back to the start, then change sides. These cues follow the ACE side-lunge guide.

For the balance hold, stand near a wall or sturdy support. Lift one foot and maintain a shallow hip-and-knee bend. This is a control exercise, not a contest to squat as low as possible.

Stop the jumping portion when landings become unstable. Pain, swelling, or a recent lower-limb injury calls for individual guidance rather than pushing through. A clinical commentary on plyometric exercise prioritizes movement quality, recommends ending the plyometric work when technique deteriorates, and suggests 48–72 hours between demanding sessions; the authors note that the optimal recovery interval is not established.

The physics: sideways force changes your motion

A lateral bound works because your foot pushes against the floor and the floor pushes back. That force, acting over the push-off time, changes your sideways momentum. On landing, the receiving leg must control that motion before the next push.

On ice, the important difference is direction. A blade glides easily along its length, while the useful horizontal reaction force acts mainly across it. Angling the pushing blade allows that reaction force to have a forward component. That is why forward skating is not simply running on a slippery surface. The mechanism is described in Forces on hockey players.

The practical connection is the ability to load one leg and produce a controlled push. But bounding farther across a floor does not establish that your blade angle, edge engagement, or stride timing is better.

A 2025 systematic review of 19 studies found relationships between skating performance and off-ice measures including jumping and sprinting. Those are associations between test results—not evidence that this particular routine improves skating speed.

Progress control before speed

Once every landing is steady, change just one variable: add a third hop set, increase the distance slightly, or shorten the pause. Keep continuous, rebounding skaters for later; they demand faster transitions than the held version.

On your next skate, practice a deliberate push followed by a balanced glide. Use the beginner skating progression if that transfer still feels uncertain. Treat the workout as physical preparation, not a substitute for learning to apply force through a blade.