Training is important no matter what sport you play. It doesn’t matter if it’s basketball, soccer, football, tennis, or hockey. Training is going to give you what you need to make sure that you’re competing for every single game and maybe even help you take your team to the championships. When it comes to hockey, the type of hockey flooring that you choose makes a huge difference, but how exactly? Let’s delve into that so you can be more well informed when making your choice for your own at-home training area.
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A Brief History of Hockey Tiles
People have been trying to figure out how one could go ice skating without the ice for hundreds of years. The first two rinks that attempted this didn’t do spectacularly for many reasons. The first rink simply lost its appeal after a short amount of time, and the second was kind of dangerous because of the way it worked. The second rink did use real ice for their rink, but the process to make it required chemically super-cooling the water to make it happen. That meant that the area was freezing and there was a thick mist rising off of the ice at any given moment.
The lack of visibility made it hard for anyone to skate on, and it would have been impossible to play hockey on because you’d simply just lose the puck. The first example of this kind of rink was actually a lot better because they didn’t use ice at all, but it was incredibly hard to skate on so most people lost interest in the concept of ice skating during the summer because it simply wasn’t the same as skating on real ice in the wintertime.
This all started to change when people started to discover ways to create artificial ice for skating purposes. They used a lot of chemicals to make this synthetic ice, and in order to get even anywhere close to the glide factor of real ice you would have needed to apply a large amount of lubricant to the ice, but it worked and became a national success in just a few short months. Synthetic ice rinks began popping up all over the United States, even in states like New Mexico or Arizona where ice rinks wouldn’t be viable for long because of the climate.
More time passed and we reached the modern-day, where this technology has been highly refined to the point that some synthetic ice has the same exact glide factor as ice, and we’ve also invented dryland hockey tiles. These tiles function in a very similar way to synthetic ice but are designed more for practicing your stickhandling than your footwork. That’s because hockey tiles are meant to be used either with shoes, socks, or your bare feet. Using ice skates on these tiles would actually destroy them, so it’s definitely in your best interest not to use your blades on them.
How to Pick the Right Option for You, and Why it Matters
Picking the best flooring for your home hockey training area is important for a number of reasons. You want to make sure that you’re actually training things that will help you out on the rink, so you can break it down into a few factors. What your position is, what you need to work on, and what your strengths are are just a few. Many people take some time to think about exactly what their needs are before they make their final choice. It’s definitely an important part of this process.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the actual options that you have available. The first we’ll look at is synthetic ice tiles. As we mentioned, the technology behind these tiles is incredibly advanced and can allow you to feel almost as if you’re on real ice. It can be good for working on your stickhandling and your footwork at the same time. This can be useful for people that are forward and defense players, with some help for goalies but not quite as much. This can be especially useful if you want to make sure that you’re staying on top of your footwork because it’s the only of the two options that gives you that freedom.
On the other hand, hockey tiles are better for people that need to specifically focus on their stickhandling. All three positions can benefit a lot from hockey tiles. If you need practice shooting into the goal, you can get a great amount of movement out of the puck on these tiles. Goalies especially benefit from hockey tiles because it allows them to get a lot of practice in without ever having to put on their skates. That can yield some great results, especially considering all a goalie needs to practice this way is someone to hit the puck in for you.
There are a few other factors that you should keep in mind when deciding what kind of flooring you want to use for your hockey practice. One of the most important ones is where exactly you plan on keeping your flooring. If you want to keep it in your garage, for example, you’d want to make sure to go with hockey tiles so you can just park your car on top of it and not worry about slipping on the very slippery synthetic ice when you get out of your car.
Some places it makes a lot less difference which one you choose. For instance, if you’re going to put your flooring in your backyard. Most companies, at least companies that manufacture high-quality products, will weather proof their tiles or synthetic ice. You could set it up in your backyard and just leave it there without much worry about the sun or the rain. Your biggest concern would be cleaning it. If you want something to be in a more multi-purpose area, you’d want the dryland tiles for sure.
What Kind of Drills can be Done on Either Type of Flooring?
The types of drills that are possible is another huge factor for deciding what kind of flooring you should get. These drills will help you focus on the specific things that you need to work on, whether that’s strength, speed, endurance, or even stickhandling. Your coach or trainer would be able to tell you exactly what you need to work on to make sure that you’re reaching your full potential as a hockey player, so if you don’t know what you need to work on exactly make sure that you ask them.
One of the most important things for any hockey player is strength training, and out of the two options we’re looking at synthetic ice is the only one that provides even a little. That’s because synthetic ice drags more than real ice, so it provides you with some resistance training. While that resistance training is nice, it’s better just to get a good pump at the gym or even at home doing bodyweight exercises. Exercising in such a way will make sure that you’re getting stronger, which will help you out a lot on the rink.
As for agility, both synthetic ice and dryland hockey tiles can help a lot, but in different ways. Both types of flooring can be used for a lot of different stickhandling drills, such as figure 8s. The biggest difference is that on synthetic ice you’d be using your blades, which gives you that little bit of extra practice. Any drill can be performed on the dryland tiles that doesn’t require blades, and any drill can be performed on synthetic ice. Really, the only reason you’d want to go for synthetic ice over dryland tiles is if you want to train your footwork on top of everything else.
Don’t Settle for Less Than What You Need
Picking out what materials to use for your at-home rink can be very, very exciting. Fortunately, it’s also pretty easy once you’ve put some thought into it. Finding out where you’ll be putting your flooring, what you want to make sure that you’re practicing, and how many people will be using your rink will help you be sure that you’re getting the best option for your situation. It’s really that easy, and there are many companies out there that are dedicated to ensuring that you get the highest quality flooring available.
