Female hockey is growing—and fast. According to Hockey Alberta, female hockey registration in Canada has increased by 15.5% over the last five years, with over 100,000 girls and women registered to play last season—a historic milestone. With this surge in participation has come a wave of momentum: more female coaches, mentorship programs, and visibility at every level of the game. With more girls on the ice, as clinicians and performance professionals we need to be keeping up with this momentum by better understanding how female hockey players move - especially when it comes to skating performance and injury risk.
What the Research Shows Us
Studies consistently show that female skaters tend to skate with a more upright posture with a higher centre of mass, less hip abduction, and less knee flexion than their male counterparts, especially during explosive movements like starts, stops, and changes of direction (Budarick et al., 2020, Robbins et al., 2024, & Shell et al, 2017). These more extended joint positions may limit power output and energy storage in the lower body, which are crucial for the stop-and-go acceleration that defines elite hockey performance. Acceleration is arguably the most important aspect of skating performance in hockey. The game is built around short bursts of speed, whether you're chasing down a loose puck, closing a gap defensively, or initiating body contact. Unlike top speed, which may only be reached once or twice a shift, acceleration, especially in the first few strides and following a quick stop, can influence nearly every play.
Moreover, female skaters often demonstrate more in-phase coordination patterns (where the thigh and lower leg move more in unison), which may be a protective strategy linked to lower limb strength (Mazurek et al., 2024). While this in theory is a good strategy for decreasing injury risk by compensating for a lack of stability at the knee, this coordination pattern may be limiting performance as more variable/out of phase coordination allows for better energy transfer/use of forces in the system. While the research is not clear on why this difference exists between males and females, it has been theorized to be connected to the decreased leg strength in female skaters compared to males as measured by tasks like a single leg hop distance (Mazurek et al., 2024). This can also be related to a response to a prior injury as it is more likely to show up in a nervous system seeking a more rigid, stable strategy due to pre-existing factors around the knee (Mazurek et al., 2024), which is especially relevant given the higher rates of non-contact knee injuries seen in female hockey (Agel et al., 2007). This suggests that developing targeted strength in key ranges of motion, particularly in hip abduction, knee flexion, and hip flexion with lowered centers of mass could help female players move more explosively and efficiently, with greater resilience, especially following injury to the lower extremity.
Additionally females demonstrate less lateral trunk motion and side flexion in skating (Robbins et al., 2024), which may impact the ability to balance and generate power during direction changes and further contribute to the tendency for more synchronous movements between the thigh and lower leg in the name of increasing stability at the cost of efficient force transfer.
Why Does this Matter?
Most of the skating-based strength training and rehabilitation has been based on the way that males skate. Rather than assuming that females skate and play hockey in the same way as males, it is important to understand these key differences so that we can be more specific and targeted in the way that we train female athletes for skating and prepare them for maximum performance.
While we don’t necessarily need to train female hockey players to skate like male hockey players, some of the differences in how females skate compared to males have been shown to be similar between slower and faster males (Bracko, 2004). As such these key differences are informative in allowing us to train female skaters like the powerful, adaptable, and skilled athletes they already are. By understanding the unique movement patterns and biomechanics of female skaters, we can design smarter strength and conditioning programs that support speed, skill, and long-term durability.
So, What Should We Training?
Overwhelmingly, the evidence points to lower, more flexed positions with effective trunk lean, hip/knee flexion and wide stride angles, being associated with faster skating speeds, better deceleration-acceleration transitions, and more efficient force generation when comparing males to males (Bracko, 2004) and females to males (Budarick et al., 2020, Robbins et al., 2024, & Shell et al, 2017).
It seems that getting low & exploding out of these positions appears to be a hallmark of high level skating. From a physiotherapy perspective, these movement trends point toward specific areas where targeted training and rehab strategies may help female hockey players better perform on the ice.
Here’s where we should focus training efforts for female hockey players:
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Glute & Hamstring Strength: Supports better push-off, trunk control, and knee positioning while reducing injury risk.
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Hip Abduction & Stability: Improves stride width and lateral power, aiding balance and acceleration.
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Game-Relevant Strength Angles: Train in low joint positions (e.g., below 20° knee flexion which has been shown to be where the skating stride ends in females and males) to better mimic skating mechanics and improve performance transfer.
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Explosive Power from Low Positions: Use plyos and resisted starts to build force production in flexed positions.
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Core & Trunk Control: Train dynamic trunk movements to support better COM management, stability, and agility on ice.
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Eccentric & Deceleration Strength: Enhance stop-start control and reduce injury risk with eccentric loading, tempo work, and deceleration drills.
Practical Takeaways for Clinicians and Coaches
While there’s still a need for more research that compares faster and slower female skaters directly (rather than always referencing male data), we can start applying what we know now:
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Screen for lower limb strength asymmetries and coordination control, especially during tasks like SL jumping, lateral bounds, or resisted starts.
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Build strength not just in isolation, but in the specific positions and movement patterns used in hockey—low, wide, and explosive.
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Consider using video analysis or kinematic feedback to help athletes understand their posture and stride mechanics. Especially encourage coaching female athletes to get low and stay low, especially when changing direction to allow for the best possible transfer for force. This can be optimized by training similar movements in more controlled settings such as in-clinic in order to maximize strength curves in these positions.
Keeping these principles in mind, the following exercises that incorporate these ideas can be used as a good starting point for increasing the speed and dynamic capabilities of female skaters.
Key Strength Exercises:
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Deficit Lateral Step Up: goal of this exercise is to increase hip abduction strength in the low/flexed position at the hip and knees. It also creates a significant demand on lower leg stability.
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Bulgarian Split Squat (Asymmetrically Loaded): this exercise shoulder be performed with the athlete focused on achieving good depth rather than maximal weight. The asymmetrical loading of the body will challenge lateral trunk stability while also working on single leg stability and strength through the glutes in flexed positions. Cue the athlete to hinge forward at the hips to maximize glute activation.
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Bottom Range Box Squats w/ Band to Encourage Abduction: this exercise focuses on building strength capacity in the lower ranges of hip and knee flexion while also encouraging strength in the hip abductors to promote a wider stance.
Key Power/Plyometric Exercises:
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Kneeling Start Lateral Bounds: this exercise works on the explosive power of the hip abductors from a low position. Essential for creating a powerful stride.
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Deficit Bent Knee Single Leg Jump: athletes should focus on keeping the knee bent at the start of their jump. This allows for the building of power capacity at the bottom range of hip and knee flexion.
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Box Jumps: athletes should focus on landing in a low, athletic position. This exercise optimizes both the ability to explode from a deep squatting position as well as control a fast deceleration in a low position which is an important component to the stop and go demands of hockey.
Sources:
Bracko. (2004). Biomechanics powers ice hockey performance. Sports Medicine, 47-53.
Budarick, A. R., Shell, J. R., Robbins, S. M. K., Wu, T., Renaud, P. J., & Pearsall, D. J. (2020). Ice hockey skating sprints: run to glide mechanics of high calibre male and female athletes. Sports biomechanics, 19(5), 601–617. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Mazurek, C. M., Pearsall, D. J., Renaud, P. J., & Robbins, S. M. (2024). Inter-Segment Coordination of Male and Female Collegiate Ice Hockey Players During Forward Skating Starts. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 95(4), 834–842. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Robbins, S. M., Hallihan, A., Renaud, P. J., Valevicius, A., Holman, L., McPhee, B., & Pearsall, D. J. (2025). Kinematic differences in a skating stop-and-go task between male and female ice hockey players. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/