Ice activities such as hockey and figure skating have always been popular among children and youth. Meanwhile, these sports are quite traumatic. One of the best ways to prevent injury is prevention., which consists in the correct choice of skates and their lacing.
What laces are needed?
All skates are sold complete with laces. Unfortunately, manufacturers do not always care about their quality and sometimes you have to replace this element immediately after purchase. Despite all their apparent insignificance, a lot depends on them. Most often, skates are equipped with cotton laces without additional impregnation. They are quite easy to tie, but require some care.
Excessive force when tightening can lead to rupture, and a weak knot will easily come undone.
If you want to immediately replace them with better ones, then there are two main options:
- For hockey skates, waxed impregnated laces are the best choice.They are easy to tie and hold the knot, allowing you to adjust the degree of tightening.
- For figure skaters, impregnated laces with nylon thread are suitable. They are easy to tie as tightly as possible, fixing the ankle joint.
How to choose the length of the lace?
Correct lacing of skates is impossible if the laces are shorter or longer than necessary.
You can select their length in two ways - counting the number of eyelets or based on shoe size:
- In the first case, a base length of 100 cm is taken for eight holes, and another 20 cm is added to each eyelet on top.
- The second option uses a table of shoe size and lace length. For example, for sizes 39 to 45, the optimal length is about 274 cm.
We lace skates in different ways
Just as hockey and figure skating skates differ from each other, the lacing methods will also differ. Each of them has its own characteristics due to the specifics of the sport. In both cases, you can tie the laces using the top and bottom methods. They differ in the side through which the lace is threaded into the eyelets. For beginners, bottom lacing is recommended, which allows you to make adjustments without leaving the ice.
Hockey skates
Hockey is a contact sport characterized by tough competition and high loads. Skates are an important component of protection against puck hits, stick strikes, and collisions with other players. They should fit tightly on the leg, providing fixation of the joints, but not create a feeling of discomfort..
- Lacing begins from the bottom up, while the skate must be put on the foot. After the lace is threaded through the first three pairs of eyelets, you should make sure that the leg is comfortable, the foot can move a little, and the toes can bend and straighten freely.Excessive tightening can lead to poor circulation, which can lead to health problems.
- After this, you can start lacing the instep. It must be fixed tightly; moving the leg to the side is not allowed. The shin should be tightened just as tightly. All this will help avoid dislocations and fractures. Only at the top of the lacing can you slightly loosen the degree of tightening.
- The ends of the laces are wrapped around the shin, tied in a knot, and the ends are tucked inside.
By the way! A simple rule for checking the reliability of the lacing is that a finger should not fit between the skate and the leg.
Figure skating skates
In figure skating, the main thing is the execution of artistic elements. For this purpose, skates are made of leather, which is significantly softer than the polymer materials used for hockey skates. The main task of lacing is not to tightly fix the leg, but to evenly distribute the loads.
- Skates should also be laced from the bottom up. In this case, free movement of the foot is not allowed - the boot must fit tightly to the leg.
- Starting from the third pair of eyelets, the degree of tightening should be checked to avoid circulatory problems in the leg.
- After threading the lace through the next pair of holes, you need to perform several squats. If discomfort is felt at this moment, the tension should be loosened.
- As a result, the skate should sit tightly on the leg and not dangle.