Stayner Community Centre: Indoor Skating for Power and Cardio

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The Non-Impact Power Alternative

Skating is an unusual way to train hard. Because the blade glides rather than strikes, the repeated impact loading that accumulates in running is largely absent, while the muscular demand stays high. This makes skating an ideal high-intensity interval (HIIT) venue for athletes recovering from lower-body injuries or those seeking to increase their metabolic output without increasing their injury risk.

For the Stayner and Wasaga communities, the local arena is more than a hockey rink; it is a specialized training environment for lateral power and aerobic endurance.

Biomechanics: The Skating Stride & Lateral Stability

Efficiency on the ice is a product of technical precision. We break the skating stride down into three critical phases for fitness development:

1. The Loading Phase (Deep Flexion)

The "skater’s crouch" demands sustained work from the quadriceps and glutes. Deeper knee flexion lengthens the path over which you can apply force to the ice. For reference, laboratory work on speed skaters used knee angles of roughly 107° in the low position and 112° in the high position (Foster 1999) — a deep, sustained bend rather than the full 90° squat the phrase "crouch" suggests.

2. The Lateral Extension (Power Drive)

Unlike running, where propulsive force is applied largely backward, skating power is applied laterally, which loads the hip abductors and adductors differently from linear sports. Three-dimensional analysis of the forward skating stride found that higher-calibre skaters showed a greater range and rate of joint motion in both the sagittal and frontal planes, producing longer strides and greater lateral excursion through the power stroke than lower-calibre skaters (Upjohn 2008). Technique, in other words, is what unlocks the lateral range — it is trainable, not fixed.

3. The Recovery (Balance & Core)

As the driving leg returns underneath the body, you are balanced on a single narrow blade, which places a real stability demand on the hips and trunk. This phase matters more than it looks: in a study of highly trained players, muscle activity during the recovery phase — specifically lower gluteus maximus activity and reduced co-activation with rectus femoris — was associated with faster skating, while sagittal-plane hip and knee angles showed no significant association with speed (Kaartinen 2021). Relaxing properly between strokes is part of the skill.

Physiological Demands: Why Skating Feels Different

The skating posture itself changes the physiology. Because the deep crouch is held continuously and the push-off has a long duty cycle, intramuscular pressure stays high enough to restrict blood flow to the working muscle — a mechanism demonstrated in speed skaters and offered as the explanation for why skating produces local muscular fatigue out of proportion to the whole-body aerobic cost (Foster 1999). Practically, that is why your legs can burn well before your lungs do. It also means the honest way to gauge a session is by leg fatigue and repeat-effort quality, not by chasing a heart-rate number.

Technique differences show up under acceleration too: in elite players performing skating starts, measurable differences in hip abduction and in knee extension at ice contact distinguished faster from slower starts (Shell 2017). Starts and stops are where the power demand concentrates — which is what the interval protocol below is built around.

Local Arena Audit: Stayner vs. Wasaga

Local residents have access to two distinct training environments:

Stayner Community Centre and Arena

Operated by Clearview Township, the Stayner facility opened in 1987 and pairs a full-size rink with a community hall and the township library branch. Clearview runs free public skating sessions here and at the Creemore arena, including parent-and-tot and adult-only slots. The free adult sessions are the ones worth targeting for training: fewer skaters on the ice means you can actually hold a lane long enough to do intervals.

Wasaga Stars Arena

The Wasaga Beach arena and library complex opened on 27 January 2024 with two NHL-sized pads (200 by 85 feet) and ten change rooms. The second pad matters for training: when one sheet is booked for hockey, the other is often running public or adult skating, which gives you more schedulable windows across the week than a single-pad rink can.

Both towns publish their skating schedules seasonally and both change them mid-winter, so check the current listing before you drive out rather than relying on last season’s times.

The 8-Week Skating Power Protocol

Transform your public skating session into a high-output power block with this progression:

Gear Selection: Fitness vs. Hockey Skates

For the pure fitness athlete, Fitness Skates (which combine a soft boot with a hockey blade) are often the best choice. They provide the necessary ankle support for long-duration sessions without the "stiffness fatigue" of a high-end hockey skate. However, if your goal is maximum power and edge control, a traditional hockey skate allows for more precise "bite" into the ice, enabling the high-force extensions described in our power protocol.

Conclusion: The Ice Engine

Indoor skating is a useful winter training option in Stayner and Wasaga Beach, mainly because it loads the legs hard without the repeated impact of road running. The evidence base is narrower than it is for running or cycling — most of it comes from hockey and speed-skating populations rather than recreational skaters — so treat the protocol below as a sensible structure rather than a validated prescription. Work on the lateral push, use the recovery phase properly, and let leg fatigue rather than a heart-rate target tell you when the session is done.

References