The greatest thing about synthetic ice is that you can skate virtually anywhere on it. It can be installed in the garage, the driveway, the backyard, in a spare room. Wherever there is a flat, sold space, and a little bit of room you can install synthetic ice flooring and skate on it. Of course, you must first make sure that the kind of synthetic ice panels that you get are of high-quality and won’t wear out on you in a couple of weeks. Once you have all of that established, you will be good to go. We have put together a list of things that will help you in your synthetic ice endeavors and help you keep your flooring for years to come.
Table of Contents
1 Install On a Hard Flat Surface
Although synthetic ice flooring may seem like it would go anywhere, in order for it to work properly it has to be installed on a hard, flat surface. If you are planning on setting it up on your carpet or on the grass in the front yard there are a few things you have to do first. If you lay down some plywood first, you can set up your flooring on that. Make sure that the plywood that you use is solid enough to withstand the pressure of ice skating. If you get plywood that is brittle, or weak it may break when you put pressure on it.
2 Take Care of Your Flooring
When you have nice things that you depend on, the best way to keep them nice is to take care of them. Depending on the amount of use on your flooring, you should set up regular times that you will plan to clean and care for your flooring. General sweeping and mopping will do just fine.
3 Don’t Skate on Rollerblades
Synthetic ice was made for ice skates. Sometimes people confuse dryland hockey flooring with synthetic ice panels. You can use rollerblades on dryland flooring because that kind of flooring was built for rollerblading, but as for synthetic ice flooring, it is for ice skating only.
4 Do Ice Skating Drills
Since you already have the flooring installed, you might as well make the most of it. HIgh-quality synthetic ice panels are build in order to endure the abuse from ice skaters. This is the perfect way to hone those ice skating skills so that when you do go back out on the rink and play a real game you will be in better shape than you were the last time you were out there. Synthetic ice is a little bit harder to skate on than real ice because there is a tiny bit of a drag when your skates glide across the surface. It is not enough of a difference to cause problems, but it is enough of a difference so that you will strengthen your muscles and improve your game. It is a little bit like weight training because you cause your body to work extra hard in order to get from one place to the next. The extra resistance causes muscle to grow.
5 Practice Continually
Practicing skating is one thing, but to continually practice your shooting skills, your passing skills, and your stickhandling skills is a whole other level of training. The only way that champions become champions is to practice. Over and over again, every day until they are tired of it they practice and push themselves further. Anytime you see a professional hockey player in a game you must know that they worked hard and trained even harder to get there. There is a lot of competition in the hockey world, the more you practice, the more of an edge you have against your opponents. Keep at it, and become great.