Ankle Hops
The Elite Hockey Drills app builds drills like this into your personalized off-ice program, week by week. Your first week is free.
How to Do It
Stand with feet hip-width, arms relaxed at sides. Push off the ground using ONLY your ankles — minimal knee bend. Think pogo stick. Land on the balls of your feet and immediately bounce back up. Contact time should be minimal. Keep hips and knees relatively straight throughout. Focus on fast, light ground contact — not height. Do 10-20 consecutive hops, rest, repeat.
Why It Works
Ankle hops develop the spring-like stiffness in the Achilles-ankle complex that reduces ground contact time during skating strides. Stiffer ankles mean faster energy return — like a better spring — which directly increases stride frequency and agility speed. Reactive strength index (how quickly you can absorb and return force) strongly predicts agility performance.
Hockey Transfer
Builds calf and ankle stiffness for faster skating push-off. Twenty contacts × three sets. Use as warm-up before bigger plyos — primes the calves and Achilles.
Coaching Cues
- "Keep knees almost straight"
- "Hop rapidly using only ankles"
- "Tall posture"
Common Mistakes
Using the knees too much — this becomes squat jumps. Lock the knees and use the ankle spring. Slow ground contact — you want to 'ping' off the floor, not squat into it. Landing on the heels — kill for ankle development. Balls of feet only. Too many reps per set — quality of spring matters more than endurance.
Progression / Regression
Single-leg ankle hops — maximum hockey transfer for the skating push-off.
Double-leg calf raises — build the strength before the spring.
Primary Muscles
Energy System
Alactic/ATP-PC
Put it to work
on the ice.
The Elite Hockey Drills app builds exercises like this into a personalized off-ice program — created by a sport scientist and former national-team coach. Your first week is free.
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