The length of the skate

The length of the skate
How long should your skates be? Will longer skates make you faster? There are many good questions to ask before buying skates. Generally, long skates offer no speed advantage compared to shorter ones, but there are other factors to consider when choosing your skates.

The first thing to consider is getting a skate long enough to fit your feet. If you do a sideways stop on ice, you can tell by the skid marks that only 10 – 20 cm of your blade has had contact with the ice, the rest will have been in the air. Despite this, you will still need a few centimeters of blade in front of, and behind your foot. Otherwise, the pressure on the ice will tip too close to the ends of the blade when you push with your toes and put pressure on your heels when turning. Both will slow you down. Leaning on the rounded nose during the leg extension will also make the skate wobble under your foot. To conclude, there are reasons not to pick a too short skate.

So why not choose a very long skate?
A longer skate will weigh more and be harder to control. When you bring your foot forward, a skate can get caught on the ice with its nose or on your other foot if the skate is too long. In other words, this will restrict you from perfecting your technique. Crossovers are also made more difficult with long skates.

Skyllermarks Red and Orange are both made to provide as much contact area as possible towards the ice while keeping the skate short. These are for you who wants the shortest skates possible to perfect your technique and skate efficiently, turn, and have fun.

There is however an advantage with longer skates which is how they handle very uneven ice and to some degree, soft ice. They will smooth over bumps, making the ride more comfortable. On soft ice, common in the spring, blades will sink into the ice and slow you down. In this situation a long blade will benefit you. The difference is however small. Usually, the ice will be hard in the morning, allowing skating without issue, then soften up under the sun and suddenly everyone sinks down a centimeter, no matter the skates. The difference between blade lengths is consequently marginal on soft ice.

Skyllermarks Blue are longer as they are made to handle all ice, even the most uneven and problematic. An all-round skate for all expeditions, still with immense skating joy thanks to Skyllermarks unique multi-zone curve.

Under each skate in our web shop, you will find a size guide, showing you which skates fits your shoe size.