Skates

After my second session I was in the skate shop asking the prices of some shiny new ice skates. Lucky for me, I didn’t buy any right then. A couple of weeks later a friend from work who played ice hockey when he was younger complained they didn’t have hockey skates in his size to hire and that was how I found out about hockey and figure skates.

At first I thought it was all just aesthetic differences; the figure skates looked more like dancing shoes, posh shoes, or flashy boots, while the hockey skates look much more like football boots, however, as well as the look, there are differences to the design of the blade.

Figure skates are the ones you normally get when you hire them. They have teeth on the front which are called toe-picks and these are used when performing jumps - I’ll tell you more when I know more.

Hockey skates don’t have toe-picks or the extended tail that figure skates have. They tend to look more like trainers too, while figure skates look more like shoes.