Calf muscle soreness during game: Roller Hockey/Ice Hockey

[steafo]

I have a question for the skate aficionados on the board. I have been playing roller hockey for about 15 years so I am a decent skater. I have recently taken up Ice hockey as well. I recently purchased 2 new sets of skates...one for Ice one for Roller.

1) Tour Thor ZX9 - Roller (Straight 80mm wheels)
2) Reebok 11k

Both of these skates fit better than I have ever had skates fit, I am having some trouble with them though.

I had a roller hockey game yesterday and my Calfs were killing me like I skated for about 3 hours at the end of every shift. I felt like I did calf raises for about an hour each time a shift ended. I have never felt this before. The skates I had prior to the ZX9's were Hi-Lo chassis skates. Is the change from a Hi-Lo to straight line 80mm's making that much of a difference?

I did a bit of googling and some people having this problem were tying their skates too tight at the base of their foot. I'm going to try and keep them a bit looser and just tighten the top eyelets. I'm hoping its just a break in issue.


Another thought I had was that I have been playing A LOT more ice hockey than I'm used to (4 nights a week). Are the skating mechanics that much different that my legs are just out of "roller hockey" shape? Using different parts of the calf muscle etc?

I know this is a long post but any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DarrenBanks56]

funny you post this.
my left calf and below it, is absolutely killing me the past 2 days.
i play roller hockey on sunday nites.
I never thought about tying the skates too tight as the cause. I dont know if thats it though.

This is an aching pain, if i put pressure on it, its pretty bad. Tough to sleep at nite too

[steafo]

Mine doesn't stay, it feels as if I have been running and my legs are tired. It goes away while on the bench, the concern I have is that it feels like this even if I'm not skating hard, or I take a really short shift. For example. We had a powerplay where we controlled the puck for roughly ~1:30 before scoring. I was the guy at the point and I barely had to move. After we scored my legs were killing me like I just did a bag skate.

[BmxHockey]

Interesting, I find my calves are tight and will need to foam roll them out quite frequently. I always roll them out before I head out to the rink for a league game. The calves are part of the "triple extension" of the hip knee and ankle joints when skating, so we're all using it pretty good.

[Not Threadworthy]

Medically speaking...look up claudication or intermittent claudication. It's a vascular disease (common in smokers/diabetics). Basically the blood vessels in your legs aren't capable of supplying your calf muscles with enough blood and oxygen while working out, hence you get pain. When you stop, the need for oxygen to the muscles goes down, and the pain stops...... but the duration of pain can vary post exercise.

Or could just be lactic acid buildup.

[JR97]

I noticed quite a bit of difference on which part of the legs get worked between ice and inline skates. My inline setup was a HL chassis with the front wheel being slightly smaller to give some rocker. My old CCM 952's felt exactly like my Tours. Been when I switched up to Bauer One90's I noticed my calf got worked differently. Just took some getting used to and building up strength. Went away after a few skates.