Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

I'm getting back to skate skiing after a few years off for hip
injuries and surgeries. A quick look at websites and magazines shows
there's not the same level of heated promotion of amazing new skating
techniques like there was a few years ago. What happened?

And, not to play coy, I was always very skeptical of the dogmatic
people who said here was the best way to skate for everyone at every
level. It just never made sense that people with very different
levels of training and very different biomechanics should all do
something the same way. Local coaches who picked up on this stuff
seemed to be just jumping on a band-wagon and, without much rationale,
dogmatically promoting something completely opposite from what they
dogmatically promoted a week ago.

Also, the article promoting "new" technique always spent half their
time with self-promotion: how innovative and brave they were being by
striking into new territory. Now that a few years have passed, has
this innovation translated into results?

Jon

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:52:43 -0800 (PST), wrote:

Also, the article promoting "new" technique always spent half their
time with self-promotion: how innovative and brave they were being by
striking into new territory. Now that a few years have passed, has
this innovation translated into results?

This looks like "new skate" to me (minimal rotation, short crisp
movemens), and this guy got some results
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duA2q2s2-38

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

This looks like "new skate" to me (minimal rotation, short crisp
movemens), and this guy got some resultshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duA2q2s2-38

Thanks--that's a great video (and shows me I've been holding my poles
way too far out).

So, to rephrase my question--have "new skate" concepts just been
incorporated into more or less standard thinking on the correct way to
skate by everyone?

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

That's a touchy subject, rarely discussed in polite company. ;-)
I agree with you about the self-promotion aspect of it - read the
coach's biography - and it's been commented upon by others with a lot
more experience and authority in U.S. x-c ski race circles. See, for
instance, Dick Taylor's commentaries at fasterskier.com.

As for the technique itself, at best it was an indirect attempt (via
the Norwegians) to pick up what the Italians were doing with V1 in the
1990s, and a direct attempt to counter what was claimed to be
over-rotation in American technique teaching. As fitness and
competition increased, the idea of a quick turnover skate that could be
used in some circumstances gained acceptance in international
competition. That comes with the caveat that I think it depends very
much on the individual's style, aerobic capacity and snow conditions.
For example, Marit Bjoergen and one of the German women used something
like years ago on uphills in some races, but where conditions were slow
they looked like everyone else. The idea hit the fan in the U.S. when a
coach of one of the commerically-sponsored elite teams tried to
generalize it to *all* of skate technique. That merged the promotional
with a dilletantish approach to biomechanics - and a lot of cliquism.
Voila the fishbowl of x-c skiing in North America.

As for the video of OEB that JFT linked, I don't see anything 'new
skate' about his technique; his rotation is proportional to speed and
terrain. I couldn't find the video on YouTube, but there was one, I
think from the nationals in the last year or two, that shows Elizabeth
Stephen and/or Dong doing it.

Gene


wrote:


This looks like "new skate" to me (minimal rotation, short crisp
movemens), and this guy got some resultshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duA2q2s2-38

Thanks--that's a great video (and shows me I've been holding my poles
way too far out).

So, to rephrase my question--have "new skate" concepts just been
incorporated into more or less standard thinking on the correct way to
skate by everyone?

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

I think of the old style as being "ride'n'glide," which works great
for citizen skiers.

To me the newer style has more of a constant forward tilt with legs
pushing even forward from the heel as in ice speed skating and
steadier torso. It can be relaxing. And it doesn't seem to HAVE to
have a much higher turnover. It does have a deep ankle flex.

I personally saw it standing out the most back before the noise
started when I reported on it here in a way that I intended to include
light teasing but some took it badly. I saw it at the No. Am. Vasa
when five or so top skiers, some on the US Team, came thru on their
first lap. Then about 5 minutes later a train of 10 top citizen skiers
came thru (at halfway point) and they looked like they were going much
slower and basically doing different sports. They were "winding up"
and sitting back on their heels, doing "ride'n'glide." I thought they
had a higher tempo, too. I knew that the cit-racers included longtime
expert skiers and worldclass athletes (in canoeing in particular). I
thought they had the fitness to do the technique that the leaders were
doing, they just didn't know about it. I dunno if it would've helped
them go all that much faster because the leaders were more muscular
and probably more XC-specifically trained. But the leaders didn't seem
to be working that hard---or any harder than the 2nd citizen pack.
They look darn effortless, with very quiet torsos...and lower
turnover, I thought. Unfortunately, I didn't give props to the locals
who were mixed in with the leaders and thus gave offense.

That year the new-style Norwegian tapes came out---with their forward
fall and deep ankle flex in all skiing modes---and the Master Skier
"new skate" articles started flying.

I still like Pete's advice to press the knee to the ski top going up a
steep hill and to keep falling with the torso and maybe also keep it
pointed up the hill. I was bogging down on steep uphills, doing a lot
of zigzagging with the torso and splaying with the skis, and that
really seemed to help. It involved quickover turnover than I was
doing. I mention some of this in an article on my site:
http://www.outyourbackdoor.com/article.php?id=571 .

Does new-skate have high elbows and lots of arm bend and a lighter
poling action? ...Plus deep ankle flex.

And maybe we've seen top skiers NOT using such aspects?

--JP

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

*See, for
instance, Dick Taylor's commentaries at fasterskier.com.


Thanks very much--just read the first of his articles and immediately
got that "I'm not alone in the world" feeling. I really like how he
ties the whole new skate business to issues of character--i.e., young
elite skiers who are still able to think independently see through
parts of the B.S. that don't work for them.

At the place I ski, it's just plain sad to see people who aren't even
at the stage of being able to balance properly on one ski, doing
drills with poles on their shoulders, trying not to rotate their upper
bodies at all.

It's scary how half-baked ideas quickly become conventional wisdom
(and as Taylor points out, make it into official teaching manuals)--I
had always thought xc skiers were too independent to get sucked into
stuff like that. But I guess, to be honest, even 10 or 20 years ago,
there was the hot new wax or brush we all had to get...

Jon

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

Borowski wrote in either Silent Sports or The Master Skier about how the
'new skate' sent a lot of masters off in a self-defeating direction.
In 2005, some of PSIA's nordic leaders dropped their disagreement with
it in order to develop better relations with the USST's coaches, and
that change showed up in the new nordic technical manual. Dick Taylor
spoke to that in his fasterskier article last summer. In Canada, the
ski instructors association (CANSI) had a long debate some years ago
about whether or not to hire XCZone to do the production for an
instructional DVD, since the latter are strong new skate devotees.

I did hear a talk by one former U.S. Olympian, who described how at the
U.S. Nationals a few years back at Soldier Hollow, in very slow
conditions, the winner by 4 or 5 minutes was the one faster skier who
did not use the new skate at all, and second place went to the skier who
picked up on that during the race and went back to "old school"
technique (Babikov and Swenson, respectively). Lee Borowski made an
instructional skate video several years ago that was in good part a
direct response to the debate. He compared footage of WC skiers from
the 90s with those more recent, and, pole length aside, the differences
were hard to discern.

Gene


wrote:

*See, for
instance, Dick Taylor's commentaries at fasterskier.com.


Thanks very much--just read the first of his articles and immediately
got that "I'm not alone in the world" feeling. I really like how he
ties the whole new skate business to issues of character--i.e., young
elite skiers who are still able to think independently see through
parts of the B.S. that don't work for them.

At the place I ski, it's just plain sad to see people who aren't even
at the stage of being able to balance properly on one ski, doing
drills with poles on their shoulders, trying not to rotate their upper
bodies at all.

It's scary how half-baked ideas quickly become conventional wisdom
(and as Taylor points out, make it into official teaching manuals)--I
had always thought xc skiers were too independent to get sucked into
stuff like that. But I guess, to be honest, even 10 or 20 years ago,
there was the hot new wax or brush we all had to get...

Jon

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

Jay Wenner, a really fast cit racer, mentioned here that ride'n'glide
worked fine for him and he was going to stick with it. It's easy,
obvious and sensible for the Master skier. It offers easy, restful
bone-on-bone gliding that you can pile the work onto and let the skis
run. Go with what works.

I suppose there are elements of New Skate that can sink in and help
everyday skiers.

I'm a medium cit skier and I use USST ideas in steep uphills.

For me it seems that V2 is best in what I'd call a New style. Quiet
torso, tipping forward, bent-arm pole plant with quick, high elbows,
heel kick forward. I dunno if that's really New but it's how I get
speed and stability from V2, esp on uphills.

But I've also dropped into a modified marathon out of the tracks for
most of a 20k race when I noticed that it was faster than everything
else and stable and easy and let me keep catching people. It was a
slightly unstable, choppy course that wanted a more stable work
platform, so I found my own technique that delivered. I find that I
tend to sniff out what the skis and the course want and go for that
without worrying about anything else. Other times I need to focus to
keep a trickier technique together---V2, for me---because anything
else is slower even if it feels more stable.

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

Varying technique to fit the overall situation makes a lot of sense.

Can you explain this point of technique you associate with new skate:
.. heel kick forward.

Thanks,

Jon

Whatever Happened to All The "New Skate" Hub-bub??
 

Varying terrain to fit the overall situation makes a lot of intuitive
sense.

Can you explain this point of technique (you associate with New
Skate):



heel kick forward. I dunno if that's really New but it's how I get
speed and stability from V2, esp on uphills.

Thanks,

Jon