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Old December 24th 03, 02:46 PM
Ken Roberts
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Default Poles / No-poles Skating experiment

True, you cannot fully replicate the low skating position when you add
poling, but you can get closer to it. And it's worth learning.

Mark Frost wrote
my xc-ski speed last weekend was from getting low to the
ground, which I cannot replicate when using poles.


It's sounding like you've been getting the worst of both worlds:
ineffective pole-push which is also compromising your skate-push. Here's an
approach for getting closer to the "best of both" in your Open Field Skate
(V2A) or V2 techniques:
(0) Learn to drop your hips low in your pole-push.
(1) Start your pole-push _before_ your leg-push.
(2) As your hips are getting lower in the pole-push,
that's the time for your big skate-push out to the side.
(3) Thrust your hips up forward again _immediately_
at the end of your skate-push
(4) Double benefit.

Details:

(0) Learn to drop your hips low in your pole-push.
Get lots of practice on pure double-poling (with no-skate-push). The
objective for addressing your "getting low" concern is to discover how use
bending your knees and dropping your hips back to actually power your
pole-push. Turns out that lots of the power in elite double-pole technique
comes from the _legs_. The big problem is how to get you abdominal and
chest and arm muscles to _transmit_ this leg power to the poles, instead of
just absorbing it.

This is partly neural coordination, but it's more about specific muscle
strength. Fortunately you were doing some of those "core stability"
exercises in the off-season, right? (Actually my approach is to train those
"core" muscles to _add_ power of their own, not to just stably transmit it
from the legs).

One opportunity for a quick fix: Most people extend their hands and arms
too far out in front, because they think poling is about using their arm
muscles. But for _transmitting_ force it works better to bend the elbows at
least 90 degrees, and have your elbows back somewhere near the side of the
chest when you start the pole-push. I like to "wing" my elbows out a
little.

(1) Start your pole-push _before_ your leg-push.
Short quick crunch like Rob said. I will add: Don't worry about trying to
push toward the back. Even if push goes mainly _down_, once you're up to
speed, there's a magic in the physics that transmutes your downward push
into forward motion power. Just like you can push out toward the side in
your leg-push.

(2) As your hips are getting lower in the pole-push,
that's the time for your big skate-push out to the side. Your instinct from
inline skating is right: you hips must get low in order to effectively use
your big leg muscles to push. It's just geometry.

(3) Thrust your hips up forward again _immediately_
at the end of your skate-push. This is where most snow skating is different
from inline skating, where you want to stay low for the aerodynamics. For
the most effective skating with poles, you need your hips up and forward
again _before_ the start of your next pole-push, so you can use gravity and
your leg power effectively in your double-pole push, like you learned in
step (0).

(4) Double benefit:
With this forward hip thrust move, you get to effectively use your big leg
muscles _twice_ in each stroke to deliver forward-motion power: first in
the skate-push out to the side; second by building potential energy through
lifting the upper body which is released into the pole-push.

Ken



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