skate tecnique V2 alternate vs V2 and speed

I've been doing a lot of no pole skating latlely on fairly flat
terrain in an effort to improve both my balance and leg strength. It's
great fun to glide effortlessly without poles, and in fact my push off
actully seems stronger without the use of the poles. When I do use my
poles my push with my legs seems stronger doing V2 alternate than when
doing V2. I suppose that's because the tempo and poling motion is both
quicker and shorter doing V2. Many ski technique tapes I've seen, seem
to suggest that V2 alternate is faster, but whenever I watch world
class skiers they seem to be gliding causualy when doing V2 alternate
and really turn on the speed when doing V2 alone. Also, some time ago
I remember Bill Koch demonstrating in a ski video, a technique for lack
of a better name that was something like a V2 alternate switching
poling to each side so that it was something like pole, skate skate,
skate then pole to the opposite side. I like doing this when I
rollerski and wonder if anyone else does this variation? I've never
seen it used in videos of worldclass atheletes so I wonder how fast or
effective this variation is? Any suggestions?

"steve" schreef in bericht
oups.com...
I've been doing a lot of no pole skating latlely on fairly flat
terrain in an effort to improve both my balance and leg strength. It's
great fun to glide effortlessly without poles, and in fact my push off
actully seems stronger without the use of the poles. When I do use my
poles my push with my legs seems stronger doing V2 alternate than when
doing V2. I suppose that's because the tempo and poling motion is both
quicker and shorter doing V2. Many ski technique tapes I've seen, seem
to suggest that V2 alternate is faster, but whenever I watch world
class skiers they seem to be gliding causualy when doing V2 alternate
and really turn on the speed when doing V2 alone. Also, some time ago
I remember Bill Koch demonstrating in a ski video, a technique for lack
of a better name that was something like a V2 alternate switching
poling to each side so that it was something like pole, skate skate,
skate then pole to the opposite side. I like doing this when I
rollerski and wonder if anyone else does this variation? I've never
seen it used in videos of worldclass atheletes so I wonder how fast or
effective this variation is? Any suggestions?
I'm quite a newbie and have only recently managed the timing of regular V2.
For me, V2 is practical to deal with burts of headwind when passing tall
buildings, coming around corners, etc. But it's so explosive, my arms give
in quite quickly. Without wind, I find V2 accelerates me more quickly, but
for high-speed cruising in short time trials it's not so effective (yet?).
I also need to focus a lot to get decent push-off in the hasted rythm of V2.
There's much more poling input, but also less power per pole, for me.
The poling switch I never heard of. Perhaps it's something to use for slight
downhills and headwinds, to recover the arms after a long power burst up a
hill? As the technique is somewhere between no-poling and V2alt, I would
suppose it can't be the fastest way to get there. But as no-poling is used
for high speed descends where poling becomes inefficient, I could see how
mid-speeds might warrant such an intermediate technique? I'll have to try
it, for conditions with conditions that go from tail to headwind. Being
strong for the headwind is more important that for the tailwind, once up to
speed I can no-pole pretty quickly, possibly even faster than without poles.
This is with pretty easily rolling ski's, of course.

From what I've read, V2 is used for slight uphills, slow snow and sprints,
as there's fewer dead spots in the cycle, speed doesn't fall back in between
phases. At least for me it's a more explosive technique, that can only be
used shortly.

On 23 May 2006 22:38:58 -0700, "steve"
wrote:

I've been doing a lot of no pole skating latlely on fairly flat
terrain in an effort to improve both my balance and leg strength. It's
great fun to glide effortlessly without poles, and in fact my push off
actully seems stronger without the use of the poles. When I do use my
poles my push with my legs seems stronger doing V2 alternate than when
doing V2. I suppose that's because the tempo and poling motion is both
quicker and shorter doing V2. Many ski technique tapes I've seen, seem
to suggest that V2 alternate is faster,

Not exactly. V2 alternate is used when you can go faster than V2, it's
not that it's inherently faster. Which is faster depends on the
terrain, snow, wax, wind and your fitness. Uphill you might bog down
in V2 alternate and lose momentum, so V2 is faster in that situation.
Downhill you might run out of time to complete effective poling with
V2, so V2 alternate is faster in that situation.

JFT

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....It's also totally fine to skate no-poles whenever conditions
warrant. One needs to always sense what tech will work better. I
suppose it's just like knowing what gear to be in on a bike. You don't
want to bog down nor do you want to spin out. No-poles is probably the
fastest move for fastest conditions. The "gear range" thus goes like:
Diag skate V1 V2 V2A NP.

From what JGK and Steve both write above it seems like they might be
rushing the V2. V2 is a wonderful challenge and is great fun to master.
One needs good commitment, balance and posture to be really steady
enough in V2 to kick and pole fully and maximally and to also not rush
and not get into a "snowballing" acceleration situation. JGK's remark
makes me think he's falling off his V2 ski, catching himself on each
ski faster and faster so it only seems to be good to him as a sprint
move. That's how I used to be with it. There is much posted here at RSN
about doing it relaxed. Basically, practice doing it really slow and
practice it just standing on dryland.Hop from foot to foot doing the
right arm motion til you're totally steady doing it. Coach "JD" Downing
gave me a great tip: use only lateral/side-to-side motion in the
dryland drill. Straighten each leg, chest and head facing forward, and
just pop back and forth. No rush, no imbalance. I discovered a "hang
time" phase in V2 which also greatly helped me. Whenever I can get
"bone on bone" posture I relax easily---when I step over to the new
ski, with arms back, I like to have my leg mostly extended under me so
I just float there a second. It's a position of stability for me. You
need that in each move or else you get the 'snowball' trouble. You only
want to "fall" to load ski and pole as you kick/pole---I don't think
you want to "fall" off a ski. Well, google around and you can finds
lots more info. --JP