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#1
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
Interesting (not very scientific) experiment for a skating newbie. (Skated
maybe a dozen times - came from a Rollerblade background). I was at Okemo, VT last Sunday. On the short practice loop (around the driving range) I was practicing going with no poles/poles. I did 4 loops, timed as such: 1) 5 min 50 sec - no poles 2) 5 min 40 sec - no poles 3) 4 min 50 sec - no poles 4) 4 min 50 sec - with poles! - no improvement! Of course since I knew the course better, and that helped. How can I keep my speed up (or better yet, increase it) when I use my poles! They seem to get in the way, make me want to use my upper body, and get more tired, and generally detract from my (rollerblade - legs focused) skating style! -- Mark Frost Bedford, NH, USA |
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#2
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
With strong legs on fast flat snow, you have to be good at poling in order
for it to make you go faster. On downhill sections with fast snow, even the best ski racers stop poling and skate with only their legs (or just tuck it). Mark Frost asked How can I keep my speed up (or better yet, increase it) when I use my poles! The key limitation of poling is that the tip of the pole has to be _stopped_ on the ground-snow surface while forward-push force is being applied. The faster you are going, the shorter the time before that spot of ground your pole tip is stopped on disappears behind you. Therefore the faster you go, the lower the amount of effective force you can apply per pole-push -- so the less able you are to maintain that faster speed. Unless you can somehow apply a very quick intense force thru the poles (think "explosive"). Or unless you can apply many more pole-pushes per minute (think "amazingly quick and coordinated recovery motions"). The shortcut to the first "unless" is to use more muscle groups and clever aids (like abdominals and chest crunch and body weight -- not just direct arm-push). But getting all those other means to work _together_ is going to first require some practice time to work out the special _neural_control_ coordination just among themselves. And more neural coordination practice time for to them work efficiently with your leg motions. And more practice to work out the new balancing strategy. Next, some of those new muscles haven't had much training in their new motions, so they're going to get tired after like a minute of their new work contribution, and painful after another minute. So it might take a few more days (weeks?) of appropriate training stress and rest cycles to develop those muscles to where they can make a big enough _sustained_ contribution to make a substantial improvement in your five-minute time trial measurement. Or it might come sooner. The surest way to make it take less days to get faster with poling: Take some lessons. Ken |
#3
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
Thanks for the great reply. I am looking forward to lessons next time I go.
I just wanted to get the on-snow feeling again... plus I have only skied 3 times since my last lesson, and am still practicing what I learned. -- Mark Frost Bedford, NH, USA "Ken Roberts" wrote in message ... snip The surest way to make it take less days to get faster with poling: Take some lessons.snip |
#4
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
I love to skate on pavement on inline skates (like rollerblades), so my
usual initial reaction to using poles is that they just get in the way. Three things that could help you appreciate the value of poles mo (a) try to skate up hills on skis, including long hills and steep hills. (b) spend time just double-poling on your skate skis, but without making _any_ skate-pushes with your legs. Find out what your poles can do for you just on their own. Play with finding ways to use your poles to push you forward even without using any arm muscles -- with your arms "locked out", like by pressing your elbows against the side of your abdomen. Play with pumping your legs up and down (but not skating out to the side), and see if you can make that motion push your poles down and back somehow. (c) Try out double-poling on dry pavement with inline skates. First purchase some specialized rollerski poles, so you don't wreck up your snow ski poles. Then try all the same things under (b). As you get going faster, also try pushing the poles closer to straight _down_ into the pavement, rather than so much toward the back, also play with explosive versus smooth at higher speeds. I've gotten to the point where I can double-pole on pavement way faster than I can run. It's amazing how many variations are possible even with the simplest part of cross country skiing, "just" pushing on your poles. And how much power can be gained by clever mental images and neural coordination of unexpected muscles -- not just more brute force in the obvious main push. Ken |
#5
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
How can I keep my speed up (or better yet, increase it) when I use my poles! They seem to get in the way, make me want to use my upper body, and get more tired, and generally detract from my (rollerblade - legs focused) skating style! 90% of the power comes in the first 10% of the pole stroke. You are probably swinging the poles too far back and too slowly. Bring your hands up in front of your face. Elbows slightly bent. Start the poling with a crunch of your abs. Don't let your poles go back behind your hips. See if a shorter, quicker poling motion helps. Good experiment by the way - you gave yourself some good feedback. Rob Bradlee |
#6
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:00:17 -0500, "Mark Frost"
wrote: Interesting (not very scientific) experiment for a skating newbie. (Skated maybe a dozen times - came from a Rollerblade background). I was at Okemo, VT last Sunday. On the short practice loop (around the driving range) I was practicing going with no poles/poles. I did 4 loops, timed as such: 1) 5 min 50 sec - no poles 2) 5 min 40 sec - no poles 3) 4 min 50 sec - no poles 4) 4 min 50 sec - with poles! - no improvement! Of course since I knew the course better, and that helped. How can I keep my speed up (or better yet, increase it) when I use my poles! They seem to get in the way, make me want to use my upper body, and get more tired, and generally detract from my (rollerblade - legs focused) skating style! Mark, Since you come from a rollerblading background your legs are well ahead of your arms in "mastering" skate skiing. I agree with what someone else was saying, if you were already going pretty fast, the poling may not get you (in theory) much more speed. And in your case, is probably "throwing off" your legs. However, when you hit the trails for a few HOURS, your legs will be "kissing" your arms. :-) Ben |
#7
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
As a speedskater (inline) I can't help but add my two cents.
I made a switch to roller ski this winter because all the speedskaters compete indoors in the off season and I do not do indoors and prefer to XC-ski instead. So I expected to find my legs working much better than arms... It is not happening. Since position of the skier is much higher than that of the skater, I found myself not pushing strong enough with my legs. Having skating background does not help much at all to my dismay. The balance is different and the push is different too. Although I push straight to the side, the foot relative angle is different - the "V" is wider. So, if your Rollerblades are purely recreational (I think they are - no sane speedskater would call skates "Rollerblades") switch to roller skis. It is a better training (upper body too) and you can do hills you wouldn't dream doing on skates. And question to Rob - When I do V2 my arms are still passing my hips otherwise my timing get screwed up. What is wrong? |
#8
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
Serge,
I used to race on 4 wheels... I didn't get around to buying 5 wheel super-painful-on-the-feet speedskates. It was a short recreational racing career in NYC's Central Park. But I echo that my xc-ski speed last weekend was from getting low to the ground, which I cannot replicate when using poles. Will try harder. Thanks. Looking forward to this weekend! -- Mark Frost Bedford, NH, USA "Serge" wrote in message om... As a speedskater (inline) I can't help but add my two cents. I made a switch to roller ski this winter because all the speedskaters compete indoors in the off season and I do not do indoors and prefer to XC-ski instead. So I expected to find my legs working much better than arms... It is not happening. Since position of the skier is much higher than that of the skater, I found myself not pushing strong enough with my legs. Having skating background does not help much at all to my dismay. The balance is different and the push is different too. Although I push straight to the side, the foot relative angle is different - the "V" is wider. So, if your Rollerblades are purely recreational (I think they are - no sane speedskater would call skates "Rollerblades") switch to roller skis. It is a better training (upper body too) and you can do hills you wouldn't dream doing on skates. And question to Rob - When I do V2 my arms are still passing my hips otherwise my timing get screwed up. What is wrong? |
#9
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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 |
#10
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Poles / No-poles Skating experiment
My take on this is you aren't necessarily poling wrong, but
what everyone learns if they skate well is that it is 80% legs anyway. So the key is to apply the legs just as effectively with or without poles. I recently timed myself at a local park with plently of long gradual hills, a few long enough to bust a lung on (for me). I covered it in 65 minutes without poles, 55 minutes with poles. Skiing without poles is a blast because you feel less constrained, can tuck more easily, and dance up the hills without any strain on the back. I felt like it took less energy. So for me, it seems like I need to transfer more of that no-pole feel and efficiency over to fully-armed skiing, primarily by relying on my legs more. -Bob |
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