video make-over

Janne G wrote
Tell me what you see in Björndalen that differs from your video.

Wow, what a great challenge.
I'm looking at the front skier in the red-and-black tights and Carbon-silver
boots in the first two seconds of the video skateclimbslomo.mpg which I
downloaded from ftp://avari181.mt.luth.se/pub/mpeg/skidor/Technic. I'm
comparing it mainly with V1 side-view video.

Here's what I observe:
(a) Björndalen's ankle is flexed forward a little more than mine at the
instant his foot lands, and I think also flexed forward more at the end of
the leg-push.

(b) Björndalen plants his poling-side a little before he lands his
poling-side leg, and his poling-side hand starts alongside his ear. I plant
my poling-side pole simultaneous with landing my poling-side leg, and my
hand starts in front of my head, so my pole starts more angled back and his
starts more vertical.

(c) B is extending his leg out to a bit closer to straight than mine in my
V1 side-view video. Though in my V1 front-view video I'd guess I'm extending
out as far as him.

(d) In the pole-push, B is driving his hands down lower than mine, and then
further back than mine. I think my poling motion gets closer to B in my V1
front-view video. A hypothesis is that in the side-view video, the steepness
and slow snow were too much for my non-elite muscles to handle with V1, and
I should have switched to single-poling "coaches" skate.

Comparing my V1 front-view video with the other racers (since there's no
front-view of Bjorndalen):
(e) While pushing on my recovery side I'm bending my torso sideways so that
my recovery-side shoulder is more over my recovery-side foot -- that's a
deliberate attempt to maximize my side-to-side weight shift.

(f) But sometimes I also see what looks like some bending of my torso
backward which Andrew mentions -- which is not deliberate and for which I
cannot imagine a positive benefit. (I'm thinking instead that when I swing
my shoulders over to the recovery-side, I need to keep them lower longer,
and focus more on moving fully sideways first, rather than get diverted into
rising upward too early.)

(g) The elite racer's heads are much more stable than mine in the V1
front-view video. Though I think my head-stability in the other videos
(notably the Legs-only front view) is better.

My response to those observations is that I'd like to make all of those
difference points to become less different -- except maybe (e).

What do you see as different?

Ken
__________________________________________
Janne G wrote
Ken take a look at the skateclimbslomo.avi at my site and compare
especially Ole-Einar Björndalen that are skating at the far side from
the camera. Tell me what you se that differ from your video.

This was intresting, so intresting that i whanted to go out with the
video myself and try it, but then the thermometer was hovering around
+6C, not my favorite snowcondition.

Janne G

Ken Roberts wrote:
Janne G wrote

Tell me what you see in Björndalen that differs from your video.


Wow, what a great challenge.
I'm looking at the front skier in the red-and-black tights and Carbon-silver
boots in the first two seconds of the video skateclimbslomo.mpg which I
downloaded from ftp://avari181.mt.luth.se/pub/mpeg/skidor/Technic. I'm
comparing it mainly with V1 side-view video.

Here's what I observe:
(a) Björndalen's ankle is flexed forward a little more than mine at the
instant his foot lands, and I think also flexed forward more at the end of
the leg-push.

(b) Björndalen plants his poling-side a little before he lands his
poling-side leg, and his poling-side hand starts alongside his ear. I plant
my poling-side pole simultaneous with landing my poling-side leg, and my
hand starts in front of my head, so my pole starts more angled back and his
starts more vertical.

(c) B is extending his leg out to a bit closer to straight than mine in my
V1 side-view video. Though in my V1 front-view video I'd guess I'm extending
out as far as him.

(d) In the pole-push, B is driving his hands down lower than mine, and then
further back than mine. I think my poling motion gets closer to B in my V1
front-view video. A hypothesis is that in the side-view video, the steepness
and slow snow were too much for my non-elite muscles to handle with V1, and
I should have switched to single-poling "coaches" skate.

Comparing my V1 front-view video with the other racers (since there's no
front-view of Bjorndalen):
(e) While pushing on my recovery side I'm bending my torso sideways so that
my recovery-side shoulder is more over my recovery-side foot -- that's a
deliberate attempt to maximize my side-to-side weight shift.

(f) But sometimes I also see what looks like some bending of my torso
backward which Andrew mentions -- which is not deliberate and for which I
cannot imagine a positive benefit. (I'm thinking instead that when I swing
my shoulders over to the recovery-side, I need to keep them lower longer,
and focus more on moving fully sideways first, rather than get diverted into
rising upward too early.)

(g) The elite racer's heads are much more stable than mine in the V1
front-view video. Though I think my head-stability in the other videos
(notably the Legs-only front view) is better.

My response to those observations is that I'd like to make all of those
difference points to become less different -- except maybe (e).

What do you see as different?

I see some timeshift between the upper and lower body movment.
I do think that O-E have longer poles compared to you.
He does a more compleate weighttransfer on every cycle and gets more
glide out of it.
He does a lower more economical lift when doing the recovery and also he
does not "stamp" down the skii after every recovery, he "glidestart"
every stroke.

Further down i the clip we have some frontviewshot.
Comparing yours with that i notice that you only glide on your left leg
and don't do anything with your right leg, it looks like it's just
hanging there straight after setting down the skii on the surface.
You are workig wery hard on your left leg but not on the right and
therefore the strokecycle seams a little odd.
Look how much all are working with both legs when climbing, just because
we emphasis one side by "hanging" or going forward with the poles on
that side doesn't mean that the oposite side is going to just hang there
doing nothing (ok, doing 30% while the other side doing 70%).

And yes i know that it isn't fair to compare some like O-E Björndalen in
an unknown climb with people like us. But i can't se any other way.

Don't take this as a guide for what to do, this is just my reflections
on the videos.

Janne G

Janne G wrote
O-E Björndalen does a lower more economical lift
when doing the recovery and also he does not "stamp"
down the skii after every recovery, he "glidestart" every stroke.

I agree with that observation -- and it leads to a whole new idea about
technique for me. The reason I intend to lift the ski higher is in order to
"stamp" it down, and the reason I intend to stamp it down is to guarantee
that one of my legs is always pushing -- to ensure that there is zero
passive-glide "dead time" for my legs. So I start my next leg-push even
before I have finished the previous one, and I think my next leg is thus
already generating some reactive-force propulsive work even before it hits
the snow. I think the disadvantage is that this stamp or stomp increases the
sliding friction of the ski, especially in softer snow.

But looking at Björndalen's "glidestart", I'm wondering if he's not actually
pushing simultaneously with _both_ skis for one or two video frames, less
than 0.1 second. It looks to me like his heel stays down on the ski until
after the other ski lands. So if his heel coming up off the ski indicates
that he is applying propulsive force thru the ball / toe of his foot, then
he is transmitting force to the snow thru both skis simultaneously.

I think in that striking close-up of footwork in the skateFeetSlomo.mpg
Techic video - (Thanks for much for recognizing the importance of that and
putting it up on the Web for us, Janne) - viewing with single-frame-advance
during time :13 second, I see about 3 or 4 frames of overlap between the two
leg-pushes. So if the slow-motion is at half-speed, that's around 0.06
second of overlap.

The advantage of this overlapped timing of leg-strokes in the physics is
that you can get a larger range-of-motion with the same turnover frequency,
or the same leg-push range-of-motion with a faster turnover frequency -- and
either one implies a higher output rate of propulsive power. I had noticed
this kind of overlap before in the V2 of elite racers, but I hadn't been
ready to see that it might be happening in V1.

I wanna try for it.

Ken
_______________________________________
Janne G wrote
I see some timeshift between the upper and lower body movment.
I do think that O-E have longer poles compared to you.
He does a more compleate weighttransfer on every cycle and gets more
glide out of it.
He does a lower more economical lift when doing the recovery and also he
does not "stamp" down the skii after every recovery, he "glidestart"
every stroke.

Further down i the clip we have some frontviewshot.
Comparing yours with that i notice that you only glide on your left leg
and don't do anything with your right leg, it looks like it's just
hanging there straight after setting down the skii on the surface.
You are workig wery hard on your left leg but not on the right and
therefore the strokecycle seams a little odd.
Look how much all are working with both legs when climbing, just because
we emphasis one side by "hanging" or going forward with the poles on
that side doesn't mean that the oposite side is going to just hang there
doing nothing (ok, doing 30% while the other side doing 70%).

And yes i know that it isn't fair to compare some like O-E Björndalen in
an unknown climb with people like us. But i can't se any other way.

Don't take this as a guide for what to do, this is just my reflections
on the videos.

Janne G
_____________________________________________

O-E Björndalen does a more complete weight
transfer on every cycle and gets more glide out of it.

Without doubt he gets more glide than me. My obvious interpretation is
that's because Björndalen is twice as fast as me, using about the same
turnover frequency, therefore he's going twice as far in every leg-stroke.
If I cut down my turnover frequency, I might glide a little farther in each
stroke, but I'm guessing that my muscles would be more burned out when I got
to the top of the hill.

Weight transfer -- what is it?
Seems very clear to me in Classic striding: Complete weight transfer is when
I take all my weight off one ski (and better yet take it off both my poles
too) and put it all on the other ski. So if I watch a video of Classic
striding and see one ski completely off the snow and both poles off the
snow, then I can infer that "weight transfer" is 100%, and that's the
maximum. If I see the other ski on the snow and out toward the back only the
toe touching down, and the heel off the snow, I might guess that it's 75%.
But if the other ski were on the snow directly underneath the skier's hips,
I'd say the weight transfer is only 50-60%.

But in skating, what is "weight transfer" really? (and how measure it off a
video?)

I think it's clear in all four of my videos that most of the time only one
of my skis is on the snow and the other one is up in the air somewhere, so
by the Classic-striding definition I have achieved 100% complete
weight-transfer (between my legs). So when somebody says I have "less weight
transfer", it can't mean that.

Perhaps it means the amount of time I spend with all my weight on each
single leg before I land the other one. Basically that's just 60 seconds
divided by my 2 times my stroke-cycle turnover frequency per minute. Which
is just another way of saying my turnover frequency is higher than it could
be. Actually I've measured my turnover frequency and it's not much different
from the elite racers climbing up hills. Anyway if "time until you put the
other leg down" is what we really mean, then why not just keep it simple and
measurable and talk about "turnover frequency".

So I guess it must mean something else, like how far you get out over one
ski. Or maybe how far you get out toward one side (aside from where the
ski went). Which raises the messy but critical detail of what the "you"
is -- your hips? your navel? your true center of mass which is fully dynamic
and not linked to any body part? Then there's the other question of what the
"get out over" means -- rotate to face toward the ski (as in
Nose-Knees-Toes), or shift (a.k.a. "translate") position sideways, or tilt
sideways -- or some combination of those? Finally once you go to the trouble
of selecting and carefully describing some set of those options as the
"definition" of weight transfer for skating, then how will you convince
anybody else that it's better than seventeen other similar-sounding
definitions?

Anyway, I agree that some sort of weight transfer in skating is a good
thing, and that Björndalen probably has more of "it" than I do in in my V1
Side-view video -- and I wish I had as much as him. Maybe I was not focused
enough on weight transfer there on that hill? Or don't know what it is I'm
supposed to be focusing on? Or was that hill just too steep for me in fresh
cold snow?

But it does seem to me that a Front-view video offers a more accurate way to
analyze weight transfer, and I feel like I see a lot of weight transfer in
my V1 Front-view, and even more in my Legs-only Front-view. Like if I pause
the Legs-only video at the moment my pushing ski finishes, it's not easy for
to imagine how my pushing hip could be moving any further toward the other
side than it is -- because my leg is leaning at a 40-45 degree angle from
vertical, and very straight with the toe pointed. And it's difficult for me
to imagine how I could have committed my torso-shoulders-head any farther
over to the other side -- whether you want to define it as rotate or shift
or tilt doesn't matter -- because I'm doing all three at once. Then as I
continue thru the first phase of the next leg-push, my head moves to
directly over my ski boot, so one shoulder and arm are out there sideways
further than my pushing foot.

I guess I if we want to define "weight transfer" as relative to the next
pushing ski, I could have gotten more if I had simply landed the ski down
more underneath me. I think what I see is that in my leg-recovery move I
bring my ski in to nearly underneath my next pushing hip, but then I send it
out again, and end up landing the ski distinctly outside the pushing hip.
Perhaps if we had a straight Front-view of Björndalen, we'd see him landing
his ski directly under his pushing hip, or less far out then me anyway.

Is that what ought to be meant by "more complete transfer" ?
or what?

Seems like an important question, if we're want to use video to improve
skating technique.

Ken
__________________________________
Janne G wrote
I see some timeshift between the upper and lower body movment.
I do think that O-E have longer poles compared to you.
He does a more compleate weighttransfer on every cycle and gets more
glide out of it.
He does a lower more economical lift when doing the recovery and also he
does not "stamp" down the skii after every recovery, he "glidestart"
every stroke.

Further down i the clip we have some frontviewshot.
Comparing yours with that i notice that you only glide on your left leg
and don't do anything with your right leg, it looks like it's just
hanging there straight after setting down the skii on the surface.
You are workig wery hard on your left leg but not on the right and
therefore the strokecycle seams a little odd.
Look how much all are working with both legs when climbing, just because
we emphasis one side by "hanging" or going forward with the poles on
that side doesn't mean that the oposite side is going to just hang there
doing nothing (ok, doing 30% while the other side doing 70%).

And yes i know that it isn't fair to compare some like O-E Björndalen in
an unknown climb with people like us. But i can't se any other way.

Don't take this as a guide for what to do, this is just my reflections
on the videos.

Janne G
__________________________________

Jim Grau wrote
I can see one difference between Ken and the
elite skiers in Janne's collection: I see more
forward hip rotation in the elite skiers

Hip rotation. Forward. Wow!
Somehow I never noticed that before in the elite skaters.

First let's make sure we're clear on which kind of rotation we mean. What
I'm seeing is that at the start of the leg-push, the non-pushing-side hip
starts behind the other hip, but it finishes ahead of the pushing hip. So
the hips have rotated so that the skier's pelvis starts "facing" a bit away
from the current leg-push side, and finishes facing a bit toward the
leg-push side.

Physics -- I can see how this hip move helps in climbing up a hill, because
it uses some sort of "pelvic rotator" muscles to move the non-pushing leg
say like 5 cm further forward, which on a hill of 10% steepness grade yields
a 0.5 cm advance in the fight against gravity for the mass of one leg --
which is a substantial percentage of the skier's whole body. There's a bit
of inefficiency with the transmission of the reactive force from this work
into the snow thru the skier's already-pushing leg. So overall there's a net
increase in uphill propulsive work without changing turnover frequency, and
therefore an increase in total power and thus the skier's speed up the hill.

Or the skier could choose to go easier with his main leg-push and poling
muscles, and allow this new "pelvic rotator muscle" work to maintain the
same total power rate as before -- but with less lactate load on the main
pushing muscles -- and just get to the top with more energy leftover to
enjoy the rest of the day's skiing. I like that picture.

I'm not worried about putting load on my "pelvic rotator" muscles, because
they don't have much else to do anyway. Except I better be careful not to
overdo it in the first week or month or so -- I don't want to miss four days
of skiing recovering from a strange new muscle strain.

I'm seeing the elite racers also rotate and/or shift and/or tilt their
shoulders in the opposite direction from their hips -- away from the
currently pushing leg. But not as much as I do. Finally I see the good
reason to limit my shoulder swing -- in order to get more out of my hip
rotation. A few months ago I said on this newsgroup that I used the concept
of rotating my
non-pushing hip forward -- but not for propulsion, and not to actually move
it forward -- only to make sure that it did not rotate backward. The elite
racers had a better idea.

I can't wait to try it.

more . . .
* My analysis of the physics is on flat terrain that forward hip rotation
has much less net forward-propulsion benefit -- except in softer slower snow
(? or maybe into a headwind ?).

* Classic diagonal stride -- eliter racers use "forward" hip rotation to
increase forward propulsion power. Again by advancing the non-pushing hip.
And they also counter-rotate their shoulders -- so the shoulder opposite to
the soon-to-be-pushing leg moves backward -- I think to help with the
"diagonal" pole push. (Interesting that the way the Ultimate Master does
weight transfer in Classic striding: Elena Vaelbe minimizes side-to-side
motion of her hips, and mostly moves her shoulders across to the side of her
next pushing ski -- see the great rear view in the Norwegian Ski Federation
instructional videos from Trondheim 1997.)

* backcountry striding -- Sharon started playing with hip rotation to help
climb up very steep hills with climbing skins on her skis. Then I found out
that two of the fastest non-racer mountain touring skiers I know make big
obvious use of forward hip rotation to help them climb big hills.

Ken
____________________________________
Jim Grau wrote
Ken, I think what you're doing here can spark some really helpful
discussion. Most of us who are still struggling to improve our
technique no doubt look a lot more like Ken Roberts than Carl Swenson,
so your videos may make it easier for us to see what needs to be
changed.

Bearing in mind that I'm just a struggling skier who gets blown away by
Ken on the uphills, I can see one difference between Ken and the elite
skiers in Janne's collection: I see more forward hip rotation in the
elite skiers vs a deeper knee bend from Ken. Whether we should be
consciously thinking about it or not, it seems we DO need to bring the
foot forward and upward to get up the hill, and what I see in Ken's
video (and probably in mine if I had one) is that he's moving the
foot upward and forward by bending the knee with a fairly stationary
hip, which tends to put the hip back; whereas the elite skiers move the
hip forward and upward with consequently less knee bend.

I never did totally understand the concept of "keeping the hips
forward", but somebody (maybe Ken actually) pointed out something
that might be important: that "hips forward" should not be thought
of as a "position" but rather as a "move", as in your hips
shouldn't be forward all the time, but rather moved forward at the
right time. It seems to me that the elite skiers are doing this by
rotating their hips, both in V1 skating and in classic. I suspect
there's some disagreement about hip rotation since I distinctly
recall an article in the Master Skier suggesting skating no poles with
your poles behind your back so that any of this presumably undesirable
hip rotation would be accentuated.

Hopefully some of the technique experts can weigh in and set me
straight here. Again, I applaud Ken's courage for posting the videos
and I hope they solicit more discussion that we strugglers can find
helpful.

Jim
____________________________________

Well Ken, the technique looks better than last year. I quickly skimmed
over the replies and looked at the side view video. Now, I'm not a
coach and I don't play one on TV, but two things strike me. One is that
your upper body seems to be flailing. Maybe you were really hammering
for the camera, but the coordination didn't seem to be there (which
comes with years of skiing) and there was lots of movement. As you ski
more and get a stronger upper body, it seems the upper body doesn't
feel like it moves a lot but the muscles (abs, chest, lats) are really
contracting. Remember that if you bend over to push, you have to bend
back, and the bending back is mostly wasted energy.

The other thing was the stomping. Usually I associate that (with
myself) when I'm off-balance or skiing through 6" of sugar or climbing
a super steep hill. There's no need to pick the ski up more than just
enough to clear the snow (watch Isometsa, who seemed to splash some
snow about every 5th stroke). Also, power in skiing seems to be
associated with being smooth with the legs. You can suddenly apply
power to the arms, but the legs usually work in a nice smooth pendulum
motion. Maybe think of a speed skater doing a long distance event.

Jay Wenner

Andrew Lee wrote
Swing (not lift) your leg forward with your abs... You
can figure out how to do that now in the house. Visualize your
legs going all the way to the bottom of your ribs and move from there.

OK I'll try that. Andrew is right that I can feel the difference in my
living room. Actually I'm not sure why thinking about moving my leg should
help much. But that's OK -- I'm happy to try new moves and figure out the
physics/biomechanics later. (Is this move at all related to what Jim Grau
said about "forward hip rotation"?)

Your weight is on your heels. You are skating like a speed
skater pre-clap skate. It was very noticeable to me that
your boots never come off your skis.

I agree with this observation that my heel stays down thru virtually my
whole leg-push, though I think my heel usually does come up just as I'm
finishing my leg-push. But I'm not seeing where to go with this, because it
looks to me like the same observation about "heels down thru almost the
whole leg-push" can be made about Bjorndalen and all the other elite racers
in Janne G's video -- and to me it looks even more clear in that footwork
close-up video on Janne G's Technic page: skateFeetSlomo.mpg

... you having fore-aft balance problems (where you
seem to get your upper body too far forward . . .

I agree with the observation that my upper body is leaning way forward. But
it looks to me like most of the elite racers in JanneG's videos are leaning
way forward also -- and it seems roughly as far as me, but sometimes more. I
know skating is complicated -- so I'm glad to say I'm missing some key
aspect -- what is it?

If you keep your torso connected with your pelvis with
body tension, ALL of your upper body will be involved
with weight shift (not just your torso)

I think I'm hearing that maybe my pelvis and hips are not properly shifting
sideways. To me that sounds undesirable, since I really believe in
side-weight-shift, and I really believe that it's more important for my
hips, than it is for my torso and shoulders. I really believe that the shift
of my shoulders is only a supplement to be added after strong hip+pelvis
side-weight-transfer is achieved. I'll give up some shoulder-torso-swing if
I really understand how that's going to increase my hip+pelvis action, but
not if I haven't heard how at least a good hint at how proper hip
weight-transfer should be defined and observed -- so I could know when I'd
finally "got" it.

So like in my Legs-only Front-view video, or my V1 Front-view, what is the
observation that shows that my hips or pelvis (or something) is not getting
enough weight-transfer? In what phase of my leg-push: set-down? final
extension?

you are even arching your back backwards the V1
front view video ... your upper body should move as a whole.

I agree with that observation about arching back, and that I don't like it
and want to get rid of it. And I agree with the observation about the elite
racers (this time) in their torso-side-moves do not curve their torso
sideways like I do -- so thanks
for exposing me to that. But this is one case where I'm not yet ready to
copy the elite racers -- in the side-curve-bend of my torso.

I don't buy the "upper body should move as a whole" because to me it's like
what the US National team coaches have been pointing out for years about the
benefit of forward-curvature of the torso -- that in the pole-push it's
important to curve the shoulders-chest-abdomen (the C position), and have
warned against the mistake of hinge at the waist and keep the torso
straight in poling. I agree with those National coaches, and in the last six
months on the newsgroup gave a difficult-to-understand justification of the
physics and biomechanics of why the curved C position is better.

I'd be glad to hear some arguments for why side-curvature is bad even though
front-curvature is good, or for why its side-effects are inevitably bad. But
for me it's got to be something more than just "quieter is better". Because
climbing up a hill is an act against nature.

Ken
__________________________________
Andrew Lee wrote
Ken, at times I almost think that you are trolling ;^)

I also taught myself and I shudder to think how I looked skating my first
two years, but I think that my learning process made me very aware of what
mental technique pointers worked for me. I also have skating imprinted
into
my brain from watching and rewatching the 1998 Olympic tapes continuously
one winter (and later 2002 Olympics and Janne's technique videos) during
the
time I finally picked up how to skate correctly.

Here are the things that I noticed on your new videos:

Your weight is on your heels. You are skating like a speed skater
pre-clap
skate. It was very noticeable to me that your boots never come off your
skis you could probably ski the same way if your heel was fixed! You
should
be aware of your center of gravity. When your weight is back, your COG is
over your heels and that's where you feel the pressure in your feet. You
need to shift your weight forward so that your COG is over the front part
of
your foot... the ball of your foot or just behind the ball of your foot.
If
you feel the most pressure at that point when you skate off, you know you
have it right. References from memory: Galanes (RSN poster "Jim") wrote
that the push should be with whole foot, with greatest pressure on the
forefoot. Abby Larson had an article a while back somewhere where she
says
that she can tell she is in the right fore-aft position when her weight is
on the front part of he feet.

You are not using your abdominals, at least not to the extent that you
should or the way that you should. One part of it is the running thing
that
Gene mentioned in your forward step. Getting this right was THE key for
me
(I picked up the tip from the archives of RSN a couple of years ago).
Don't
step forward with your leg. Swing (not lift) your leg forward with your
abs... You can figure out how to do that now in the house. Visualize your
legs going all the way to the bottom of your ribs and move from there.
During my first two years of skiing, I never used my abs. One time, as I
was skiing behind my friend up a long hill, I asked her if she was using
her
abs and she told me OF COURSE! and that it was almost cramping up. She's
a
high level skier, so that was a wakeup for me. Anyway, that visualization
for bring the leg forward turned my skiing around within minutes of trying
it. Immediately my upper body was more stable. In the legs only views,
you
can tell that you are not using your abs and that it is resulting in you
having fore-aft balance problems (where you seem to get your upper body
too
far forward and need to correct...).

I agree with Gene on your upper body. You should shift your weight around
and compress to some extent, but your upper body should move as a whole.
Dang, Ken, you are even arching your back backwards the V1 front view
video
(the side view doesn't look as bad). If you keep your torso connected
with
your pelvis with body tension, ALL of your upper body will be involved
with
weight shift (not just your torso) and the overall movement will be
quieter.
It's an easier and more effective way of loading your weight on your
kicking
(skating) foot than what you are doing with the extra torso movement.

Keep your head steady too.
_____________________________________

Ken Roberts wrote:

Andrew Lee wrote
Swing (not lift) your leg forward with your abs... You
can figure out how to do that now in the house. Visualize your
legs going all the way to the bottom of your ribs and move from there.

OK I'll try that. Andrew is right that I can feel the difference in my
living room. Actually I'm not sure why thinking about moving my leg should
help much. But that's OK -- I'm happy to try new moves and figure out the
physics/biomechanics later. (Is this move at all related to what Jim Grau
said about "forward hip rotation"?)

Yes, it is related to what Jim said. It will stabilize you more than you
can believe if you haven't tried it yet on snow. You might be able to see
it in the videos if you know what to look for - it's a elastic springiness
to their hip/ab movement that shows that they are using those muscles. I
notice it even in the leg skating videos. The stability will help you
reduce extraneous upper body movement. Your weight center will no longer be
all over the place, so you will be able to smoothly shift it much easier. I
use this for all the skating techniques and classic as well.

Your weight is on your heels. You are skating like a speed
skater pre-clap skate. It was very noticeable to me that
your boots never come off your skis.

I agree with this observation that my heel stays down thru virtually my
whole leg-push, though I think my heel usually does come up just as I'm
finishing my leg-push. But I'm not seeing where to go with this, because
it
looks to me like the same observation about "heels down thru almost the
whole leg-push" can be made about Bjorndalen and all the other elite
racers
in Janne G's video -- and to me it looks even more clear in that footwork
close-up video on Janne G's Technic page: skateFeetSlomo.mpg

I could tell without detailed observation that you were skating off your
heels - it just looked like that in my first impression on the side views.
It might be a factor in limiting your leg extension. If you try it both
ways dryland, you might notice the difference. This is pretty much an easy
fix I think. Just keep your weight centered over the front of your feet and
feel the pressure just behind the ball of your feet when you push off and
rest will probably take care of itself.

... you having fore-aft balance problems (where you
seem to get your upper body too far forward . . .

I agree with the observation that my upper body is leaning way forward.
But
it looks to me like most of the elite racers in JanneG's videos are
leaning
way forward also -- and it seems roughly as far as me, but sometimes more.
I
know skating is complicated -- so I'm glad to say I'm missing some key
aspect -- what is it?

I was noticing the bobble and instability, not the angle so much. See my
first point.

If you keep your torso connected with your pelvis with
body tension, ALL of your upper body will be involved
with weight shift (not just your torso)

I think I'm hearing that maybe my pelvis and hips are not properly
shifting
sideways. To me that sounds undesirable, since I really believe in
side-weight-shift, and I really believe that it's more important for my
hips, than it is for my torso and shoulders. I really believe that the
shift
of my shoulders is only a supplement to be added after strong hip+pelvis
side-weight-transfer is achieved. I'll give up some shoulder-torso-swing
if
I really understand how that's going to increase my hip+pelvis action, but
not if I haven't heard how at least a good hint at how proper hip
weight-transfer should be defined and observed -- so I could know when I'd
finally "got" it.

You can keep the swing, but more pendulum like without the flailing.

So like in my Legs-only Front-view video, or my V1 Front-view, what is the
observation that shows that my hips or pelvis (or something) is not
getting
enough weight-transfer? In what phase of my leg-push: set-down? final
extension?

It looks like you are getting good weight transfer - you are moving up the
hill pretty well.

you are even arching your back backwards the V1
front view video ... your upper body should move as a whole.

I agree with that observation about arching back, and that I don't like it
and want to get rid of it. And I agree with the observation about the
elite
racers (this time) in their torso-side-moves do not curve their torso
sideways like I do -- so thanks
for exposing me to that. But this is one case where I'm not yet ready to
copy the elite racers -- in the side-curve-bend of my torso.

I don't buy the "upper body should move as a whole" because to me it's
like
what the US National team coaches have been pointing out for years about
the
benefit of forward-curvature of the torso -- that in the pole-push it's
important to curve the shoulders-chest-abdomen (the C position), and have
warned against the mistake of hinge at the waist and keep the torso
straight in poling. I agree with those National coaches, and in the last
six
months on the newsgroup gave a difficult-to-understand justification of
the
physics and biomechanics of why the curved C position is better.

I guess my point wasn't clear. I'm not saying anything about whether there
should be a curve or not, and I'm not saying to bend at the waist. The
curve is a good thing. The lower part of the C is maintained by the muscles
that I was referring to in my first point (psoas?). I was thinking of two
things: the back arching and instability.

I'd be glad to hear some arguments for why side-curvature is bad even
though
front-curvature is good, or for why its side-effects are inevitably bad.
But
for me it's got to be something more than just "quieter is better".
Because
climbing up a hill is an act against nature.

No one else does it, right? Maybe it isn't inevitably bad. Some top
marathoners do some weird form things (Paula Radcliffe's head bobble, some
top Chinese runner's straight arms, etc.). But it looks like flailing to
me.

If you can get on some snow (in Europe?), try the ab driven leg recovery and
the weight over the front of the foot things.

Andrew Lee wrote
... try the ab driven leg recovery ...

Yes I did, and I like it. I haven't actually done any sort of side-by-side
comparison against my old way, because once I got into doing Andrew's new
thing I found I had no interest in going back.

I started by just trying Jim Grau's idea of "forward hip rotation". One nice
thing about hip rotation is that you can observe it without video -- just
look down. What I soon observed was that I wasn't actually doing it what I
thought I was trying to do. Then I realized I'd better use Andrew's image of
thinking of my leg as attached to the bottom of my rib cage. And that
worked. (except that sometimes I skied into the edge of the trail because I
was looking down at my hips to check).

I'm thinking it's like Andrew's image is the "subjective" approach and Jim's
concept is the "objective" approach -- and some people need one and others
need the other, and a few of us "resistant" types need both.

... try the weight over the front of the foot ...

Yes, this tip worked well for me too -- especially in the final phase of my
leg-push, when I combined it with JanneG's and Jay "Bjorne" Wenner's idea of
setting the next ski down low and smooth. I liked what happened when I would
land the next ski early, before the end of previous leg-push -- then focus
the finish of that old push on the fore-foot. Felt like that helped me
direct that final push into the line of the new ski -- which when I was
climbing up a steep hill was aimed distinctly out to the side.

I would also "slice" the pushing ski forward in that last phase of the
push. So it was not like a runner's toe-push aimed toward the back. Instead
it felt like it was pushing me over to other side (? more weight transfer
?), and thus enhancing the glide of my next ski out to the side. This is
great, because for keeping my ski gliding up a steep hill in soft snow, it
needs all the help it can get.

During the early or main phases of my leg-push, I found it hard to make
myself focus on my forefoot. Out of the few times I could talk myself into
it earlier in my push, at least once it seemed to bog my ski down and almost
stop my glide -- because I was in soft snow. Maybe I need an additional tip
about that.

Overall I spent about three hours skiing with no poles -- made it thru all
the black trails ("most difficult") -- the later 2 hours was in mushy snow,
the last hour to the point of "ugly". Never thought I could do that before.
But even in the midst of the most heinous climbs, I never thought about
going back to my old ways. So thanks a lot to Andrew Lee and Jim Grau for
taking me to something new.

Ken

Jay Wenner wrote
stomping . . . You can suddenly apply power to the arms,
but the legs usually work in a nice smooth pendulum motion.

I figure when both JanneG and Jay are telling me the same thing, I ought to
do something about it.

So I started playing with recovering the ski low -- it was firm snow in the
first half hour, so I actually dragged the non-pushing ski on the surface.
No problem for me -- good positive start. (This and what follows was with
no poles -- didn't use poles the
whole day)

Then I tried what I was seeing in JanneG's Technic video
skateFeetSlomo.mpg -- of landing the next ski before I finish the previous
push. This was hard for me at first. I really had to force myself -- seemed
sorta like I had to pause my leg-push for an instant, consciously set the
other ski down, then finish the leg-push. (I assume it would get smoother
with more practice). I tried for, but did not achieve my idea of pushing on
both skis simultaneously.

This early smooth landing definitely eliminated my "stomp" move, and I
really liked the feeling of the smoothness (regardless of what plus or minus
in physical effectiveness might result). Somehow it also seemed to help me
focus more on getting the
most out of the final phase of my leg-push, and to direct that push toward
the other side, and into helping my next ski glide out to the side more (?
better weight transfer ?). For me that side-glide is really critical for
surviving skating up hills slowly, without burning out.

So I started testing this new capability in skating up tough hills on the
"most difficult" black trails (with no poles). By now the snow had turned
mushy, and later got to the point of ugly and nasty. And the low recovery
and smooth set-down kept on working for me. Not an enormous surprise, since
soft snow is exactly where "stomp" has its worst effect.

I tried going beyond that. I decided to deliberately set the new ski down on
top of the tail of the old ski. So I could hear the "click" -- the base of
one ski landing on the top of the other. While climbing up a substantial
hill. And it kept working for me. As the next ski landed, I would aim it
further out toward the side (not up the hill), and aim my knee along with
it. Then I'd consciously do the final push off the old ski thru the
forefoot, like Andrew Lee suggested. Somehow all that fit together nicely
for me.

I don't understand all the biomechanics and physics of why smooth and low
and early landing is better than "stomp" (or if it actually is in all
situations). All I know is I kept on doing it for 2 hours in the toughest
hill-climbing situation I can remember, and it kept working for me. So much
thanks to JanneG and Jay Wenner.

Ken
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Bjorn A. Payne Diaz wrote
Well Ken, the technique looks better than last year. I quickly skimmed
over the replies and looked at the side view video. Now, I'm not a
coach and I don't play one on TV, but two things strike me. One is that
your upper body seems to be flailing. Maybe you were really hammering
for the camera, but the coordination didn't seem to be there (which
comes with years of skiing) and there was lots of movement. As you ski
more and get a stronger upper body, it seems the upper body doesn't
feel like it moves a lot but the muscles (abs, chest, lats) are really
contracting. Remember that if you bend over to push, you have to bend
back, and the bending back is mostly wasted energy.

The other thing was the stomping. Usually I associate that (with
myself) when I'm off-balance or skiing through 6" of sugar or climbing
a super steep hill. There's no need to pick the ski up more than just
enough to clear the snow (watch Isometsa, who seemed to splash some
snow about every 5th stroke). Also, power in skiing seems to be
associated with being smooth with the legs. You can suddenly apply
power to the arms, but the legs usually work in a nice smooth pendulum
motion. Maybe think of a speed skater doing a long distance event.

Jay Wenner