A good skill to master. Many of the movements in skating on skis transfer directly into skiing.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
david@mediacopy, I agree. skimottaret has a skating test as part of the assessment he uses for his junior racers; he said there's a strong correlation between the kids who can skate quickly on the flat (the test is a timed figure of 8 circuit around two ski poles 10m apart) and those who ski well.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
rob@rar wrote:
skimottaret has a skating test as part of the assessment he uses for his junior racers; he said there's a strong correlation between the kids who can skate quickly on the flat . . . . and those who ski well.
It doesn't surprise me. And the ones that can skate well get a better start
the junior race club here spends quite a bit of time with the kids on xc skis - it's a joy watching those little grommets mucking around on them.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Can't say I really get the outside edge chat in this thread - was thinking about it skating around today and I seem to push off an inside edge and glide on the other (with less edging, more flat) , then push off that one, etc.
notice that the wheels are up and down (this would correspond to flat bases on skis) only when each foot is directly under that leg's hip socket.
You're not *required* to skate that way on inlines or ice or in XC boots (though it is least exhausting) because most inline boots and ice boots and XC boots have enough lateral room or lateral flex at the ankle. Alpine boots do not have this room or flex.
Last edited by After all it is free on Fri 26-03-10 22:37; edited 1 time in total
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The one thing I'd add is don't rush the glide phase. otherwise you just look like a penguin and work too hard.
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yeah, full alignment works etc... I get a flat ski, or close to, but there's no way i'm balanced on the outside edge? Will play with it more tomorrow, but spent the morning with kids on the lower mountain so did a fair bit of skating around!
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stoatsbrother, if you're not balanced (stacked) directly on top the gliding foot you can't /help/ but rush it because the body topples towards the inside edge.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
comprex, the inline vids show a classic double push - how does that apply to skating on skis
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slikedges, the glide foot set-down (landing), the hip-knee-ankle alignment and the redirection of body toppling are exactly the same.
The only difference is that, with skis, there isn't a skeletal muscle active push to the inside. Very minor difference.
The glide foot set down and the hip-knee-ankle alignment so that the leg is straight down through the sole of the foot (putting the skate or ski on the outside edge) during set-down is what's important.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
comprex, the bit I'm struggling with is in the vids, the foot seems to come back under the torso a lot - not something I can think of happening in my skiing at all... Are you talking about something that's biomechancially most efficient, or the default way for people to do it?
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
comprex, vid is a Quicktime movie. Check your quicktime plugins
Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
comprex, My experience is from recently coaching an adult female to do race starts, her skis just diverged too quickly and slowed her down if she got onto an outside edge. The OP is also female and using similar radius skis.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
comprex, Just double checked and it work fine in Firefox for me... I have updated Quicktime though
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
DaveC, you mean 'the left foot goes right'? That's not important in this context.
Watch the position of the ankle, knee and hip as the skate hits the pavement. The ankle is straight and the skate is under the middle of the body. Those two facts put the skate (or ski) on its outside edge.
I mean that the skate as a base of support crosses under the CoM, so it's obvious the inline skater is balanced to his "outside edge". Watching this clip - http://youtube.com/v/G3gKkPeZeMU - doesn't seem to show anything like it. I can kind of imagine that my balance on what feels like a "flat base" is actually a mild bias to the outside edge of the ski, so balanced to the outside, but that's just the way I can picture your example working for me.
You can almost see it watching the guy in red at 4:40. They're sprinting with diverging skis, so obvious glide phase balance is hard to spot.
Quote:
I can kind of imagine that my balance on what feels like a "flat base" is actually a mild bias to the outside edge of the ski, so balanced to the outside, but that's just the way I can picture your example working for me.
That sounds like I've managed to explain some of what I mean. Now imagine that someone with wider hips is going to have a greater 'mild' bias, even to the point that it isn't 'mild' at all.
After all it is free
After all it is free
But watching the hip roll "inwards" in the inline skating videos look like its a lot more pronounced than would even be possible on skis, mainly since you've got skis on! Just a bit suprised, I mean if we're talking about just the gliding part before the next push off, it's odd there's much call to have the ski biased to the outside rather than inside/flat. Given I'm a big guy, I'd of thought I'd of fit into the more extreme end of the scale.
Other thing I'm wondering - would you ever mention the outside edge to a pupil learning about skating, either at beginner or high end levels?
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Yes, the huge base of support available between long, divergent skis makes going to the edges of that base of support a lot slower and therefore less generally useable than on skates.
DaveC wrote:
Just a bit suprised, I mean if we're talking about just the gliding part before the next push off, it's odd there's much call to have the ski biased to the outside rather than inside/flat.
Not a "call to", so much as "observation that it happens", imo.
DaveC wrote:
Other thing I'm wondering - would you ever mention the outside edge to a pupil learning about skating, either at beginner or high end levels?
skating on skis? No, I don't think so.
skating on inlines? Yes. First lesson, usually. The ones that show up on hockey inlines are usually on their outside edges whilst standing still before anyone even starts teaching.
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I managed to get Fastman's vid to show, and also watched the cross country skiers in action on Utube as posted above. On the Diverging skis video I can see that progess has been made towards rocking onto the outside edge - its a pity it doesn't last for longer as I would like to see what happens next. The cross country skiers make it look so easy don't they, but the shots in the one I watched don't show clearly how they are doing it. The clearest thing to see is that they are on significantly thin skis and I wonder if on skis that thin if the rolling onto the outside edge is so important or can they get away with gliding on their bases. N.B. For the record I can get around reasonably OK on ice skates though have never really looked at how I do so, and with momentum on my side as I say I can manage to start skating on skis - I just seem unable to maintain it after any degree of distance. FWIW I am also on a wider ski as mentioned - 78mm underfoot with I think a 17m radius.
N.B. this is turning into a really interesting discussion though
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comprex,
Quote:
...the glide foot set-down (landing), the hip-knee-ankle alignment and the redirection of body toppling are exactly the same.
Yes, never disagreed with that, but why is the outside edge set-down important?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
comprex wrote:
skating on skis? No, I don't think so.
skating on inlines? Yes. First lesson, usually. The ones that show up on hockey inlines are usually on their outside edges whilst standing still before anyone even starts teaching.
This is why I'm a bit thrown - I'm following (and believe you about) what's happening, but given it's not something I could imagine on skis framed as "outside edge", I'm suprised it got mentioned by a few people. I definitely wouldn't want to mention "balancing on the outside edge" at any point to a student. The skating example is so extreme compared too, in the hip movement.
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So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
slikedges wrote:
comprex,
Yes, never disagreed with that, but why is the outside edge set-down important?
A /balanced/ set down is important so that you can immediately glide with close to all your weight on that foot.
The edge bias is an effect, not a cause.
If you're slow to transfer weight to the set-down foot because it isn't almost completely balanced at set-down, the weight on the back foot makes it act as a brake.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
comprex, I thought I was quite a reasonable skater but I don't think I set-down as early as that (on skis) - I'll experiment over the next 7/8 days, thanks!
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
DaveC wrote:
This is why I'm a bit thrown - I'm following (and believe you about) what's happening, but given it's not something I could imagine on skis framed as "outside edge", I'm suprised it got mentioned by a few people.
People are generally very unwilling to balance themselves at the very edge of their base of support.
On this forum, in a thought experiment context, I think it fairly handy to have a ready standard of where the edge of that base of support is, so that we can figure out if something like inadequate weight transfer problems exist.
Quote:
I definitely wouldn't want to mention "balancing on the outside edge" at any point to a student.
Until they're ready for one-foot skiing, no.
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DaveC, As a fairly intermediate skier I was instructed to skate landing gliding ski on outside edge and rolling to inside as the glide continued by two instructors. One was a Canadian Provincial race coach, the other a Canadian with a race coach background also CSIA 4.
In one case it was part of a description of skate technique to attempt to describe the movements. (I already did a pretty poor imitation that got me around kind of but I was asking about more power)
The second it was part of a skate to carve progression that had you scribing and arc inwards after the slight outwards movement(you progressively hold the inward edge longer and longer)
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Megamum, If you can find thousand steps in Fastman's video samples then you will probably see more. The aggressive thousand steps had strong skate steps IIRC (thinking back to filming). They were similar to his skate steps when he starts in a race - you can really see the acceleration from each stride.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
[bit of an extended tangent, but interested from a teaching pov] - moving on from the how - why/when would it be important to encourage balancing on the outside edge/prolonging the glide phase, either as a tactic to develop ski performance elsewhere? how about for simply just skating (since the idea of mentioning outside edge to an intermediate sounds pretty horrific to me)?
It can actually be done in many ways, from stepping to the inside edge, all the way to stepping to a high outside edge. It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish, and how much power you want to put into the skate. Generally, more power requires skating onto a high outside edge.
Sometimes I will skate from inside edge to inside edge when I just want to add a bit of low effort forward motion to my travel across a flat area. It's very effortless, basically just a fall from one ski to the other with little thrust. It also works well when skating uphill. Back in the days of the straight ski we would use a skate at the end of a turn to compensate for the ski's lack of ability to carve sharply enough. The skate would produce a good portion of the direction change we needed. Those skate steps went onto a flat ski because we didn't have time to roll all the way across the ski from one edge to the other. We had to get the new turn going quickly. Skating onto a flat ski didn't generate beast size power, but it allowed for the direction change and quickness we needed. Now, if I was going to skate race someone across the flats, you'd better believe I'd be hitting some pretty high outside edge angles.
This is yet another example of why I preach versatility so persistently. In so many areas of the sport there are numerous ways of doing things. Getting locked on one concept of right just leads to a narrowing of one's options.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
the idea of getting up onto an outside edge surely isn't so bizarre or challenging? Traversing on an uphill ski is not an advanced exercise? Or getting onto the uphill ski to do a whole turn on the outside ski? I can do that and I'm not advanced. I think the reason I emphasised the outside edge bit (as a very intermediate sort of skater) is that when people are struggling I feel it's because they are just so reluctant to commit to balancing on top of the ski at all - they just sort of get there, then collapse back too quick. We always tend to do a movement much less than we are told - if told to get onto that outside edge when skating, many of us will only just be managing to get off the inside edge.
pam w, yep that is mostly what it did for my skating when I was told. I don't get to the outside edge and glide on it still... but I get an awful lot closer than before I had that explained.
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
DaveC, I am not an alpine skier, so won't comment on the discussion about skating on Alpine skis, but the clip you picked is not IMHO the best example of skating on XC skis. It's a bunch of children and some aren't that skilled.
Have a look at the best in the world for some contrast. Especially the chap in red.
pam w, it contradicts the majority of what I'm trying to get pupils to do though, and after talking to a few other instructors, no-one was particularly comfortable with the idea of balancing on the outside *edge* or encouraging people to do it (not full cert instructors, fwiw). I agree with people not doing as much as they're asked, but for purposes of describing it I'd always mention a flat ski. FastMan's description of skating from inside to inside rings much more true with me - if I'm skating uphill I push inside to inside, and on the flat barely pick my skis off the floor if at all to add momentum.
Not been back on snow since my last post to actually try and get a high outside edge angle, but it definitely still seems like an alien concept from my experience of skating. Anyone want to weigh in on my last question (when would it be useful to encourage use of the outside edge, to develop general skiing?). I can't really think of an applicable situation until dealing with racers.
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DaveC, How do you teach high edge angles if the student never learns to balance on an outside edge of an inside ski? At some point in the learning they WILL fall inside - being able to recover rather than SPLAT is surely fairly useful? (That is why I've been learning it anyway)
Also kind of useful in ILE - to know where your outside edge is to start the extension(add pressure)
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little tiger, it's not something I've got a lot of experience teaching, especially with adults - with high end kids I don't worry about getting their CoM inside until they're angulating well, and then work with inclination again to do it. Inside ski edging seems to be a very natural process assuming other factors don't block it. Did you see the "carving both skis" thread? I haven't come across any focus on the inside ski through CSIA trainers and my teaching reflects that. Seems like at least BASI give it a lot more consideration from discusssions here.
FAQ
Poster: A snowHead
Now imagine that someone with wider hips is going to have a greater 'mild' bias, even to the point that it isn't 'mild' at all.
