Falling for the hips#

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

When we last left our intrepid zero he was concentrating on "that falling from the hips stuff". This is just a short note to say that having tried skating that way for a bit (my cadence feels much faster again, but one thing at a time) I think there's more going on than just gravity and "the fastest way to an inside edge".

The point is, I think, tentatively, that I'm not just leaning my hip away from the direction of the push, I'm using muscle power - probably, at a guess, my hip abductor - to push my leg outward, and this pushing force is available to me before I get onto an inside edge. This clears up one question which has been nagging me: "what's so bad about landing on an inside edge anyway" - it limits the push to what can be achieved with the quads and neglects any possible input from hip abductors. Which, given that they're responsible for keeping the hips level while balancing on one leg (as we do for about 40% of the time while walking) and so are pretty strong, would be a bit of a waste.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/ibls/fab/tutorial/anatomy/glutealt.html#T2 # gory pictures

http://www.roberts-1.com/xcski/skate/secrets/#timing_adductors_quadriceps # Ken Roberts was here already

[ Edit: I subsequently remembered there are some other and more fundamental reasons for not having an inside edge setdown, as in you probably don't want to start falling before you've recovered the trailing leg ... ]