Nose knees toes (pick any two)#

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:05:20 +0000

In the last entry I wrote

If nothing else it would gratify my sense of neatness if I could ascribe all of my weak left parallel turns, weak right crossovers, early left foot opening, bad left armswing, and weak right carve to a single underlying cause (example: skating while upper body torqued rightwards)

Almost exactly wrong. I now have the video, and if there's a problem[1] it's that my upper body is twisted leftwards. On the left foot setdown I have vertical knee/toe alignment and my nose is somewere off to the left, on the right foot I have nose/knees, and the toes are setting down somewhere off to the left.

Had a discussion with Mike in the park this evening while sheltering under a tree from the sudden rain. He maintains that I am incorrect to describe outside edge setdown as "not the holy grail" as several coaches say otherwise - even Sebastian will admit it's good at the elite level, though like the doublepush is not something that most skaters should worry about. However, he (Mike) can't explain a mechanism by which it might help, and nor can I. My suspicion is that it's actually about setting down very slightly inside of the line and using the hip flexors to drive the foot across to the outside where the regular push can start - his is that it enhances the pendulum effect. Someone is going to have to explain the said pendulum effect to me in terms that make it obvious how that helps. Timing issues are always really hard to think about, though.

(Edit the next day: reviewing past pronouncements from Hans on the subject he maintains that NKT is still the goal even when setting down on outside edge, so it can't be about extra push range from setting down over the line. He was talking yesterday about getting more push by rolling the skate from outside to inside edge, which I didn't understand at the time, but now interpret to mean that he's getting a slight amount of extra push using sideways ankle flex instead of just keeping his frames and shinbones in line. Time to look at some more video of other people)

Not a whole lot of skating happened so far this week. Monday was rest, Tuesday was "fall unexpectedly asleep while browsing web" - hence more rest, and today I got 30 minutes or so of crossover drill on the Serpentine Road before the LondonSkate was cancelled due to sudden freaky rain storm.

fn1. Of course, there may not be a problem - I might very well be imagining it.