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Inline skaters who also ski

Poll Results: How do you make most of your inline skate turns?

This is a multiple choice poll
  • 2% (1)
    A-frame. I generally enter turns very slowly.
  • 0% (0)
    I brake before turns and stride through in the new direction
  • 15% (7)
    Some form of parallel turn. Both feet on ground. Very hard to lift inside foot during turn.
  • 23% (11)
    Some form of parallel turn. No problem at all to lift inside foot.
  • 43% (20)
    Crossover
  • 17% (8)
    Lunge turn (extra wide parallel turn with weight transfer to outside edge of inside foot)
46 Total Votes  
post #1 of 101
8/7/08 at 1:07pm
Thread Starter 
The question was prompted by some of the inclination/angulation discussion over in the Intructional area. Most specifically, by the reviews of Greg Gershmans articles, to wit:

http://www.youcanski.com/en/coaching/slalom.htm

Quote:
The ability to carve should be developed by first skiing a line that is more round. Once a racer can successfully carve turns in this line, he or she should gradually work on tightening the line, without sacrificing the carving action of the ski. (Of course, even at the World Cup level, a clean carve does not always happen, but it should be the ultimate goal of any athlete and coach.)
A common mistake made by coaches and racers occurs when a young racer tries to tighten his or her line without correcting the technical errors that prevented him or her from carving turns and skiing fast in the first place.
Though these technical errors can vary for every racer, several of the most common are:
  • not being balanced over the outside ski
  • putting too much weight on the inside ski too early in the turn
  • upper-body rotation
  • wrong timing of a pole plant
  • a lack of forward pressure
  • a knocked knee
  • leaning in
  • late or weak reentering during the transition phase (very common with modern skis)
I thought some of these were quite relevant to what we do on inline skates. Some of them are obviously not relevant. The ones that are:

Do we maintain our bad habits in one sport and the other?
Do we train bad skiing habits as we skate well?

FWIW, I would expect anyone ticking the bottom three boxes to

a) be able to skate in the rain
b) be able to make round turns down steep hills on skates
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post #2 of 101
8/12/08 at 12:43pm

Not sure...

You tell me.

Dry land training from last Oct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJWU6mZIG9M

If for some reason video does not load or says unavail - just hit refresh until it does.
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post #3 of 101
8/12/08 at 1:36pm
Never tried the "lunge turn" though I don't see why I could not do one...
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post #4 of 101
8/12/08 at 1:47pm
Thread Starter 
In terms of the poll, passes 1-3 look like option 3

Starting in pass 4, then 5, and some of 6 looks like it might be option 4 if you tried to single-foot them. Pass 5 looks best to me for that because the outside skate doesn't lag behind the body as in the previous descents.

Pass 7 reverts to option 3, tucked.
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post #5 of 101
8/12/08 at 1:50pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigE View Post
Never tried the "lunge turn" though I don't see why I could not do one...
Having spent years practicing LTs so as to be able to street skate on 14 inch Eaglehawks and Suregrips, I now have an irrepressible tendency to move the pelvis uphill on attempted ILEs.
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post #6 of 101
8/12/08 at 5:48pm
Realization is half the cure!

jdistefa said it best, re: gait mechanics:

It feels like you are striding down the hill.
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post #7 of 101
8/19/08 at 12:45am
Haven't practiced land training in a while, especially for lack of "closed" downhill concrete runs...been skating with 100mm wheels last fall (no "downhill " skating) but am now back to run and cycle to build myself back up.
From my recollection, a mixture of options 3,5 and 6 with high preponderance of option 3 and some timid probe toward 5 and 6, mainly due to the "fear factor" (fear to end up like Wile E Coyote....flattened on a Bus front side)
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post #8 of 101
8/19/08 at 1:26am
Oh, btw, I think of myself as a "skier who also skates".
In fact I took skating as a mean of cross training during the dry season
It's only lately that I've discovered the subtle yet important differences between a "skater who also skis" and a "skier who also skates"...
One above all, a skater (racer) relies mostly on his/her inside leg while turning (that's where they apply the majority of the weight)
While a skier (especially an "old" style one) tends to use the outside one, while skating.
It's not really dangerous for a skier who skates, but to have the weight on the "wrong" leg while skiing (a skater who also skis) can lead to rather dramatic outcomes-injuries on the lower legs/knees...
Movement patterns are similar but not identical, weight transfers work differently so it's important to be aware of those differences.
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post #9 of 101
8/19/08 at 8:09am
I am a old time ice skater who roller blades now. So i don't have a clue how to do what is in the video, lol. I can crossover with the best of them thou, and blade about 30 miles a week. Looks like fun on a slope thou. We don't have any of those in Cleveland thou, lol.
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post #10 of 101
8/19/08 at 1:26pm
Thread Starter 
Nicely put, Matteo, I'm quite grateful for your pointing out the purpose of the thread.

As I see it at the moment, practiced use of any one of #3, #4, #5, #6 can lead to errors when skiing:

#3 - Greg Gurshman's list above, errors of balance on outside ski, (including fore/aft)
#4 - Lifting of the inside ski, errors of not maintaining active inside leg
#5 - not finishing turns, errors of timing
#6 - errors of over-muscling + errors of balance on outside ski (including fore/aft)





That said, have you had a chance to skate slalom cones on those 100s yet? And, most particularly, have you had a chance to skate slalom cones on really hard wheels (90A++) indoors?
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post #11 of 101
8/21/08 at 6:18am
Hi Comprex! Alas my reply to both questions is...
1)No...

First time I put on the 100mm wheels and started skating I thought that those skates were a lot like GS-SG skis, a lot of fun once up to speed but an awful lot of work to reach that speed (and in my conditions that meant having all bell and whistles of my HR going out loud). Still, as a comparison, our team of youngsters (13-17 y.o.) was doubling me at least a couple of times on a 10 km "road" ring, if not more.
I ventured only on "road" rings in the open air, not indoor, and with "standard" hardness wheels (those which came with the skates sorry, don't remember how much hard are, skates are now resting at my GF place)
Don't plan to skate indoor, indoor structures (parquet or linoleum) are opened to skaters only during races, given their multi-purpose vocation. Besides it could be very dangerous, even if helpful as a balance workout, for those around me and for my old bones... Still, now you nag me, I might try and find the courage to ask the coaches to allow me a couple of rounds during this winter coming training sessions..

2) I never used slalom cones, I just "free" skied much like in the video, the skates I used were my old rollerblade w/ 78mm wheels
(and with the two middle wheels slightly lower than the outer ones so to simulate a mid of the turn "decambered" ski.

Now you "nag" me, I might try and find the courage to ask the coaches to allow me a couple of rounds during this coming fall/winter training sessions..
Also, as soon as I'll catch a sniff of a "closed" to the traffic road, I'll try the 100mm wheels!
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post #12 of 101
9/21/08 at 9:44pm
Interesting. I've been skiing and skating since a young age. Started skiing around 3, ice skating around 4 or 5. In middle school, I played in an organized indoor roller hockey league for a few years, played intramural ice hockey in undergrad. Been ski racing since middle school, got serious in undergrad, now a grad student.

I love skating in the off season for exercise and to get some turns in on a slope. Actually done a lot of that this summer as I busted a crack in my MTB frame and waiting on the warranty....

I have inline hockey skates from when I played hockey, leather lace up boot etc (no brakes!). For me, I probably do 60/40 outside/inside weight in turns skating. I can make linked turns on both my skis and skates on one foot, so I may be overestimating how much I weight my inside *skate* in turns.

Clearly inline skating is different, your range of motion is limited you can't load the skate to carve like a ski, the grip is way less on skates, etc. Especially hard to skid a turn. I've lost traction in turns accidentally and stayed up, but I'm not ready to do it intentionally! A guy I played hockey with could 'hockey stop' on his inlines in the rink... pretty impressive.

A few things I focus on while skating are how well my knees track together in turns (no A-framing), that I keep a consistent distance between my feet, that I don't lead (fore/aft) too much with my inside skate. I basically pretend that both of my knees and both ankles are connected with a rigid bar. Racer256 - sweet video - but along these lines I did notice a lot of movement in your lower body, tightening of your stance in the transition mostly. Almost like you were pushing to get more speed. Maybe you need a steeper hill

Also I've noticed I'm a lot more comfortable with a 'cross-under' movement on skates than a 'cross-over' which is unfortunate as I'm currently aiming for the latter in my skiing to be more aggressive on the initiation....

Regardless, its just fun to find a good slope and make some turns, if you're lucky a fairly steep deserted slope with a good runout. A spot near where I used to live was perfect. Pavement was GLASS from years of rush hour traffic but very quite mid-day, and a very nice incline. When I straight line tucked it I would end up I would guess around 25mph, maybe more it hard to tell but it feels very fast and I got strange looks. And thats on my 8 year old ABEC 5 bearings. I should have at some point busted out my unused ABEC 7s, could have really flown down that.

Maybe I'll make a video of myself skating, would be interesting to see.
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post #13 of 101
9/22/08 at 6:28am
Hi everyone,

I can perform crossovers, but simply skate normally through most turns.

Anyone keeping your feet grouped together and propel by paired lateral thrust?

Michael
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post #14 of 101
9/22/08 at 7:26am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by WILDCAT View Post
Hi everyone,

I can perform crossovers, but simply skate normally through most turns.
You mean you stride through?

Here's a task. Put a piece of chalk at the end of a 4 foot string. Scribe a circle. Skate along that circle as fast as you can, without letting the inside skate leave the circle.

Faster.

Faster.

Have someone chase you around it while you try to catch them.

Pretty soon you'll have the important part of the lunge turn.

Quote:
Anyone keeping your feet grouped together and propel by paired lateral thrust?

Michael
Yea, sometimes when I feel like being odd. That isn't really an efficient range of motion for getting power from the inside foot, and efficient long distance skating does _not_ extend the long leg to the side with muscular action.

Anyway, there was a thread discussing the move, demonstrated by Eddy Matzger here:



back when BwinPa was trying to get the ski version named after hisself.

Mostly useful for core training, I find.
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post #15 of 101
9/22/08 at 8:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by comprex View Post
You mean you stride through?

Here's a task. Put a piece of chalk at the end of a 4 foot string. Scribe a circle. Skate along that circle as fast as you can, without letting the inside skate leave the circle.

Faster.

Faster.

Have someone chase you around it while you try to catch them.

Pretty soon you'll have the important part of the lunge turn.

Yea, sometimes when I feel like being odd. That isn't really an efficient range of motion for getting power from the inside foot, and efficient long distance skating does _not_ extend the long leg to the side with muscular action.

Anyway, there was a thread discussing the move, demonstrated by Eddy Matzger here:



back when BwinPa was trying to get the ski version named after hisself.

Mostly useful for core training, I find.
Interesting...
I do that, as you say, only when I feel playing odd, but I don't keep the feet together, rather, the feet are a bit far away (sort of like in the ski "natural stance") let's say kind of "linked lunge turns"
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post #16 of 101
9/22/08 at 9:47am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobody View Post
Interesting...
I do that, as you say, only when I feel playing odd, but I don't keep the feet together, rather, the feet are a bit far away (sort of like in the ski "natural stance") let's say kind of "linked lunge turns"
I do that too but it requires a bit of care not to diverge the toes and scrub speed that way. Feet together comes in very useful skating cones.
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post #17 of 101
9/25/08 at 7:46pm
Lunge turn progression:

Skate backwards in a circle, faster and faster, with crossover. You will find yourself reaching in with the inside skate and *pulling* to keep the body moving on a circular path.

Lunge turn has the same pull.

So does double push.

Matzger's video is irrelevant.
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post #18 of 101
9/25/08 at 7:50pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigE View Post
Matzger's video is irrelevant.
It was directed to a different topic.
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post #19 of 101
9/25/08 at 8:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by comprex View Post
It was directed to a different topic.
my bad.
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post #20 of 101
4/12/09 at 8:02am

I have decided to commit to using my in line skates more this summer to get some better balance on skis as well as develop some new skills that will translate to better ski fitness in the fall.

 

This thread is sure to help in that regard.

 

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post #21 of 101
4/12/09 at 10:01am
Thread Starter 

There seems to be some stuff missing from the OP.  

 

It appears to be near gutted even.

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post #22 of 101
4/13/09 at 12:45pm

FWIW I've always felt ice skating is an excellent cross training activity for skiing, expecially east coast or midwest skiing.   And, it even brings the chill factor in during the summer.  But, inline skating outdoors can be done right out most folks front doors and brings hills in to the equation.. Sitll, I feel that ice skating is closer to actually skiing on most regards.

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post #23 of 101
4/13/09 at 2:09pm

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Trekchick View Post

I have decided to commit to using my in line skates more this summer to get some better balance on skis as well as develop some new skills that will translate to better ski fitness in the fall.

 

This thread is sure to help in that regard.

 

I second that! 

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post #24 of 101
4/13/09 at 2:51pm
Thread Starter 

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by crgildart View Post

. Sitll, I feel that ice skating is closer to actually skiing on most regards.

 

Why?

 

 

 

9 days/122 miles so far this season, the cold rain has really been putting the hurt on skating.

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post #25 of 101
4/13/09 at 4:50pm

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by comprex View Post

 

 

Why?

 

 

 

9 days/122 miles so far this season, the cold rain has really been putting the hurt on skating.


Skidding sideways on a pair of ice skates and the edge control is much more similar to skiing edge control.

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post #26 of 101
4/14/09 at 7:40am
Thread Starter 

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by crgildart View Post

 


Skidding sideways on a pair of ice skates and the edge control is much more similar to skiing edge control.

 

If you -really- want to do all that, get softer wheels in your inlines.     Srsly.    

 

180lbs on 4 wheels per skate, skating outdoors,  go 76A or softer.

 

You will be able to snowplow, gliding wedge, and skid on even moderate inclines.

 

 

 

What I thought you were going to say is that inline skaters pump and extend the stance leg for forward motion.    
 
This, of course, is a beginner move and highly inefficient.     
 
The forward and lateral 'fall' move from an extended stance leg of intermediate inline skaters is very similar in balance elements to proper ski transitions.

 


Edited by comprex - 4/14/2009 at 02:51 pm GMT
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post #27 of 101
4/14/09 at 8:45am

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by comprex View Post

 

 

If you -really- want to do all that, get softer wheels in your inlines.     Srsly.    

 

180lbs on 4 wheels per skate, skating outdoors,  go 76A or softer.

 

You will be able to snowplow, gliding wedge, and skid on even moderate inclines.

 

 

 

What I thought you were going to say is that inline skaters pump and extend the stance leg for forward motion.    
 
This, of course, is a beginner move and highly inefficient.     
 
The forward and lateral 'fall' move from an extended stance leg of intermediate inline skaters is very similar in balance elements to proper ski transitions.

 


Edited by comprex - 4/14/2009 at 02:51 pm GMT

Yes, I realize it is possible to  skid on inlines with softer wheels, but to be able to dial it up and down from pure skidding to hard edge set  and all degrees in between they way you can on ice is much closer to the feel of skiing IMHO.

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post #28 of 101
4/25/09 at 6:35am

Alright, despite resorts being still open here (Made will close tomorrow, Tonale and many others will close

next week end after a three days "fest") I'm nearly convinced my season is over, unfortunately due to things that took priority over ski...

So, I've dug out my skates and gone to the track, three times so far. I can only manage 2x10 laps each time...

1)at around the 7th lap, my lower back start to ache really bad

2)At the same time my HR goes dangerously up, particularly if I cross during the turns and keep the shortest

  radius (inner), if I stay uptight and stay at the track outest even during turns, well, HR and back don't worry me too much and can keep going and going and going...

Hope that things will get better as the season progress, so to get ready for next ski season.

 

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post #29 of 101
4/26/09 at 8:29pm
Thread Starter 

1)  tight hamstrings?   If you're coming off work or a long period of sitting, skating upright *hurts*, right in the lower back.      Stretch after a ~20min warmup?  Beyond that, I'd say your knees are too rigid, soften them up and skate lower down overall?

 

2) How is your breathing at this point?    I would fully expect you to work harder in the turns than during the straightaways, heck, the straightaways are really the rest periods.   If your skates fit well, then I would look at either the breathing or maybe you're pushing too much with the stance leg (toe kicking).     The TK is easy to rule out just by having someone watch you.      

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post #30 of 101
4/27/09 at 1:20am

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by comprex View Post

1)  tight hamstrings?   If you're coming off work or a long period of sitting, skating upright *hurts*, right in the lower back.      Stretch after a ~20min warmup?  Beyond that, I'd say your knees are too rigid, soften them up and skate lower down overall?

 

2) How is your breathing at this point?    I would fully expect you to work harder in the turns than during the straightaways, heck, the straightaways are really the rest periods.   If your skates fit well, then I would look at either the breathing or maybe you're pushing too much with the stance leg (toe kicking).     The TK is easy to rule out just by having someone watch you.      

Comprex, you're spot on on both counts. Must also add that friday I swam at midday and then skate in the evening, probably too much activity in one day...need to plan better and not pile up things...

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