Skittl1321
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Post Title: Skating Fast?
Posted: 01-25-2007, 10:14 AM
How do you learn to skate fast? After I do my crossovers at the beginning of my lesson my coach makes me hold his hands and keep up with him. And it scares me, really really scares me! Especially backwards But the thing is, I keep up- so I know I can skate that fast. I know I need to work on stamina because I am completely out of breath after 2 minutes of the super fast crossovers on a figure 8. But how do I work on being able to do it without holding on? Without the support, I'm terrified to go more than a snails pace. I still click my blades quite regularly going backwards, and slip off my edge going forward- and that's going slow. But I don't want to be a snail. I want to be a good skater. I want to be able to pass tests that show I have "power".
I know fear is a good part of the problem. I am scared of hurting myself, but maybe even more than that, because I skate on public sessions, I'm scared of hurting someone else. But I don't think I'm good enough to be on freestyle yet. We don't have any senior level skaters, and freestyles aren't crowded- but the one I skated on, it felt as though I shouldn't be there yet.
Any tips?
Rusty Blades
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 10:27 AM
First of all, falls when you are going fast hurt A LOT LESS than when you are going slow - I KNOW that for a fact!
Being fast is 50% technique (the RIGHT technique) and 50% strength - both of those you build with practice. I am a novice and am way faster than I have any right to be - it's about the right push and having the leg strength to put power behind it.
Yes, backwards can be scary - most all of my falls these days are going off the back of the blade while skating backwards so I wear a butt pad (that doesn't even show) and always remember to bring your chin to your chest QUICK when you loose it going backwards.
flo
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 11:25 AM
Think power and not speed. Focus on making each push (each stroke is a push) in the crossover count. Once you have this, speed will follow.
Mrs Redboots
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 11:31 AM
And don't forget to finish off your edges. Properly done, you can get a lot of speed from edges, and it's somehow a lot less scary than getting speed from pushes (don't ask me why, my coach and my husband think I'm silly!).
MusicSkateFan
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 11:31 AM
Use deep edges.....Listen for the rip in the ice. If you have a good edge...that creates a powerful "push" and the more speed you will gain.
TimDavidSkate
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 11:39 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by flo
Think power and not speed. Focus on making each push (each stroke is a push) in the crossover count. Once you have this, speed will follow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MusicSkateFan
Use deep edges.....Listen for the rip in the ice. If you have a good edge...that creates a powerful "push" and the more speed you will gain.
AMEN, dont be too scared, we all fall on them when the least we expect it.
sunjoy
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 12:22 PM
I think you might gain a lot from working on two very important pre-requisites: practice falling, and practice your stops.
Practice falling to get over your fear, and also to learn how to "give-in" to the fall and sit yourself down on the ice rather than fighting it, stiffening up, and completely going heels-over-head. If you watch Nationals tonight or this weekend, you're likely to see a few falls from skaters who went full-speed into a jump. Notice that they barely loose a beat, and bounce right back up with a smile. Yes, they are in competition, but it's a nice habit that I try to emulate myself in practice. Falling isn't a mistake -- it's learning. It's not scary [most of the time] -- it's fun. It's not embarassing -- laugh, smile, enjoy it.
Practice to get a good hockey-stop. Start with one-foot snow-plows, which are really good for slowing down for traffic. It will take a while to get fluid, sharp hockey-stops. Probably harder than back-crossovers, and unfortunately, the falls you will take while learing them can be quite hard (you catch the wrong edge).
Once you don't care about falling, and once you can stop hard at will, I think you'll be able to effect the speed that you already seem to have but are afraid to use. *THEN*, you can start spending a lifetime finessing your technique to really milk speed out of the ice!
I found a nice blog the other day by a figure-skater who's now coached by a hockey coach, and who's really working on power-skating. Might be helpful to you.
http://mygorramden.typepad.com/my_go...ing/index.html Team Arthritis
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 12:32 PM
GO JESSI!
be afraid- that's how you know you are pushing it.
forget form - just skate fast, work form going slow. Doing it right is just an excuse for not going fast.
wear your pads- they are your armor and make you brave
warm up first- going fast on warmup you are more likely to fall, get your legs under you as this is something you are trying to work on.
now all I have to do is take my own advice
Lyle
flo
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 01:02 PM
"Forget form: Doing it right is just an excuse for not going fast"
Hmm Lyle, not sure I agree with this one! By all means keep trying to improve, and "go for it". But if you can't control your speed, take care for yourself as well as others around you. If you are interested in progressing in skating, learning to do basic stroking the correct way is the building block of everything. Also this is why so many coaches spend all that time on crossovers and getting them "right", and why at whatever level you are, the first thing a new coach (or any judge for that matter) looks at is your crossovers. My first coach told me that the quality of the crossovers and basic stroking is what seperates the skaters from the "Sunday" skaters.
If form, control and progressing are something you are not interested in, then the fs sessions would probably not be the best place to practice.
Skittl1321
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 01:09 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Blades
First of all, falls when you are going fast hurt A LOT LESS than when you are going slow - I KNOW that for a fact!
That's good to know!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunjoy
I think you might gain a lot from working on two very important pre-requisites: practice falling, and practice your stops.
Practice falling to get over your fear, and also to learn how to "give-in" to the fall and sit yourself down on the ice rather than fighting it, stiffening up, and completely going heels-over-head. Falling isn't a mistake -- it's learning. It's not scary [most of the time] -- it's fun. It's not embarassing -- laugh, smile, enjoy it.
I think you are right on both accounts. I had great stops on my rec skates, but weak ones in my figure skates. I need to relearn them.
I think part of my issue with falling is when I did the basics, I never fell. I think I can count the falls of my first 8 months of skating on one hand, and the past 2 months on the other. So now that I'm advancing I'm scared to let myself fall because I didn't do it then. However, I am falling more than I was before- and I don't mind the bumps, bruises and soreness, I'm just scared of the "bad one"- I've already done the horrible injury thing, and don't want to again. I'm not embarassed to fall- I just need to get used to it, and don't really want to get used to it while flying through backwards crossovers. But maybe Rusty Blades is right- it won't be as bad going fast? Not to mention, now that I help teach tots, I'm spending a lot of time going over the right way to fall. So i'll get it stuck in my head.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Arthritis
GO JESSI!
warm up first- going fast on warmup you are more likely to fall, get your legs under you as this is something you are trying to work on.
now all I have to do is take my own advice [img]
Lyle
Lyle- I think you are right about the warm up. Crossovers are part of my warmup routine, and that's why it's so difficult. I need to put them back in at the end too. Oh- and I think it was your post about "keeping up" from awhile back that i thought about while I was skating so fast I thought I was driving down a freeway. I'm sure the look on my face was priceless.
jenlyon60
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 01:21 PM
A good way to warm up knee action quickly on the ice is to do a couple passes of really quick 2-foot slaloms concentrating on a combination of both knee bend and quickness. Try to keep the knees between a light bend and a medium bend on the knee action, and keep a fast tempo on the actual edge changes.
quarkiki2
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 02:00 PM
Join a synchro team
I never practise crossovers until I've skated a lap or two and warmed up my basic edges, maybe some swing rolls or cross rolls, too. Then I work on the crossovers using the forward and backward power circles (Adult Gold MITF test). I don't concentrate on form, but on rhythm and speed. Then, once I'm warmed up, I work on form going more slowly and concentrating on the edges. I also work on crossovers every time I'm out there.
And, as often happens on the satruday AM freestyle, there is a lull before group lessons start and I take the center circle and fo ALL OUT, balls to the walls, especially backwards. There's only one ot two other skaters on the ice and I can really hear the rip that way. A couple of weeks ago, I was skating fast enough that I went from dead center on the ice to out past the circle in six crossovers. Whee!!! Of course, no one was there to se it
Team Arthritis
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 02:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by jenlyon60
A good way to warm up knee action quickly on the ice is to do a couple passes of really quick 2-foot slaloms concentrating on a combination of both knee bend and quickness. Try to keep the knees between a light bend and a medium bend on the knee action, and keep a fast tempo on the actual edge changes.
These are great but I'm having trouble graduating to the next step: 2footed bracket - back 3's -bracket etc. I can do them but lose power on each step so I have to scull between each one to get back some speed. Any ideas on how to get push on these while keeping the feet together??? I can't figure out why these are so much harder than the slaloms, arrrggghhhhh
Lyle
Mrs Redboots
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 02:05 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by flo
"Forget form: Doing it right is just an excuse for not going fast"
Hmm Lyle, not sure I agree with this one! By all means keep trying to improve, and "go for it". But if you can't control your speed, take care for yourself as well as others around you. If you are interested in progressing in skating, learning to do basic stroking the correct way is the building block of everything. Also this is why so many coaches spend all that time on crossovers and getting them "right", and why at whatever level you are, the first thing a new coach (or any judge for that matter) looks at is your crossovers. My first coach told me that the quality of the crossovers and basic stroking is what seperates the skaters from the "Sunday" skaters.
You're both right! My coach makes me work on technique 90% of the time, but usually towards the end of a lesson he'll say "Just go for speed" and require me to skate round faster than I find comfortable, usually backwards (helllllp!). You need to spend at least part of each session skating outside your comfort zone, with or without your coach propping you up, and the rest of the time really focussing on good form.
jenlyon60
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Posted: 01-25-2007, 02:08 PM
I'm slowing down on the 2-footed br-3-br also. I think it's a combination of not timing the knee action with the unweighting of the blade, so even though I'm not on the toe picks, I still scrape a bit. Also I don't tend to keep my head pointing down rink, staring at a spot on the wall, and I still have movement in my shoulders (or at least too much movement in shoulders for my new coach).
Hmmm. Maybe I will try not tensing up on these so much and think about making the turn quicker. Dmitry (new coach) said something to me the other week about not halting momentarily at the top of the rise before doing the turn. I knew conceptually what he meant but was having trouble with the translation from words to body. Now I have a feeling of a way that I could possibly do what he's asking (or at least be a bit closer).