Inline skating

[MoSkyrPls]

^have you tried inlines on a pump track yet?

I kind of painted myself into a corner this summer - first I cracked my wrist so that holding a paddle or bike handlebars is difficult - and now I have new skate blisters all over so its hard to even walk *cry*

I messed up my shoulder paddling so my kayaking season is done for, just trying to prepare for December I finally went and started skating a 3 mile trail at the riverfront here. But I went like 30 miles and now my knee is angry truly no pain no gain

 

[cantunamunch]

I messed up my shoulder paddling so my kayaking season is done for, just trying to prepare for December

oof.

But I went like 30 miles and now my knee is angry truly no pain no gain

This...is a bit worrying. Knees should not be sore at a pavement-cruising level.

Everything else (lower back, hamstrings, bottoms of feet, even upper quads, adductors) is just par for the course.

Yeh, don't do too much of that knee soreness inducing without someone taking a close look at a) your stroke b) your frame alignment.

 

[MoSkyrPls]

I noticed that, but even beginner skaters and novice (inline speed) racers fall into that habit because they do not feel safe when turning...
To avoid that I must pay extreme attention and care not to fall in that habit by actively working at keeping the shins as parallel as possible. As for the grip differences, nothing that I can do, really, so I must put up with it and pray for snow...but at least, this way, skate-to-ski is another mean to while away the time...

I've honestly kinda ignored most of the skate-to-ski advice and paid attention to street skaters. I had a few breakthroughs with my fore/aft balance and confidence in being on one skate so now I can actually carve short turns pretty well, much faster than on skis. I try to throw my balance/speed off with my center of mass while carving different sized short turns to hopefully improve my balance in moguls. It's pretty amazing how much fun it is though...

 

[MoSkyrPls]

oof.



This...is a bit worrying. Knees should not be sore at a pavement-cruising level.

Everything else (lower back, hamstrings, bottoms of feet, even upper quads, adductors) is just par for the course.

Yeh, don't do too much of that knee soreness inducing without someone taking a close look at a) your stroke b) your frame alignment.

Yeah my legs took a good beating. I should have stopped around 20 miles but I was having a bad week and felt the need to push myself. I had to walk on uneven ground/rocks the next day and that's really what messed with my knee.

 

[cantunamunch]

Yeah my legs took a good beating. I should have stopped around 20 miles but I was having a bad week and felt the need to push myself.

Do some gliding (one footed, two footed straight) and tight circling practice for a bit. Also try really working your edge changes and abductor/adductor.

15 foot circles at ~8-10mph, uphill swizzles is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Oh and stretch after the workouts... hams, lower back, hips.

 

[Shawn]

Went on a very casual city stroll and got caught by the rollerblading paparazzi in a double-pronating glide. Awful. I'm going to adjust the frame position a little more.

 

[MoSkyrPls]

Went on a very casual city stroll and got caught by the rollerblading paparazzi in a double-pronating glide. Awful. I'm going to adjust the frame position a little more.

View attachment 207636

How dare you not have perfect form! Shameful! Definitely beats walking. I still feel super sketchy when it gets a little crowded.

 

[DavidSkis]

For those of you that augment training by skating, what are some things I should pay attention to or maybe even avoid? What bad habits could I fom through inline skating? What will it help most with?

Context: I hold a CSIA 3 and an ICP2, with extensive skate-to-ski training from one of the few active certified trainers (ICP no longer ran skate-to-ski certification by the time I started skating).

Skating can improve your skiing, particularly if you have good coaching, clear goals, practice deliberately, make tangible improvements on skates and transfer that to skiing. This is all a lot easier with a coach who teaches both skating and skiing (I'm only aware of me and my coach, unfortunately).

Without the above, it's possible to have a great time on skates, but not improve your skiing. Great skiing movements aren't required for inline skating on flats. And you can do some ineffective movements to survive hills. You also face a greater safety risk without lessons. (As you can tell I'm very much in favor of lessons--I take lessons in everything I do. They're a shortcut to success.)

The stuff you could work on includes everything in skiing: stance/balance, pivoting, edging, pressure control, timing & coordination. If you can do it on skis, you can do it on skates--plus on skates you can do a whole lot more, including slalom (cone skating), urban, marathon, figure, dance...

There's a lot of poor or incorrect guidance on skating, as well as guidance that's great for specific styles of skating but could hinder your skiing (I'm particularly thinking about stance and alignment geared towards the figure skating tradition of skating, or arm swing in race technique).

What I expect to improve most/want to improve:
-fore/aft balance
-riding switch
-consistent, balanced pop(jumping)
-uniform edge angle, less A-framing

You could improve all of those with skating. You could also improve none of those even with months of time on skates. Coaching and deliberate practice make a world of difference.

 

[Mike King]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Skate to Ski series that Projected Productions is currently doing featuring Stefano Belingheri. Stefano is one of the best technical skiers in the world and an Inline Alpine Europa Cup champion.

 

[JESinstr]

We are all experts at locomotive based heel to toe/ball-of-foot dynamic balance like walking, running, skipping etc but when it comes to non-locomotive dynamic balance, activities like roller blading, skating, surfing, water skiing etc., we are forced to learn a different way to dynamically balance, that being through the center of the arch as our fore/aft balance fulcrum.

Aside from that critical key and fundamental skill development, I don't see roller blading playing much of a role in building edging, pressure and or rotary skills and the main reason is that most of one's time roller blading is spent on flat terrain in a locomotive state. Where and when you do find a down hill grade like at 22 second in on the above "Beginner Zone" video, I think is it is more of a case of bringing developed skiing skills to rollerblading vs the other way around. I find it hard to believe that someone with beginner skills would subject themselves to a grade like that with no way of slowing down or stopping.

 

[cantunamunch]

Aside from that critical key and fundamental skill development, I don't see roller blading playing much of a role in building edging, pressure and or rotary skills and the main reason is that most of one's time roller blading is spent on flat terrain in a locomotive state.

Starting at Stride 2, the flat locomotive state is built on toppling off a long leg, using the inside edge of that long leg as support. One then lands on the outside edge of the short leg's foot, recenters the upper body while extending the short leg into the new support leg.

And, once one has a parallel turn, one can easily, on flat ground, learn to convert the parallel turn into a linked series of either locomotive or braking manoeuvers. By managing extension and pressure.

Useful? you tell me, I expect you know more about skiing than I do. It's certainly excellent primary muscle conditioning, with very little chance of building imbalanced kinetic chains. And it's far better than cycling for adductor, abductor, hip rotator conditioning.

I also contend that anyone with a will and skiing-level coordination can progress to this level in the space of one summer. If they don't...well, that's kind of like talking about skiers permanently plateaued at L4.5, no?

I find it hard to believe that someone with beginner skills would subject themselves to a grade like that with no way of slowing down or stopping.

I completely agree with you here.

And someone with a parallel turn and a Stride 2 or stride 3 locomotion would have massive drawbacks to practicing on a grade - because conventional inline skate wheels have only a fraction more lateral grip on grades than edgeless xc skis do.

 

[JESinstr]

Starting at Stride 2, the flat locomotive state is built on toppling off a long leg, using the inside edge of that long leg as support. One then lands on the outside edge of the short leg's foot, recenters the upper body while extending the short leg into the new support leg.

And, once one has a parallel turn, one can easily, on flat ground, learn to convert the parallel turn into a linked series of either locomotive or braking manoeuvers. By managing extension and pressure.

Useful? you tell me, I expect you know more about skiing than I do. It's certainly excellent primary muscle conditioning, with very little chance of building imbalanced kinetic chains. And it's far better than cycling for adductor, abductor, hip rotator conditioning.

I also contend that anyone with a will and skiing-level coordination can progress to this level in the space of one summer. If they don't...well, that's kind of like talking about skiers permanently plateaued at L4.5, no?

If you subscribe to PSIA Fundamentals.... #2 Control pressure from ski to ski and direct pressure toward the outside ski.

Although this is a rather a general statement, the inherent assumption (when carving), is not about physically pressuring the ski through locomotive extension but rather maneuvering the feet/legs to build edge angles and using the leg muscles to manage the resultant pressure emanating from the ski.

That being said, any summer activity that is based on developing centered dynamic balance and upper lower separation can only lead to good things for your winter skiing endeavors.

 

[DavidSkis]

Aside from that critical key and fundamental skill development, I don't see roller blading playing much of a role in building edging, pressure and or rotary skills and the main reason is that most of one's time roller blading is spent on flat terrain in a locomotive state.

So a couple of challenges with that assumption:

Firstly, if you are on flats, there are several disciplines that can be used to develop edging, pivoting, pressure control, etc - the biggest discipline in my mind is slalom skating. Here's a slalom example where you can see it takes a highly skilled blend of stance/balance, pivoting, edging, pressure control, and timing&coordination to execute:

But more importantly, once you have fundamental skating skills in place, you can transition to skate to ski.

Where and when you do find a down hill grade like at 22 second in on the above "Beginner Zone" video, I think is it is more of a case of bringing developed skiing skills to rollerblading vs the other way around. I find it hard to believe that someone with beginner skills would subject themselves to a grade like that with no way of slowing down or stopping.

I will agree that a beginner skater will not be able to skate down a pitch - much as a beginner skier could not ski down a bump run. Just like in skiing, you need to apply good teaching techniques: make the terrain simple when you introduce a skill. Once the skill's developed and consistent on the terrain, increase the terrain (add some pitch), or increase the performance expectation. One of the critical bits in inline skating is ensuring the skier has solid stopping skills and has developed a safe ready position.

Yes, you need to learn to skate to be able to take advantage of skating in skate-to-ski. This took me about 10 hours. If you hop on skates expecting a ski, you're in for some disappointment.

The more impactful question is: can a skater actually learn to ski or improve their skiing with inline skating? The answer is: absolutely!
During my level 2 skate coach training in Madrid, one of the modules was on snowskates - essentially ski boots with edges on the sides (the company sponsored the ICP course). These strong skaters, most of whom had never skied a day in their lives, after literally a single run of coaching down a magic carpet were able to carve down the green runs in control. I have also seen the same results with skilled skaters switching to snowblades, and eventually increasing their gear to regular skis. Skate to ski works!

From a coaching perspective, skating wins out because of all the ways I can coach:

• All terrain is usable - we are constantly skating and working on our development, with no waiting for lift lines - you go from 20% of the lesson spent skiing, to 70% or more spent skating and reinforcing
• I can literally draw paths on the concrete for the skater to follow to set their turn shape or even movement patterns
• I can video you and immediately show you what's going on, so you can immediately make changes, and re-video, without having to go up a hill and forget what we've done
• I can skate beside you, for long chunks of time, to coach while in motion without risk of getting clocked or the skier freaking out due to pitch
• Terrain can be free! I have the entire outdoors to use with my students without having to pay for a lift ticket.

I'm happy to post a skate to ski video in a separate comment to give an example of how it can be used.

 

[DavidSkis]

So since there's some question around the effectiveness or relevance of inline skating, I've made a quick video with narration to show how I was able to work on some skiing skills this evening using a video camera and my assessment and development skills.

I don't claim to be the best skier or skater - but keep in mind this was about 45 minutes of work between the first video and the last. Hopefully the relationship with skiing is evident here as well

 

[JESinstr]

Relative to teaching beginners (skate to ski), I have already posted that any activity that develops centered balance and upper lower body separation is a boon to the sport of skiing.

The skills that are not addressed by inline skating are the skills that involve the creation and management of grip (edging and pressure management). The consistent roller/pavement interaction of Inline skates do not address the issue of unintentional/uncontrolled skidding which is a major issue with lower-level skiers.

In line skating is definitely sympatico with skiing in terms of Centered Balance and rotary but with the advent of shaped skis my teaching focus (after centered balance) has long ago shifted from rotary to edging and pressure management.

Let me be clear, I am not pooh-poohing inline skating, I am just not buying into the panacea scenario.

 

[MoSkyrPls]

Coaching and deliberate practice make a world of difference

I very much agree, but honestly I have some social anxiety that makes me tend to go solo until I find someone I feel comfortable with. I've been picky about what advice I pay attention to and I do avoid things that wouldn't make sense if I was skiing.

 

[MoSkyrPls]

Starting at Stride 2, the flat locomotive state is built on toppling off a long leg, using the inside edge of that long leg as support. One then lands on the outside edge of the short leg's foot, recenters the upper body while extending the short leg into the new support leg.

And, once one has a parallel turn, one can easily, on flat ground, learn to convert the parallel turn into a linked series of either locomotive or braking manoeuvers. By managing extension and pressure.

I think I've felt what you're talking about... When I lean forward slightly and let myself almost fall as I carve on flat, I'll propel myself forward and it feels very similar to something I've felt skiing. Stuff like this is what I tend to work on because I know the balance is much more difficult on skates so hopefully I'm working out some things I wasn't even noticing on skis.

 

[MoSkyrPls]

Relative to teaching beginners (skate to ski), I have already posted that any activity that develops centered balance and upper lower body separation is a boon to the sport of skiing.

The skills that are not addressed by inline skating are the skills that involve the creation and management of grip (edging and pressure management). The consistent roller/pavement interaction of Inline skates do not address the issue of unintentional/uncontrolled skidding which is a major issue with lower-level skiers.

In line skating is definitely sympatico with skiing in terms of Centered Balance and rotary but with the advent of shaped skis my teaching focus (after centered balance) has long ago shifted from rotary to edging and pressure management.

Let me be clear, I am not pooh-poohing inline skating, I am just not buying into the panacea scenario.

It's hard for me to give an accurate representation of where I'm at in my skiing skill level, but I'm hoping to really make some significant jumps this season. I have close to 30 days on dynastar m-free 99s, which I love, but obviously they are less of a carver. This season I'll also have nordica enforcer 88's to experience more carving performance. I'm hoping to somehow feel like a better skier than I was at the end of the season, or at least not feel like I lost anything from last season, both in skill and strength.

 

[cantunamunch]

I think I've felt what you're talking about... When I lean forward slightly and let myself almost fall as I carve on flat, I'll propel myself forward and it feels very similar to something I've felt skiing.

Nice. Glide-topple-catch is the key to both speed and efficiency. Once those basics are ingrained, all sorts of "controversies" stop being controversial, from proper hand motion to toe flicking.

Put another way, if Stride 2 and 3 didn't exist, the only skaters that could win anything would have to be 110 lbs with 35" inseams.

Anyhow. When you get back on skis, you will need to remind yourself to work on tip and tail pressure management and on upper/lower body separation. It won't take long, 2-3 ski days tops.

 

[Sherman89]

I have a related objection to all the 'skate to ski' marketing that uses conventional skate wheels.

A ski has more edge grip when edged. An inline skate wheel has less grip when edged, especially further from the centerline of the body.

Because the first reaction of someone having less grip on the outside skate is to put down the other skate and pressure it. BOOM bad A-frame habits.



Yeh, pretty much. Forget trying to do purely ski moves because you're doomed from the beginning. Forget downhills and go develop better athleticism on the flats.

I agree, inline skating really is to improve fore/aft balance and foot to foot movement to improve outside ski to outside ski balancing and quad strength.