25 years of Coaching Speed Skating! I'm Back to Blog!

Hi Followers,  I haven't posted for a dog's age. 

 Our club is in an expansion year this year as we have doubled our ice time.  I gave away my duties as the club equipment manager and summer dryland training.  I am focusing my talents on coaching as well as mentoring our coaches.


In Other News: my son Paul retired after 19 years of speed skating.  Paul is coaching with our club this year. Here is a picture from early and late in his career.














My son Aaron is beginning to live the life of an elite athlete, training for 4 months in Calgary and returning home this week.  Aaron intends training full time once he finishes grade 12 in Lethbridge this school year.

SHARPING SPEED SKATES

I have footage to make a video on how to sharpen skates.  There are others out there but they use some old ideas and make for some complicated sharpening of skates. My idea is that whenever I learn an easier, quicker way,  I adopt it. 

Sharpening Summary:

• Set up the same every time and use the same jig
• Sharpen only with the smooth side of your sharpening stone - unless you have a stripped edge, then use the course side first and then the smooth side following:  This limits the amount of burr you create and reduces the wear of the blades.  
• Use a method to reduce the side and top burr to a minimum each time you sharpen.
• De-burr your skates after every race / practice to reduce side burr.  Side burr always feels like a "dull" skate blade. Many skaters re-sharpen their skates when de-burring would be more appropriate.

Season Is Plowing Forward; Fasten Your Skate Straps

Hi All,

The season is flying by as usual.  I was coaching with the Alberta Team that competed in Winnipeg last weekend.  I had a great time coaching (we had 38 skaters with three coaches).  I had a lot of trouble trying to memorize and work out the names of the skaters.  Here are three of my club skaters that made the trip.

We just finished our Club Ability Meet yesterday.  Great success overall.  I am definitely riding a wave of positive energy from all the people I have been working with including our great team of club coaches. 

Technical Tidbit:  Short Track Blade Set-UP

When looking at most beginner to intermediate level skaters, try to get the back end of the blade in the center of the boot (in line with Achilles).  If it is hard to line up, look at my blog on how to get a blade to hang straight down from the boot.  

For off-set;  try having the front of the left blade in line with the third toe (this works great if you have the ability appropriate blade bend and rocker).  On the right foot, line the front of the blade up with the second toe (on some skate models, I find lining up between the first and second toe works better).

If you have a gauge to check rocker and bend, it is never too late in the season to check skaters equipment.  We are in the home stretch of season;  Happy Skating!!

Season about to begin; Time to get organized.

Hi All,

There is a lot of work to be done to get the club skates ready for the season.  Having the skates set up properly for each skater is a big part of performance in short track and long track speed skating.  The season will soon be in full swing so I have started to go through our club skates.






I am using an app on my tablet to start a new inventory.  The inventory will have the item, a picture with details of the item.  I then can assign the item to a category such as 'borrowed' or 'have it'.

To inventory the skates, I am marking the blades with an engraver.  For the boot, I am using a sharpie that has yellow paint; like a marker but stays on better.

I am going to be organizing a number of members of our club to learn how to check the rocker and bend on the club skates.  I will teach them how to bend a beginner blade and move to more advanced set up.

Look for my continuation of the series on How To Sharpen speed skates.  I will use pictures and video to help you learn to sharpen speed skates and hopefully help you to get to be better at creating sharp edges.  


See you in Calgary this weekend if you happen to be there for the Summer Classic LT competition.

SKATE SHARPENING 101 -  HOW TO SET UP

The topic today is the good and proper set-up of the skates in the jig.

This post is meant for members of our local speed skating club to help with new members learning to sharpen speed skates.  We are going to go through the basics.  Our skating club has 5 jigs available for members to borrow and use to sharpen rental skates as well as members own skates.  I really like the simplicity and ease of use with the Pennington Titan Jig.

I am going to pass on to you what I have learned about sharpening over the years with emphasis on things that make sharpening easier.  The goal of sharpening  is to create a nice sharp edge on the blade that can be seen as a 90 degree right angle.

To achieve this goal, we must set up the blades in the jig the same every time and we would want to use the same jig each time we sharpen.  The first time that you sharpen a pair of blade in a jig, you will need to achieve a flattening effect of the paired blades from end to end of the blade.  This may take some extra time. The next time you sharpen the same pair, setting up the jig properly will help you gain a sharp edge more quickly.    **Remember, Speed Skates are 'flat ground' and always need to be hand sharpened in a jig.  You can not have them sharpened like hockey skates which are 'hollow ground'. Also, the speed skates are precision rockered which we will talk about in the next lesson**

Equipment:  What is in the club sharpening kit.

Our club has 4 jigs and individual skaters and families are assigned a certain jig to borrow.  We have a sign-out sheet where the person writes their name and phone number and the date that they take out the jig. They are to use the jig and bring it back promptly for others to use.  If another member needs the jig, they can phone the person with the jig and arrange to pick the jig up.

Large Jig Bag: What is in the Bag






Jig End Unit with Toe piece

Center Jig Bar

Jig End Unit (heel end)

Inside the Large jig bag is a second smaller bag.  Please see below for the contents the bag. 

Small Jig Bag: nestled in Large Bag

Sharpening and Burr Stone

Oil or Solvent


Also, we keep a tooth brush in the jig kit to clean the stone.

How To Put the Jig Together Properly (and consistently):

1. Take the above piece in your hand. In Australia, where this jig is made, they put the heel end of the blade against the end piece to keep the blades even with each other (lengthwise).  I prefer and generally in Canada, we put the toe end of the blade against the length leveller.  As you look at the plastic piece above, you can see they there is two bolts that holds it to the jig, which are tightened.  Make sure these have not come loose before you start.  The cylindrical silver pieces are adjustable if your skate blade doesn't fit into the jig properly.  Please put them back the way you found them after use if you need to adjust them.
2. Take the metal square shape rod and insert it into the end piece.  To make sure you set the jig up the same every time, use the screw on the bar as a reference and insert it with the screw in the same position each time.

  

3.  Immediately tighten (not firmly; not necessary) the black bottom fastener to the secure the bar.

4.  Next, slide on the other end piece to the bar.  You want to make sure you do this the same way each time so make note of which side of the plate has a flat surface and which side has a lattice work.  I usually keep the flat surface to the outside at each end of the jig to help me remember.

    

At this point, do not fasten the rear piece to the bar yet; it is easier if you wait until after you have slide both of the blades into the jig blade holders.

5.  To insert the blades, with the back plate not yet tightened to the bar, it is easy to slide the toe end of the skate blade into the above opening in the fastener and then insert the heel end of the blade.  Repeat for the other boot/blade.  Make sure the boots/blades are on the correct side (arches facing each other).

6.  Adjust the heel end of the jig as far back on the blade as possible.  This keeps the boot from coming in contact with the jig and also accommodates for the bend that is in most blades.  Now tighten the jig to the bar at the heel end.  This will square the jig to the bar and make the whole jig "square" for sharpening.

**squaring the Jig **

7.  Next, you can now fasten the blades within the jig (if you accidently begin this phase before the bottom fasteners are tightened, the jig will not be square and you will wonder why the sharpening session is taking so long).  

Begin at the toe end; Move one of the blades up to the plastic length leveller.  Make sure you don't push too hard as the plastic piece is flexible and you may end up with the blades not even with each other.

Tighten the toe end first, keep the blade in contact with the plastic leveller.

Now tighten the heel end.

Repeat this process with the other blade.  Good Job.  You successfully set up your jig and blades with the best possible repeatable set-up.  Your goal from now on is to set up the jig the same every time.  

On my next blog entry, we will go over proper sharpening technique and how sharpening is achieved.  Remember the goal is to have a nice 'square' 90 degree edge.  This is achieved greatly with a nice 'square' jig set-up.

Next time; HOW TO GET BURR AND...

HOW TO GET 'RID' OF IT

Thanks, let me know if this is helpful.

Day 2; What my blog will be about.

I am sitting at the McDonald's not far from the Olympic Oval in Calgary.  I drove my son (our oldest of 4 kids) to his twice weekly skating practise with the short track Oval Program.  This is his second year in the program and his second year on the provincial team.  I have some time to reflect, check emails and work on my blog.

A little about myself:  I started speed skating in the fall of 1968 as a four year old in Regina, Saskatchewan.  The club was formed in 1967 and our family joined the next year.  I remember skating up and down the side of the outdoor oval and I was already hooked; the freedom of movement that skating brings was in my veins for good.  I began skating and competing the next year.

My blog will be about items relating to coaching, equipment and my experience as a skater.  I will be posting information soon on how to sharpen skates.  Rather than one big long lesson, I will divide the instruction and post them as I complete them.  Look for "How to set up skates properly for sharpening".  When I have completed all modules on sharpening, I will repost them as one full lesson.

Also, I will give information about some of the programming that I do for coaching in our club including drills for short track.  My main focus in this area is safety first and performance second.  Hope you'll come back and check out my blog again.

My first blog attempt; A life of speed skating.

As the head coach of a speed skating club in southern Alberta, I find myself engaged in many aspects of the sport that might be of interest to others.  This is my first time trying to blog, so please be patient.  I decided that rather than delve into my past or talk about what I do, I would just start to chronicle what I am doing this day as the coach and equipment manager for our local club.  I may go forward or back in time but I hope some of this sharing is useful to you (skaters, coaches, parents of speed skaters).

Today, I worked on a pair of skates that belong to one of our teenage members.  Short track is the mainstay of our program here.  I was to assess the rocker, bend, off-set and what I might call the 'plumb' of the blade and look to discover anything else about the set up of the skates that might take away for the skaters performance.

Using a precision gauge (I use a the basic Marchese gauge), I assessed the rocker of the blades.  The rocker  I was looking for is a progressive rocker of some where near 10 meters in the mid part of the blade and progressively more rocker toward the front.  Here is the list of findings:

• Right blade had a progressive 10 m rocker, the Left blade was a 9.5 m progressive
• The left blade plumb line (through the Achilles, down through the cup/ blade) looking from the back of the blade angling toward the left (in the body this would be called a valgus position).

• The bend wasn't very consistent with portions that were less than ideal bend and portions of the blade with more.
• The left blade had too  much off-set while the right was under off-set.

It is hard to get the camera to see what I see, but this is what I mean by angled.Sometimes when I check these skates, I don't know how the athlete is skating on the set-up.  Skaters do adapt to these things but with either a change in technique that isn't desirable or they can't challenge themselves to go faster.  These kind of angulations can be present in off-the-shelf speed skate boots or with custom skates ( from any company).

Solutions:

• The rocker issue could be that the skaters is not switching their jig end to end during sharpening with resultant differential pressure on each hand not being compensated for.  It is best to vary the position of the jig regularly and even make sure you start sharpening sometimes with the toe end toward you , sometimes away.
• To correct the boot to blade position, I used a small piece of plastic to wedge or shimmy the blade away from the direction that it was hanging (meaning the wedge was placed on the left/track side of the boot, one at each the back and front cup mount position.

 Once you place the wedge and decide the exact position that you want for the off-set, tighten down the blade and re-check the blade position.  If you are happy with the new position, you can glue the shim to the boot and then re-apply the blade to the boot.

• Next, I used a Pennington Bender to develop the proper bend for the skate.  I managed to achieve a 2.0 bend for the mid to back portion of the blade and a 2.0 to 2.8 bend progressively toward the front of the blade.

Lastly, I inform the skater that their skates are ready to Rock and Roll.  Skaters best adapt to the changes over a couple of practises but many experienced skaters will notice the positive effect right away and can go faster with confidence.

If you liked my blog and want me to post more of these kind of presentations, let me know.