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.