Tempo variations in Free Skate in Cross Country Skiing

 By Keith and Heather Nicol
We may want to vary the tempo of many cross country skiing techniques depending on our objective and this blog post looks at free skate. If we want to go fast in the free skate we will want to have a high turnover and keep our torso directed straight down the track as you can see in photo 1. You still want to land on a flat ski and you want to swing your arms directly down the trail. Alternatively if you want to conserve energy you might want to glide further with each skate and in this case you want to land on a flat ski but then balance on that ski longer to take advantage of the glide. This requires that you move your head over the ski to help you stay balanced as seen in photo 2.  Another way to feel this `head over ski`feeling is to do the speed skater drill as you can see in photo 3.. In this case I put my hands behind my back and really try to get a long glide like long track speed skaters do. Notice how my head is directly over the glide ski to help me stay balanced.  See this video for more information-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtoLtWkw46o