Tuesday, 17 April 2018

Using shadows to improve your cross country skiing


by Keith and Heather Nicol
  In the ski lessons that I teach I like to give students a way of checking their ski improvement through the season.  Of course one way to do this is to take more lessons (which is great for ski instructors) but for skiers that don’t have instructors close by or can’t find an instructor at the last minute here are is an idea that may help you improve- watch your shadow.
Watching your shadow can improve your skiing
      Shadows can help you see what arm position you have or how flexed your ankles and knees are. At the early season Supercamps at Silver Star – Sovereign Lake B.C.  I used this with many of my classes. I told my students that cross country skiing is a lifelong learning process and the only way to really get better is to aim for perfect practice. The old saying that “practice makes perfect” really should be adjusted to “perfect practice makes perfect”.  We used video tape feedback frequently in the  Supercamp classes but I mentioned to my students that a quick way to get immediate feedback while you ski is to look at your shadow when the sun is behind you.  Shadows can’t tell you everything but I find that they are particularly useful for checking arm (are my arms at 90 degrees at the initiation of poling?) and torso position (do I crunch my upper body to start the poling cycle in double poling or 1 skate?).  In the photo above I am checking my arm swing in free skate.  For a you tube video on this topic see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xy62ShlWBQ&t=3s 

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