Acceleration

Lately I've been giving more thoughts about acceleration and the crucial role it plays in racing. Simply being able to skate fast at a constant speed means exactly that...you can hold a certain pace. How long does it take to reach that speed though? Whether you're reacting to a change of pace in the pack or you're trying to initiate such a change, a skater with a good acceleration definitely has an advantage.

I have much trouble reacting to change of pace in the pack in the corners. Whenever the pack jams up and accelerates, chances are I end up watching a gap form in front of me and cannot do anything about it. I would spend my time catching up to the pack in the straights, only to be gapped again in the next corner, and so the vicious cycle continues until I get dropped out of exhaustion. This happens at almost every practice, constantly reminding me to improve on my acceleration.

Control is one thing that coach AA discussed with us during the indoor season. If you know that you have a long distance to bring up your speed, the acceleration should be gradual for best efficiency (think long powerful strides). However, if you have to accelerate quickly, fast legs is what gets you there. In the last couple of weeks, coach PD repeatedly emphasized the importance of staying low during acceleration. Staying low, fast legs, big recovery, driving my knees forward, and arm swing....they have yet to come together at the same time during my skating. It's a lot to think about. Ironically though, the key is NOT to think about them. With enough practice, the body would learn to do them on autopilot and that's the time when everything comes together.

Comments

[Tom]

Candy, the best thing you can do to help train yourself to react to changes in speed AND make yourself faster are intervals. I've not seen you ever mention interval training in your posts. It's a crucial element of speed skating training. All the top skaters on Team Rainbo do interval training, and we even do them as a team at certain times during the season.

Barry Publow is also a big advocate of interval training.

Also, one thing that has really helped with my speed is hip/knee drive. You want to "throw" or drive your knee and hip forward with each stride, this helps create momentum and maintain speed. I always suffer when I forget to do that.

HTH

Tom

[Candy]

Hey Tom, thanks for your suggestions. Interval training is a regular part of our club's program as well as my own training program from my coach. As for the duration of each on/off piece and the number of repeats, they change at different points of the season and of course what we're trying to achieve. I guess I stopped detailing every drill in my posts after my first season though. :D

"Those [20/20][one on one off][insert your fav program here] killed me last night!" doesn't make for interesting reading material day in day out. Haahaa.