Speed Skating & Double Push For Beginners Step 1

Being someone who's been doing the double push for years and looking on the internet at the "how to do the double push" information, I was completely lost. Now if someone who can do the double push doesn't understand the "how to do the double push" information, how is someone that can't do the double push supposed to understand. In this article I made the steps very basic to get you on your way to doing the double push.

First you have to learn your outside edges. If you take nothing away from this other than learning your outside edges you have taken a major step towards becoming a better speed skater. Below is how you should not be skating. As you can see I'm skating on the insides of the wheels and my ankles are falling in or I am skating in a pronated position. The boots will cut into the outside of your ankle and ankle bones when skating in this position.

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When I started skating I pronated terribly, all I did was chase the fastest skaters and tried to keep up at all costs even if this meant pronating for miles. This is the incorrect way to start speed skating. You should only be skating as fast as your form allows. Once I figured out that I was pronating and pronating was bad, for one straight month I skated at 5 mph working my outside edges as deep to the outside as I could stand, almost walking around our trail.

Even though the speed skaters came zipping by I knew what I had to do and that was to make the outside edge second nature to me. When you work a deep outside edge you should feel pressure from the boot on your inside ankle bone. I pushed the outside edge just short of blistering my inside ankle bone. Now there are some boots on the market that if you crick your ankle to the outside at all they cause excruciating pain on your inside ankle bone. Some boots will allow you to attain an extreme outside edge and some won't (call for that info).

I've skated behind a lot of people that I had just sold skates to and the one thing I noticed was when trying to get them to skate on an outside edge they say, am I doing it now, and I'll say no, you need to crick your ankle further like this, and then they'll say, am I doing it now and I'll say no you need to crick your ankle further like this. We would go back and forth like that another 50 times before they even came close to an outside edge. So what I've learned is people think their skate is in one position when in reality it's in a completely different position. Where that helps you is unless you know you're on your outside edge at a 45 degree angle chances are your not as far on the outside edge as you think.

Once you've worked your outside edge for weeks at very slow speeds start picking up your speeds slowly, stopping or slowing down the minute you start to pronate. I suggest intervalling your speed up. Skating at 5 mph working extreme outside edges slowly bring your speed up to 10 mph 15 mph then skate to the highest speed your comfortable at for 15, 30 or 60 seconds then shut it down. If you start to pronate at any time slow yourself back down to the 5 mph and work your outside edges for another 1 to 5 minutes then run your speed back up to the max for the 15 to 60 seconds.

When your comfortable with the higher speeds you will be trying to hit the max possible speed on each effort. If the fastest you could go before was 20 mph then your shooting for 21 mph, if your fastest was 28 mph then your shooting for 29 mph (make sure when your doing this type of training that your in a safe place that accommodates these top speeds). This type of skating will give you larger more powerful muscles where distance skating will give you smaller more efficient muscles.

Even when your just standing around talking to someone (picture below) you should be working your outside edges instead of standing in a pronated position.