Q #175 - What do fast skaters do that separates themselves from their slower competitors?
Q #175: "I’ve always wondered how some skaters can gain and carry speed more than others. what do fast skaters do that separates themselves from their slower competitors? people always say that knee bend helps, but how does it work?"
Hi anon,
Great question, I’m going to answer as concisely and non-sciencey as possible.
Not all speed is created equal. At least with regards as to how it should be reflected in skating skills scores. Speed that is generated through things like running on the ice, skips, hockey or speed skating-style stroking—even if it’s incredibly fast—should not increase skating skills scores or be reflected in GOE bullets.
Skaters that gain speed using crossovers, basic skating vocabulary, precise and controlled stroking, and using clear technique should have that benefit their SS score. So how to you gain speed if not by running on the ice? I just RT-ed my post on knee bend, so if you want to learn more about that it is Q #43. A skater accelerates by:
Increasing the force that they push with (recruiting more muscle fibers in their lower body)
Increasing the power of that stroke by delivering that force over a shorter period of time (power is the rate of Work / Time, aka making the stroke faster)
Delivering that stroke over a longer displacement (using the length of their stride to keep that contact on the ice, Work = Force * Disp.)
By increasing the original potential energy by bending their knees further, if we treat the knee like a spring where the potential spring energy increases with every degree from 180 > 90, the greater the range of motion of the knee, the more potential energy the skater has to translate into speed.
Exceptionally fast skaters like Kaori Sakamoto, Han Yan, Wakaba Higuchi, Kaetlyn Osmond, Hubbell/Donohue, Virtue/Moir, Miura/Kihara etc… apply significantly more force per stroke or crossover than their slower competitors because they are recruiting more muscle fibers from the correct muscle groups (^PE), bending their knees (^PE), and maintaining as much contact with the ice to gain the full potential of that stroke over the shortest possible time—increasing their power.
This is one of the major advantages of muscle mass, there’s simply more muscle fibers to recruit to each stroke, and they have more capacity for work. This is also why very fast singles skaters tend to have very large jumps, their knee bend allows them to translate that spring energy into elevation.
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