Inline skates for skiers

[eLeung]

I have found a website (http://www.streetski.com/ (http://www.streetski.com/)) to sell a series of inline skates for ski training. This video shows the carving turns with the inline skates. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVC8WyN7fD8

[Freestylerwill]

I have seen the street ski in some multi sport race

Should get some and use it along Shatin cycling track

[eLeung]

I do not have chance to enjoy the inline skates, so I am not sure whether the feeling is similar to carving. But I think in Hong Kong we may feel too hot due to the heavy gears.

[LoveToSki]

I have been puzzling why there are people linking inline skating to skiing.

I do both but I don't see how their techniques are interchangable.

The equipments are radically different if we compare the modern models. Ski has side-cut and is design to bend (which are both important in carving in my opinion). Inline skate has no side-cut and it doesn't bend at all.

The dynamics are very different too. In skiing, you use gravitational force. Your body is for all sorts of steering and speed control but you don't use your body for propelling. Actually most of time you want to have a steady upper body. For inline skating, your legs, arms and whole body is your engine. You use whatever parts you want to help moving/turning fast. A steady body doesn't help much. When in skating, you need to move a lot.

In modern skiing technique, especially carving, ski instructors (at least Warrent Smith as far as I know) focus on coordination of two legs and how they work together. For inline skating, you focus is more on how you can use one leg to do all the work (and the other spare leg to take turn).

Not to mention about techniques only possible in one sport but not the other (e.g. backward skating, double-push in skating).

If I ask my myself which part of skating is comparable to skiing, I would say it is not the time when skating downward. On the contrary, it is the time when you skate on flat road or go upward. In these two cases, the equipments are used in the same way: maximize frictional force to against gravational force.


Having said that, I still encourage my own kids to do inline skating, not because I think it helps their skiing but rather for followings:

Build up muscle strength and improve body flexibilty (always good for whichever kind of sport including skiing)
Have better control on body balance
Get used to speed (i.e. moving fast)
So my view is that it is fun to do all kinds of skating. But it is questionable that it may help your skiing technique.

That's my opinion. But, although I do both sport, I am unfortunately not good enough in either one. So I might be very wrong here. ;)

[carver_hk-ski]

I have been puzzling why there are people linking inline skating to skiing.

I do both but I don't see how their techniques are interchangable. If you do slalom in skating you can use the same technique like you use in skiing. However Harbcarver is a better bet. If you want to see how it works check my homepage in my user contact for a live example.

[eLeung]

Here is a link of using inline stakes for ski training (http://www.harbskisystems.com/skateindex.htm)