 |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|  |  |  |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Planet column: Skate Coach Putting Power in Your Heel Stop The Final Step: Burn Rubber, Baby! (Page 2 of 2) Down the Tunnel
This drill requires you to gradually shift weight to the brake, adding more and more weight until you grind to a halt. Do this by progressively bending your knees and sinking closer and closer to the ground. (Watch Kathy demonstrate Down the Tunnel.) To an outside observer, it will look like you are going "Down the Tunnel." Try it first standing on the grass. Then practice standing on pavement. Finally, try it rolling at slow speed. Tighten your core muscles as you apply force to your brake. If you are not sure how this is done, imagine you are a bodybuilder doing the crab. (You know: arms curved inward like two parentheses, abs popping and face contorted like a constipated Cro-Magnon man.) Practice this drill at ever-increasing speeds. Soon, you will notice that your brake pad has begun to leave black lines on the pavement. When you reach true heel-brake mastery, you'll notice a funny smell. Congratulations. You're burning rubber! ... A Note About ABT/ABS-style Brakes These brakes are designed to make stopping easier for beginning skaters. They do this by eliminating the final step in the standard heel-stop sequence: Bend, Scissor and Brake. The Skate Coach's opinion is that they do work. Beginners find it easier to stop when the ABT brake is adjusted down to the level where it engages when the skater simply performs the Bend and Scissor steps. (Typically, this is how the brake is positioned when you take your new skates out of the box.) But having the brake in this low position means that it will engage whenever the skater scissors one foot in front of the other, whether or not he or she is trying to stop. Thus, as skaters progress along the learning curve, they usually end up adjusting the brake upwards and using it like a standard brake. (In other words, performing all three steps of the Bend, Scissor, Brake sequence, including popping the wheelie.) ... It's actually pretty ingenious that these brakes work both ways like this. If your skates have an ABT-style brake, and you are ready to add power to your heel stop as described in this column, adjust the brake upward. This will give you more power than you would have with your wheels flat on the ground. (Be sure to get used to the new brake height before working on the two power drills above.) A Note About Very New & Very Old Brakes Skaters with standard brakes sometimes find it challenging to get used to new brake pads. New pads can reach so close to the ground that they touch as soon as you tip your toes up. This robs you of some braking power, at least until your brakes wear down. Much later, after the brake wears down (to nearly the wear limit), the opposite problem occurs. You have to flex your foot dramatically to get the brake to touch the ground. This is awkward and also cuts down on braking power. (Skate Coach, Kathy McSparran, answers your questions and welcomes comments and feedback on the Planet Forum.) Kathy McSparran is the director of Phoenix Inline, an Arizona skate school. She holds five IISA teaching certifications: Level 1 (Beginners & Advanced Beginners), Level 2 (Intermediates & Advanced Intermediates), BladeFitnessTM, Freestyle Dance and Fitness Inline Trainer. | Want to perfect your heel stop? ... Read all three parts of Kathy's series: Part 1: How to brake without breaking Part 2: "Help! ... I still can't stop!" Part 3: Putting power into your heel stop
Related reading • Read more of Kathy McSparran's Skate Coach columns
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
... Copyright © 2005 by Robert Burnson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ||||||||||||||||||||
