Speed skater squat technique

I find it really hard to get up from the bottom of the move. To get up without any type of momentum for even one rep seems hard compared to the previous excercise for the legs. I try to push so that my back knee is leaving ground last but if one study the video it looks it the athlete uses the back foot to get help getting started in the move. Maybe that is the way to do it or is it just that I'm weak? 

I find this move easy.  Did you complete all of the previous levels of mastery?

edit: the hardest part I find about this is the balance, when you have to put your weight on the ball of your front foot.

Yes, I did. I can also do single leg squats but probably not with perfect technique. Main problem I think is pushing from the front of the foot/quads instead of the heal. I also loose pressure when landing controlled and it's hard to build it up again.

ewethestuff said:

- Heel grounded at all times (coach confirmed)

 

Ah this is the part that was messing me up. It actually is harder for me to do it as shown in the video. Cheers for bringing this up!

Experimenting with heel to ground. Doing this I will need to have more forward lean to maintain balance. Could you give input to my technique, please.

It looks like your torso's leaning forward way too much. Move forward a bit during this exercise and bring your back leg a little further behind you.

Thanks but I'm not much wiser. I see no other way for me to maintain balance than to lean forward if I leave the heel to the ground, my ankle can't bend more forwards so I can't move forward. Bringing the back leg more further back would put me even more out of balance. Should it be this hard. Can someone provide a video how it should be done if the heel should stick to the ground, please.

I think your technique looks good to me Tomas. It's true that the athlete in the demo video stays more upright, however in this video of Ido showing what I presume is the same exercise, he learns forward quite a bit.

http://youtu.be/Dpgn6eRtsdw?t=27s

honestly, this exercises resembles horse stance technique a lot. I could be wrong. 

i'm curious to know what your foot arches look like. cause after watching a video that was posted on another thread, i examined my arches and i need to work on it, which is why i have trouble balancing on one foot unless i forcibly engage my feet to grab the ground. 

are you familiar with what i'm talking about? 

here's the video

I'll try to post a video tonight to see if my form is correct. I don't like it when things feel easy for me that other people say are difficult. Means something is off.

Hi Tomas, I think your form is fine.

Your shoulders will come forward to help with balance and how far forward can depend for example on how much you extend your arms in front of you as well as how flexible your ankles are; the further your knee can track forward the more your weight shifts forward.

If you feel that ankle flexibility is an issue then try out some of Kit's ankle stretches to see if that helps.  I always do ankle mobilisation drills prior to any lower body exercises and find that it makes a big difference.

Otherwise you probably just need to spend a little more time on it.  Whenever I've taught this movement to others, I first start by allowing some momentum and letting the rear foot touch the ground first, followed by the knee.  Over time work to eliminate the momentum and have the foot and knee touch at the same time.

Also, I think of this as a glute dominant exercise (I learnt it under the name King deadlift), which makes sense to me as Coach has paired it up with the quad dominant natural leg extension.  I find thinking about it this way makes it easier to focus on the hip hinging and pushing through your heel.

Keep at it, just about everyone I've shown this too struggles at first with the balance and mobility aspect, and improvement seems to happens quite fast once they get comfortable with the actual movement.

Happy to be corrected if others see this differently.

I'm zonked. Today was rough, so I'll hopefully do this and upload tomorrow.  I'm really interested now to see what folks say about my form.

Thank you all for your time and input. I might have some flexibility issuses with my ankles but if I do I belive it's in the joint rather than short muscles. I'll keep working.

This could be completely off topic but I had issues with range of motion in one ankle due to a bone spur.  I followed some advice from Kit and am now pretty much pain free with my ROM restored.

I've posted about my progress over the past 3 months here:

http://kitlaughlin.com/forums/index.php?/topic/216-bone-spurs/

I'm certainly not suggesting that this would be useful in other scenarios, I'm simply wanting to share what worked in my specific case.