Speed Skating

Interestingly, many differences become apparent if you have an opportunity to watch inline skaters of a variety of skill levels.

SpeedSkating illustrates that sometimes, in order to progress, it is not sufficient to keep getting better and stronger at what you were already doing; rather, it is sometimes required that you unlearn what you know, and temporarily sacrifice performance while you reinvent your methodologies for long-term benefit.

Here's what the double-push looks like -

And here's the physics - http://home1.gte.net/pjbemail/pushpull.html.


Contributors: AndyPierce, MichaelSchuerig


rather, it is sometimes required that you unlearn what you know, and temporarily sacrifice performance while you reinvent your methodologies

Is it as clear-cut as that? Is it not possible to progress from recreational technique via practicing cornering - improving balance and familiarity with the falling sensation, but not falling? Are you really 'unlearning'? The thought behind these questions is that apparently discontinuous evolutionary change often makes a lot more sense once you know the intermediate steps too - or the hidden variables behind the change.

I can't say how good my double-push technique is, but for me it was a gradual change. Nothing nasty or unpleasant - just Hey, this is faster. Beginning skaters usually set down their feet well outwards. As you get better, you set down your feet ever more inward as this gives you a longer way to push to the outside. The next step, in my experience, is to then start pulling inwards before pushing outwards. -- MS


This story is made more fantastic when one realizes that the learning is ultimately expressed by a neural gait generator that evolved before the wheel. Here is a ScientificAmerican article that discusses this class of neural circuit.

Not elsewhere online, except archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919073348/http://www.cureparalysis.org/nnvl/


This is related to PracticeMakesPermanent.


CategoryEducation


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