~Speed Skating~

Ever since taking up recreational inline skating, I have been fascinated by the speed skaters who are able to whizz by me with so little effort. Last year, I decided to attend lessons conducted by speed skating and fitness coach Sandy Snakenberg in order to try and uncover the €œsecrets of how to go faster.

It did not take me long to find out that speed skating is really about skating efficiently and that it demanded a high degree of technical skills and physical conditioning. Under Sandy’s patient coaching and watchful eye, he had to virtually teach me how to skate again from scratch. After months of hard work, I finally made what I personally thought was a major breakthrough. I am now able to skate in a straight line! In other words, my landing skate could now travel in a straight line instead of veering left and right with every stride.

With a GPS watch on my wrist, I am able to see the effects of subsequent fine tuning of the basic power push technique, e.g. push-off, recovery, timing, arm action, etc. and its impact on the actual speed on the ground. Thanks to Sandy, my sustainable and peak speeds have improved dramatically as a result of his coaching.

With a sound fundamental speed skating skill in place, I’m now looking forward to working with Sandy on variations to the basic power push to cope with wet surface conditions and long distance skating.

~ Strength Training~

I am a speed skating enthusiast and look forward to every opportunity to get out and do some hard skating. However, the somewhat awkward physical posture required for skating efficiently places a fair amount of stress on the back and legs so I tire easily and was not able to enjoy extended periods of skating pleasure.

I turned to Sandy Snakenberg who is both inline speed skating and fitness coach for some help. With his extensive experience in this field, Sandy set about designing a comprehensive strength training programme to suit my needs and also to supervise me on the proper form and technique to handle each of the exercises for maximum effect and safety.

With regular workouts at the gym, I am now skating 30 to 40 km regularly in the early morning a few times a week and the amazing thing is that I am still able to carry on with my usual activities for the rest of the day