piggyslayer wrote:Two ways to flex, relax quads (balance moves aft a bit) or pull knees up (balance moves a bit fore and torso moves forward a little bit).
I believe the relaxing quads is better, but is the other approach bad?
Robert
I too believe that relaxing the quads is better. I believe that's a matter of biomechanics -- when you are retracting the knees, the muscles go into concentric contraction. What this means is that you are less able to determine the exact position of your feet. Bear with me on this, and I'll complete this really weird thought:
Suppose you are in a grocery store, and want to buy an apple. You pick one up, and raise it and lower it in one hand, gently relaxing and tensing the arm in an attempt to find one with just the right weight. The arm muscles move from concetric (raising the apple) to eccentric (lowering) contractions. At what point do you get enough information to determine it's weight? Exactly at the point where the muscles go from eccentric to concentric contraction (or vice-versa). At that point, more muscles are in use, so the body has more feedback.
Contrast that to holding the apple with a death grip, and stock still -- really tense up! The weight almost vanishes!
So this analogy is all about eccentric/relaxing and contracting being able to provide more feedback about what the body is doing, than contration alone. So relaxing the quads will tell you much more about what you are doing (foot position/balance etc) than retracting the knees will tell you.
Also, since the retraction has momentarily stopped the feedback circuits in the body from working optimally, there is a momentary delay in reestablishing just what the body is doing after you begin to relax again.
This is what I like to think of as the uncertainty principle: The more certain you are of the bodies location, the less strongly you can move it.
Conversely,the more strongly you move the body, the less certain you are of it's location.
Smoothness and grace in movement is very desireable. Stiffness and force are not....
SO, IMO, knee retraction is a less desireable form of flexion.
Also, and this is pure conjecture, you may find your balance point moving back on the blades (and the resulting mini-goodmorning) as a result of the stiffness of the boots, and the impossibility of applying as much forward pressure as you could if you had the shovel of the ski to press into.....I have found that inline skates are soft enough to allow the ankle to bend when I do that flexion by relaxing in inline skates; the balance point does not move back, requiring the "good morning" posture.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents!