The best website for all links from all speed skating news. Check it out!

Peter is currently doing a fundraising drive, so far he got 395$, donate something so he can continue to keep up the great work on his website and skates!!! I will donate something this week, now you also go donate something!

http://speedskateworld.com/

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One of the very cool techniques they use are camera shots, they make pictures with them and if you watch the interview they have with Joey Mantia u will also see video from the helmet! how cool is that??

Check out their website: http://www.skate-tv.de

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7yS4Augfw

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Play and Stay is a philosophy currently being used within the International Tennis Federation. I stumbled upon this a couple of months ago and think there are a lot of interesting key points that we can learn from it!

4 Key Points= How could we apply this to speed skating?

Different racket sizes = NO difference in frame sizes, standard for all skaters according to age. Free of choice once skating at senior level

Red, Orange and Green size courts = Track, road and marathon races according to age. Maybe focus more on track(technical) skills for younger age groups. Don’t let younger kids race marathons or very long distances to soon!

Tennis is easy if you use the right ball = NO difference in size of wheels, standard for all skaters according to age. Free of choice once skating at senior level. I see to many young skaters with big wheels, nowadays with so many set ups this worries me what kind of damage it could do to the knees.

Tennis is a sport for all = Skating is a sport for all, recreational or competition. Make it fun and easy, so it’s accessible to many people!

Check out the website and read carefully how they implement the key points, I am sure we can all learn from it:

http://www.tennisplayandstay.com/

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgLnAKJi-jM

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Wether your training for speed skating races or just recreationally, these are some games that teams and skating businesses can use to improve agility, coordination and of course to have some fun!

For more games you can check my previous posts; Skating games,Skating games 2,Skating games 3 and Real example video”la puerta” Game. The games can be used in warm ups, or as part of the cooling dow. They are also very useful for people who organize summer camps.

1) A Frame Game

The game can be played like a normal tag game, every time somebody gets tagged you stand in the “A frame turn” position. One or more skaters tag, if you are tagged and want to be free again you need to wait until somebody crawls under and through your legs! Be careful, make sure if somebody crawls that they go from the frontside to the back and the person on the ground should be careful with their hands when other skaters are passing!!!

The game serves as a later build up step to learn the “A frame turn” as seen in the video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgmg3v6vdR4

2) Bunny tail

First you need to create a Bunny tail for every skater, this can be a piece of an old T-shirt or rope. All skaters attach it on the back of their pants or you can put it inside the pants so that the longest part sticks out. The object of the game is for the skaters to run around and make sure that no one pulls off their bunny tail while trying to pull off the other players tails. You can have 2 winners, the one with the most bunny tails or the last skater left with their tail.

3) Red light , green light

We usually use this as a warm up game. Skaters go around the track and on command of the light’s they need to adjust the speed that they are skating at. For example: green= skate fast,orange=slow down, red= STOP

You can do numerous variations with this where every color means something else, after red where they need to stop we usually make them turn around and then they need to skate the other way around or skate backwards.

4) Numbers game

You write down several numbers on the floor with chalk, it can be numbers 1-10, 1-20 or 10-20… as many as you like. Very simple game, skaters skate around and when you shout a number they have to go skate to the number. Again you can do numerous variations with it. For example: skaters have to sit down near the number, skaters have to do the number in push ups/sit ups, skaters need to stand in the skating position during the amount of seconds of the number.

5) Soccer

No need to explain, play soccer on skates!! lots of fun and very good for controlling your skates and agility!!!

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Nothing to do with skating but I love Kanye’s music, check out his new song POWER!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS15yDVDyEw

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I saw a link about a man who skated around the world to raise money for AIDS research, the link was mentioned on Peter Doucet’s wonderful website Speedskateworld.com. Apparently he skated for 3 years trough various countries around the world to make an end to his journey in 1999. Check out the video  and an article on this coragious Frenchman named Fabrice Gropaiz.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSPuGH-qAM

Check out the link to read an article from the Los Angeles Times about his journey:

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/mar/19/local/me-18910

At the time of his journey he kept up a website as a journal on www.worldskate.com, apparently the site is not up and running anymore. If you have any more news about this skater please post a comment!

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This is the biggest daredevil on skates I have seen in my life! I saw some crazy stuff but this beats it all, check out the height he is jumping off!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArjfHI4ODC0

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Hey, I didn’t post any new messages because I couldn’t use my own computer. Starting next week I will write some new posts, there will be a post with many games that you can use in skating lessons or training.

Dimitri

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