Longest one-foot glide | Golden Skate

Longest one-foot glide

V

Vanshilar

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
Okay I haven't posted in a long time. Was curious though. How far can skaters typically go in a one-foot glide? Standing start. Single push.

Was curious because I was working on skating technique recently, in particular on getting a good push and being able to maintain stability and balance during the glide (i.e. not wobbling). Lately I've started being able to get from hockey goal line to hockey goal line, i.e. start at one end of the rink, standing start, push from behind the hockey goal line (so by the time my skating foot crosses the goal line my pushing foot is already in the air), and hold the one-foot glide until (and past) I reach the hockey goal line on the other side of the rink. So I've more or less "maxed out" at working on this due to the length of the rink (it's a standard 85 feet by 200 feet hockey-sized rink), and the length of the glide is somewhere above 180 feet. Not sure if this is something that pretty much any skater can do though or (possibly more likely) nobody bothers to work on this once they passed the basic levels because there's more fun stuff to work on. So partly curious but also partly bragging* :biggrin: since I'm happy that I can do it now.

(* until, of course, everybody starts chiming in that they've been able to do this after a month of skating and what took me so long?)
 
karne

karne

in Emergency Backup Mode
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Country
Australia
I can do one length of our rink on one foot, but my rink is undersized and also there's a bit of a slope :biggrin:

I would have known the theory after a month of skating! But in practice, I probably didn't have the stability and comfort with the ice to attempt this for a good year.
 
aromaticchicken

aromaticchicken

On the Ice
Joined
Apr 22, 2014
I think it really depends if you're saying on a flat or if you can do change of edge (rocking back from edge to edge). Off of a "one foot glide in a straight line" is really different and heavily dependent on the ice quality.

If you can continually change edges rocking back and forth on a single foot I could see someone like Patrick Chan going hypothetically forever until their leg gives out from being tired....
 
loopy

loopy

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
No idea, but it's an exercise (in a spiral) that my daughter has had to do - she can go from one end of the rink to the other in a line straight holding an edge, if she allows the edge to control it, it curves in a perfect kind of spiral pattern. It is fun to challenge yourself and I think it must take a lot of strength in the hip and core to do it well. Congrats! Skaters also do this in the shoot the duck position for fun (and to have contests).
 
G

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
From a standing start?

I haven't seen it, don't know if it was filmed, but I once heard someone describe Robin Cousins pushing off forward at one end of the rink, gliding all the way down the ice to the other end (possibly in spiral position), then when he slowed to a stop pushing backward still on the same foot and going backward to where he'd started. Sounds impressive.

Skaters who were experts at school figures should be especially good at generating power from a standstill and at conserving it.

I myself can't get very far with a single push any more. With enough intro steps I could probably make it down one length of the ice. I'll try to see what I can manage next time I skate.
 
loopy

loopy

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
gkelly said:
From a standing start?

I haven't seen it, don't know if it was filmed, but I once heard someone describe Robin Cousins pushing off forward at one end of the rink, gliding all the way down the ice to the other end (possibly in spiral position), then when he slowed to a stop pushing backward still on the same foot and going backward to where he'd started. Sounds impressive.
Click to expand...

That sounds amazing!
 
V

Vanshilar

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
aromaticchicken said:
I think it really depends if you're saying on a flat or if you can do change of edge (rocking back from edge to edge). Off of a "one foot glide in a straight line" is really different and heavily dependent on the ice quality.

If you can continually change edges rocking back and forth on a single foot I could see someone like Patrick Chan going hypothetically forever until their leg gives out from being tired....
Click to expand...

I wasn't thinking of change-of-edge power pulls or any other means of gaining momentum after the initial push. Just a simple straight one-foot glide on a flat, after a single push, from a standing start. Yes it depends a lot on the ice quality, I practice them at the beginning of the public session right after it gets resurfaced :biggrin:

gkelly said:
From a standing start?

I haven't seen it, don't know if it was filmed, but I once heard someone describe Robin Cousins pushing off forward at one end of the rink, gliding all the way down the ice to the other end (possibly in spiral position), then when he slowed to a stop pushing backward still on the same foot and going backward to where he'd started. Sounds impressive.
Click to expand...

Heh wonder if he uses the Schafer push to go backward. My backward pushes suck -- I can't even do backward circle eights yet. I've tried straight spirals (again from standing start, single push, from behind one hockey goal line) but I only get to the far blue hockey line. It was at the end of a public session though so kids had already been cutting up the ice for almost two hours.

gkelly said:
Skaters who were experts at school figures should be especially good at generating power from a standstill and at conserving it.
Click to expand...

Very perceptive, guess what I've been working on :biggrin:
 
sandraskates

sandraskates

Final Flight
Joined
Oct 31, 2006
Country
United-States
In Coffee Club class one instructor likes us to do those type of push-and-hold exercises. We push off and try to go from barrier to barrier but along the "short" (85') way of the rink.

I can sometimes get from barrier-to-barrier but sometimes I start to pretend I'm a swimmer with my arms to make those last few inches. :laugh:
 
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G

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Well, as a less accomplished skater myself, I did an experiment:

Standing next to the boards at the end of the rink, with a single push from a standstill I was able to get just past the nearer blue line. So a tiny bit more than 1/3 the length of the ice. If it had been on clean ice, maybe I could have gotten halfway down.

An elite skater -- as I said, especially one used to pushing off from a standstill for figures -- would probably have no problem gliding the length of clean ice on one push.

With intro steps of crossovers around the end of the ice, I could easily glide on one foot from one end to the other with extra speed to spare.
 
V

Vanshilar

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
I've put up videos now of my right and left one-foot glides down the length of the rink:

Right one-foot glide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCzriQ55f3A

Left one-foot glide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHGORQPH6lw

brightphoton said:
John Curry had the most fantastic edges. He glided on one foot for a good half minute during this performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJqsoFwUic&t=6m50s
Click to expand...

Yeah incidentally I find it more difficult to maintain an edge than gliding on a flat. When I try this around the hockey circle (same thing, standing start, single push, see how many times I can make it around the hockey circle) I only get 1.5 circles going to the left (both LFO and RFI) and 1.25 circles going to the right (both LFI and RFO). Since the hockey circle is 30 feet in diameter, this corresponds to lengths of 141 feet and 118 feet, respectively, compared with the > 180 feet of gliding in a straight line. I thought being on an edge is supposed to allow you to go farther compared to a flat, but I guess I'm not at that point with my edge control yet. And of course being on a deeper edge, for example for paragraphs, is more difficult -- I'm still struggling to be able to get all the way around for paragraphs, which at my circle size (around 17 feet in diameter) is only 107 feet in length.
 
C

CanadianSkaterGuy

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 25, 2013
Tried this the other day... was able to get from the red line at one end to the other end but had reeealllly slowed down by then (this was about 20 mins into a session, so not perfectly clean ice). I'm certain an elite skater wouldn't have any issue. I'll also do an exercise where I skate fast and then try to do a one foot glide around the face-off dots (essentially a lap of the ice on one foot). That's way easier though because you can actually speed into it and my rink is normal sized (maybe a bit smaller actually).
 
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loopy

loopy

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
That is crazy hard! Figures really missed out with new technology, it would have been cool to see the shape they made clearly with computers on the tv screen. It's so hard to see with old tv tech.
 
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