Anikin clinic a success! —summary
Well, the Michigan Anikin clinic came off without a hitch.
It really was just a three way teamwork of a paddler pal,
a biker friend and me to bring Nikolai to a nice ski area.
Totally amateur effort! 🙂 But I guess that really makes it 5 way
teamwork. Coz Nikolai REALLY did his part. And Bob Frye of
the XC Ski HQ of Roscommon made all the resort logistics go
smooth as silk.
Actually, it really was just the teamwork of a bunch of skiers who wanted
some good lessons and without everyone who came, it wouldn’t’ve happened,
coz we just made the cutoff. It was kinda neat to make a
clinic materialize out of nowhere.
And it sure was neat that Nikolai was willing to drive by himself
the 12 hours or more down to teach us citizen skiers. He’s 68!
But I tell you, he smoked us all with every drill he showed or
demonstration he gave. No one else was as smooth, relaxed
and coordinated. Every move had a basic drill, a demonstration,
some practice loops with comment and some taped loops with
comment followed by onsnow individual summaries and then
tape review inside.
We had some pretty good, fairly high ranking citizen skiers
attend and most took quite a dose of humble pie when it came time
to review the video of themselves doing each technique.
But it was exciting to see where such easy gains could be made.
If you’re going slow and have perfect technique you know that
the only answer to going faster is more and better training (if speed
is what you want). For people who already go pretty fast, for
them to see that they are sitting in the toilet seat posture
and have no poling followthru and are arching their backs,
what amazing prospects for quick gains they have: a few basic changes and
races get whole chunks faster without any more sweat. It is painful
to see what we ski like sometimes. –But oh so helpful if you have
someone like Nikolai to tell you how to correct the major gaffes
of an already accomplished skier. —He knows that sometimes the
best way to improve kick is to first fix a major poling snag. Most of us
seem to have major glitches we couldn’t’ve fixed ourselves.
We plan on ordering copies of his ‘Soviet Method’ book and
I’ll put a Summary Report of all the tips he gave us for each
technique on my website after we pool what we recall.
We’re also copying the class tape of ourselves.
The main things I recall were how much classic is the base of skating
and how important it is to have deep flex of the ankle and knee at
kickoff. Nikolai says about 35deg ankle flex is great. He also says
that the longer you keep the heel down, the better. —Long past the hip
in classic. I haven’t quite figured how to do this, but I’ll study it.
I’ve been botching it so far and giving myself late kick. Hmmm…
His ‘Formula Four’: stretch, push, relaxation, pendulum. More later.
I figure this sort of input takes up to a year to incubate properly.
But if we can get in a dozen skis soon after this clinic, I think that
will help what we learned sink in better.
A good weekend of improvement for about 28 skiers, I’d say—for $50.
PS: What I liked particularly about Nikolai was his plain and
simple love of skiing and his democratic approach. He wants to
see everyone get better and he treats everyone the same
—from 11 to 75 years of age and from fast to VERY slow.
He seemed to have a bit of a special bond with one skier
who had plenty of bounce and who he simply called ‘young boy’
—he said he was his assistant. Kids everywhere especially
caught his attention. For all the talk of Olympics and such
it was a very family affair.
PPS: I suppose what we really need is an Elite Anikin Clinic for only 12 good racers.
