How impt is technique?
I recently read two books on sports: “Endless Winter” (XC) and “The Barton Mold”
(flatwater kayak). “Endless Winter” talked about partying and a carefree spirit
with seemingly only a certain interest in technique, “The Barton Mold”
displayed endless analysis of seemingly extremely minor details, such
as the position of the pushing paddle hand as it passes the cheek.
Now, in general I’ve seen huge amounts of attention to detail
in the flatwater paddling world, tons of posture and exact placement
of everything. And many of the paddle folks I’ve hung out with have been
natl and world champs.
Is this much attention paid to all facets of XC technique?
By our top skiers? In the sport in general? If not, perhaps
this relates to our lack of results.
I’ve been around some top skiers and had some bit
of coaching and I’ve read almost all that’s in print about XC.
It didn’t come anywhere close to the level of analysis
showed in “The Barton Mold.” XC ski does have quite
a bit of science involved but not nearly as much, seemingly.
Is this true or just my imagination?
Here’s another little side story. In my recent studies,
I’ve found that the US sucks at Olympic/ICF Canoeing.
High kneel style flatwater. Canada is pretty good at it.
The main reasons I hear why we suck is simply that
WE DON’T KNOW HOW. Oh, I’m sure lots of US paddlers
can do highkneeling and can “go fast” and follow most of the instructions
in the books, but we just don’t know how. We even have some
people who come fairly close: close enough to know that they
suck. And they had good training from East Bloc experts.
—And here again the available instructions even in a
sport where we TOTALLY suck seems to be far more detailed
than what I find for XC skiing.
And yet another thing: the paddlers all seem to be into
making their own boats and paddles. The best ones seem
very involved with the design process anyway. They have
top scientists working with them to build and test their
boats. Even though there are, I’m sure, plenty of
high tech boats already out there. Do our top skiers
pay as much attention to their skis and poles????
Or am I wrong here? —It just struck me that paddlers are
more into details than skiers and also that in general
the US does pretty well in paddlesport (with some huge
glaring empty places also, like not only don’t we do well,
we don’t hardly have anyone trying to…downriver anyone?
Same thing with highkneeling.)
Maybe I can sum it up even better: I just read 3 books on
paddlesport (Toro’s Oly book, The Barton Mold on kayaking
and The Danger Zone on downriver) and they’re all more
detailed than existing XC stuff as far as I can tell. And
the Barton book is about a huge US success story.
The others are about big Euro success stories. But they’re
all about world champions and they’re all VERY detailed.
Can the same be said for XC? Does it relate to results?
Sorry to blab and wander, I’ll let someone who knows take over now….
