You have roughly 40 contact hours in a typical course. If all you do in them is lecture, you might as well just hand out your notes and let the students find something more productive to do with all that time. The only way a skill is developed—skiing, cooking, writing, critical thinking, or solving thermodynamics problems—is practice: trying something, seeing how well or poorly it works, reflec...

Demand for skiing expanded rapidly in the 1980s, fell quite dramatically at the start of the 1990s as the economy declined but has not subsequently recovered. Two possible explanations are explored. The ®rst is based on perceiving skiing as a new product to most consumers, which reached maximum growth in 1989. Current levels now largely represent `repeat buyers'. The alternative approach sees t...

Cross-country skiing is a rare example of how humans can efficiently use all four limbs for propulsion. Effectively becoming a quadruped, a skate cross-country skier uses skis in a skating motion while the arms are fixed to poles which are pushed into the snow for propulsion. Cross-country skiers use the 2-skate technique (similar to a galloping horse) when going slow, switch to the 1-skate tec...

Looking at the current technology of water skiing equipment, it isn’t hard to trace its roots. Ralph Samuelson successfully skied on Lake Pepin in Lake City, MN in 1922. He was the first recorded person to water ski. His skis consisted of two pine boards with leather bindings (Winkler, 2009). From this modest beginning came the old style flat bottomed and square tailed skis that were standard f...

The purpose of this study was the experimental validation of the OpenGo sensor insole system compared to PedarX sensor insole and AMTI force-plate systems. Sixteen healthy participants performed trials in walking, running, jumping (drop and counter movement jumps), imitation drills and balance, with simultaneous measures of all three systems. Detected ground contact and flight times with OpenGo...

Abstract In cross-country skiing, velocities range from 2 m $${\textrm{s}}^{-1}$$ s - 1 up to more than 20 across undulating terrain, and aerodynamics can, therefore, make a large impact on performance. The aim of this study...

The purpose of our study was to characterise the diagonal stride locomotion during a new short sprint race in cross-country skiing. Thirty male cross-country skiers were sagittaly filmed on an uphill portion of the 1.2-km classic race of the world cup (2004) using a digital camera. The main body joints, skis and poles were digitised frame by frame. Results indicated higher SV and SR for similar...