the
Skater's
edge
Bob Denike
See if you have been a part of the follow-
ing scene. You are at a local skate spot,
let's say a ramp, and someone is taking a
run. This particular skater is a beginner so
he is doing fakies back and forth, bending
and straightening his legs, slowly getting
closer to the lip. You now flash on the other
skaters surrounding the ramp and you
notice they are moving up and down slightly
flexing and straightening their legs in the
same gyrating rhythm as the skater on the
ramp. Think about it, have you done this
before? Maybe not, but I've caught myself
moving up and down slightly when rooting
on a younger skater straining toward that
first one-wheeler. You become involved in
the skater, with your intense concentration
causing you to fire the same body muscles
that the skater you are watching is using
to move up the ramp, resulting in your in-
voluntary up and down motion. This can be
a funny sight sometimes, but it's nothing to
be embarrassed about. There are two main
parts of skateboarding or any athletic activ-
ity. One is the conditioning of your muscles
and body to pull off those radical moves,
mainly through increasing strength of the
muscles and repetitive practice. The other
side, the ignored side, the side that's hard
to tap in on, is concentration.
You could ask any of the top pros today
how they prepare for a contest run, pulling
off those flawless moves back to back, and
they'll tell you about concentrating. Sitting
down, closing your eyes, and visually im-
agining a perfect run in your mind, from the
initial drop-in to the final exit from the bowl,
they will visualize every move mentally and
subconsciously fire every muscle needed
to execute the run.
This activity gets right down to the basic
mechanics of muscle movement. Each dis-
tinct muscle movement is encoded in the
cells that make up your nerves. By mental
visualization of an athletic activity, you at-
tempt to tap in on the codes hidden in your
nerve cells and you will slightly fire the mus-
cles needed to successfully complete what-
ever you visualized. Medical research has
backed this claim by showing that activities
vidualized beforehand were learned and
completed easier than those that were not.
Mental concentration will fire the proper
muscles needed, even in proper sequence,
and prepare your muscles for the real thing.
Concentration deals mainly with the
search and use of something in your body
called a motor unit, a small nerve package
consisting of one motor nerve and the sur-
rounding muscle fibers that react from that
nerve. When you brain signals your body
to do a handplant, for example, this signal
will travel over motor nerves to your brain
to your muscles. Each nerve will then fire
enough muscle fibers to execute the mus-
cle movement. To apply more force, power
or speed to the muscle, you simply use
more motor units.
To illustrate how concentration can find
and use motor units, pick a skate move you
already know how to do. Do this move over
and over and concentrate, both mentally
and when actually skating, on what you are
doing, dissecting every muscle movement
until the move becomes smooth, clean and
precise. You are consciously concentrating
A good way to learn how to concentrate
is to attempt to do something with your
other hand or foot, let's say pushing your
skate down the street with the foot you don't
normally use. One foot knows how to do
this very well and from this "smart" foot you
can dissect the proper movements. Now
switch over to the other foot and concen-
trate on duplicating the proper movements
until you begin to get a smooth, clean push.
Your concentration will first search for
enough motor units for the strength needed
and then learn to time the units for smooth-
ness. This same action will take place each
time you dissect and visualize a move. Con
centration will corral the needed motor units
and slowly condition the muscle for smooth
and clean execution.
I seem to use this mental visualization
technique a lot when I skate. A lot of moves
I used to do way back when I skated eight
hours a day have been put on the back
burner, so to speak. Once in a while I'll see
a move I used to do or someone will say,
"Hey, Bob, you used to do handplants back
at... blah, blah." I'll simply use this mental
visualization process, running the move in
my mind over and over and I can usually
pull it off in a couple of tries. With that, I'm
convinced it works and the few people I've
explained it to think it works also. Like I
said before, skateboarding has two sides,
the physical and the mental side. Work on
both and you're bound to improve your skat-
ing. Take care and skate safe.
on the whole move, but subconsciously POLAND
your concentration is finding and using
more motor units to smooth out your mus-
cle action, This is why quick, jerky hand-
plants are easier to do than those long,
smooth, stalled ones. They use less energy
or fewer motor units.
Learning to concentrate and control
motor units isn't easy, but being aware that
they exist is the first big step. Don't expect
to be able to concentrate on a microscopic
level. Visualizing yourself hiking through
mountains of muscle looking for stray motor
units like they were wild mushrooms, that's
not the idea. The type of concentration you
need to learn is mental visualization of your PORTLAND
skate moves. This will pull together the
motor units and prepare the muscles
needed, so you can learn the moves quickly
and easily.
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