The Double Push - Holy Grail or False Promise?

I often see people dead keen to learn how to double push, and huge amounts is written on the subject on the internet.  It seems to me that most people look on the double push as a magic way to get faster on skates, and wrongly so.

I've found that many people think that they are double pushing, when in fact they are only just moving close to a classic inline skating stride.  This is partly because the double push movement is difficult to do, and partly because the classic inline stride feels much like the double push stride looks.  I've personally seen only a few in the London recreational crowd who can currently make a good double-push movement, although there are now many more skaters capable of this than in the past.  Out of those, I've not seen any of the short-framed skaters do a truly efficient double push - in every case they are simply burning extra calories and slowing themselves down, albeit scoring highly in the look-good-whilst-skating competition.  I suspect that this is partly due to short-framed urban/recreational skates not being very suited to speed, and partly technique related.

What is the double push?

Here are some videos from the internet:

The section between 2:00 and 3:00 shows some quality DP at speed behind the Experts-in-Speed Spiegelbus, by Diego Rosero

Quite an old video now, but a good explanation and demonstration from the Salomon video

Joey Mantia with a short DP demo

As you can see, in comparison with a normal stride, there is an extra initial push.  The first push is on an outside edge and across the centreline of your body, followed by a rolling recovery and a normal push back across the other side.

How to get fast

This doesn't necessarily involve the double push at all.  Most of all, you'll need to spend lots of time and effort working on your technique and also your fitness.  There's no magic solution, no easy way to get fast.  What is required is hard work, lots and lots of hard work and skill.  This article about the subtleties and beauty of the speedskating stride gives some detail on where the best gains are to be made.

Advantages of the double push

Of course there are some big advantages to being able to double push, and it's far from all negative.  The most important advantages are that you spend more time putting power to the road, and that you get more push for the same kneebend than you do with classic technique.  It's a little like having an extra gear at the top end - useful at higher speeds.  Bill Begg, a world-famous coach, said some time ago that all the top skaters in the WIC need the double push to have any chance of being truly effective racers.

Disadvantages of the double push

There are some serious disadvantages to learning and using the double push extensively and too early in your skating skills progression.  These relate mainly to the gear in which the undercarve and second push occur.  Effectively most skaters start double pushing at too low a speed, and then need to make a huge steering effort to get their skate from the first underpush (on an outside edge) back across their centreline to complete a normal push.  This results in the undercarve being very open, and the second normal push being in too low a gear (i.e. too toe out).  Too much steering, and too low a gear means that efficiency is much reduced and top speed becomes limited.

I don't think a double push has any chance of becoming efficient until you're above 25-30km/hour, and that it requires huge amounts of inefficient steering making it largely useless below these speeds.  Many recreational skaters are not able to achieve these sorts of speeds for any length of time.  The problem with this is that making lots of double push strides at these lower speeds will set your stride muscle memory badly with the excess steering and lower gear pushes.  That'll leave you with many times the amount of practice required to correct the mistakes at a later date than if you had started down the right path at the beginning.

There's a further disadvantage - if you lose control of the underpushing skate when it's across your centreline, you're very likely to go down like a felled tree.  Your other skate is little use to recover on as it's far behind you in the D, and across the back of the underpushing leg.

Should you learn the double push?

I'm of the opinion that it's well worth learning the double push - it's a good way to gain additional skating skills, and will give you the skills to be much more comfortable on deep outside edges at speed, to work your setdown position, and to be a better skater with higher quality balance.  Your crossovers will benefit too, as the double push underpush is not remarkably different to a high speed crossover underpush.

On the other hand, due to the disadvantages of the double push, I would also recommend that 99% of most peoples' skating not involve any double pushing, and that most time is spent working on technique and fitness.  Using the double push more often would lead to some disadvantages as listed below.  There are exceptions, but these would normally be good fast club speed skaters (or of a similar skill level), who have had their coach suggest turning on a double push.

The double push is a very useful, nay essential, tool in the speedskater's toolkit.  It comes with some serious disadvantages though, and using it regularly should be left until you have some solid and precise classic push skills.  It's far from the holy grail of going fast, and every skater should realise that real speed comes from hard work on classic technique and fitness.

That said, it's still useful to learn simply because it's a difficult skill and will bring control benefits.  Just make sure you work your classic stride and put that double push away until your coach says you're ready to use it.

This article is aimed at recreational skaters and club speed skaters, where I've seen many of the problems from too quick an adoption of the double push.

Inline skating lessons :: About us :: Disclaimer :: Press Page

All material on this website is © Copyright 2000-2009 LondonSkaters.com, contributors, and associates. Please do not reproduce anything without permission.  If you wish to use photos or other material from this website, please contact me first.