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Who's Got The Means To Build An Indoor Slalom Treadmill?

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 6:27 am
by Wesley Tucker
Talk about year-round training:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhXvlLiV ... re=channel

Obviously, it's feasible. Imagine being able to skate endlessly in front of a mirror to check for stance, pump technique, etc., etc., etc. With variable grade you can pump up hill, down and flat.

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 8:16 am
by Toby Warg
Excellent idea! I want to see this done! :)

I've tried one for indoor ski race training

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 9:10 am
by Pat Chewning
It was a large fixed-incline surface with a "carpet" that moved uphill. We could fit 3 skiers on at once. There was a remote-control that one skier would have for panic stopping of the device and for speed increase/decrease.

Spots were painted on the moving surface at intervals for slaloming around. I remember that if you could slalom around the blue spots at full carpet speed, you were doing great.

The carpet surface was no good on your regular skis, but everyone had a few pair of "beater" skis to run on the treadmill. The skis went faster on the carpet on-edge rather than flat, which made it just the opposite of regular skiing.

The ski motion was a lot like skiing on ice -- very littly unweighting needed to get from one edge to the other.

If you fell, it was pretty benign -- you just ended up at the top and got deposited on the flat upper surface. But just in case, we had a panic-stop swtich. I always did worry about something getting caught between the moving treadmill and the stationary upper surface ... but luckily that never did happen.

Sadly, it went bankrupt after 2 years because nobody wanted to pay what they were asking when we could drive to the actual ski hill in about 1 hr...

OK, here it is.

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 9:17 am
by Pat Chewning

Actually!

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 5:22 pm
by Claude Regnier
It was the fall of 2001 so I could get ready for theFCR series.

Several people have tried it since. Time for a new one as I left the old on in Toronto as it had been damaged.

Works pretty good. Great for teaching people that are petrified of skateboarding how to do it with confidence.....