Hammer on stone
On a blustery, cold, foul day with snowflakes spinning through the air, dryland training begins-
A wise friend of mine left this quote on my blog, about 2 years ago-
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.
Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before.
-Jacob Riis
Now is the time to begin the hundred strokes.
Or in this case, this is Matt Shanahan doing the first of what will become thousands and thousands of skate position dryland jumps.
Note how his knee passes quite near his ankle, it makes each jump much harder and much more effective.
This is the time of year I think of the above quote the most, as it’s sometimes hard to see the value of the endless hammering, and the toll it takes on the body (has my ankle has received its hundred blows? it hurt quite a bit the next day).
Of course, these words apply to much more than just speedskating, as this image taken the next morning can attest to:
Life is effort….
Filed under: sweat
If we could all go around splitting rocks in one try, we wouldn’t think much of it. Those jumps look good! I’ll be…working on that
It’s funny that in Milwaukee’s looooong season of cold weather, as I work on getting stronger, I imagine everybody else is already training harder in better weather…but you had a blustery, cold, foul day with snow?!
Wow! I don’t think my dryland looks anything like that…
As for the cumulative nature of hammer blows, or dryland exercises: I’m surprised, being at the start, now, of my second “serious” year with serious coaching, at how much more I can do this year than I could at this time last year (not just strength, but doing more without pain/incipient injury). Those hammer blows take years to accumulate sometimes!
‘Life is effort’- then you’re living many lives Andrew. I feel like I am still in that hammering time- I can’t do low-walks though; messed up my knee last November and waiting for an operation.
Train hard and train well- and you said this one a while ago; suffer well!
[…] Posted on May 5, 2008 by peterdoucet Check out Andrew Love’s most recent entry; Hammer on stone. He writes ‘Now is the time to begin the hundred strokes…’ and […]
Matt’s looking good! I’m just keeping my dryland going as well as lifting with my 3 month membership to 24hr. fitness.
But I’m also getting my Xboots for LT sometime this or next month.
got mine love them they are the long track boots on bruce’s web site
Mine have been on Bruce’s site since I got them about a month ago, too! They are amazing! (But it was right at the end of the season, so now I get to use them in september when I’m really in shape
)
he might put mine on the site, but i don’t know.. they’re having the Union Jack as the theme.
does the X mesh stuff make the boot as strong as he says?
Yes, the mesh makes the boot much stiffer than the regular boots that I have had in the past, I have owned 4 pair of Bruce’s boots from the start of his business and I feel this is the best he has designed. Tried them in Milwaukee the last weekend they were open and what a difference with the new Viking pm claps.
Someday the elite long trackers will see what the short trackers already know. There is alot of junk out there being skated on but Bruce’s boots are far above that.
I know that there are some things we are both working on the may change long track clap skates in the near future.
Letsenjy.blogspot.dk…
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