Skate skills:

SKATE TIP OF THE WEEK
Inline secrets from the world's top skaters and coaches

This week's tip:
How to Hawk

By Jessica Smith
(Posted on July 28, 2006)

You never know what's going to happen in a race. Sometimes, you can't get around the skaters in front of you. Other times, racers don't skate all the way to the line. (In other words, they stop sprinting hard just before the finish line, thinking they've already won.)

Hawking is your chance to beat them.

I've lost a lot of races by not hawking or not skating all the way to the line. Those kind of races always stick in my head and annoy me. So a while back I made up my mind to skate to the line and hawk as much as possible.

I started learning to hawk when I was 11 or 12. My coach, Robb Dunn, always had us working on it.

In the beginning, it's hard. And there's always a chance you could bust it. I fell once at Worlds hawking for a gold medal. I ended up with the silver and a big bump on my head.

Here's how to learn to hawk:

1. Warm up and do some groin stretches.
2. Start skating. Once you reach a steady pace (it won't work if you're going slow), bend your forward knee and push your back foot to the rear. In this position, only the toe wheel of your back skate should be touching the ground.
3. Practice this until you feel comfortable.
4. Gradually work on pushing your front foot forward.

Remember: the goal is to get as low as you can with your feet spread apart (forward and back) as far as possible.

Once you're in a race, save your hawk for the last possible moment. It could mean the difference between winning and losing.

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Jessica Smith won her first spot on the U.S. World Team when she was only 12. Since then, she has won 25 gold medals at World Championships (13 as a junior, 12 as an adult) and become, arguably, the top female marathoner in the world. This year, the 22-year-old native of Melvindale, Mich., has won all three World Inline Cup races that she entered. This weekend, she travels to Colorado Springs to start three weeks of intensive training with the World Team at the Olympic Training Center. A week later, she plans to defend her title at the St. Paul Inline Marathon. Then it's off to South Korea to compete in her 10th World Speed Skating Championships. She is sponsored by Hyper.

Related links:

• Hyper web site.
• Skate Tip of the Week Archive.
• Beginners Guide to Inline Skating.
• Jessica Smith Podcast

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