Speed skating techniques are always changing.

What was once cutting edge has been deemed old fashion.

Enter Mengyao "Maggie” Qi.

The "technical guru,” as Phil Hoffman, coach for the Whitehorse Rapids Speed Skating Club, called her, visited the Yukon to hold camps at the Canada Games Centre from Jan. 28-30. Joining Qi from the Olympic Oval in Calgary was one of her pupils, Whitehorse's Troy Henry, who competed in the 2007 Canada Winter Games and in four Arctic Winter Games since 2002.

A big part of bringing in these two ringers was to inspire the Yukon's speed skating contingent – Donald Fortune, Heather Clarke, Shea Hoffman – leading up to the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax, N.S., in two weeks.

Qi said that even top-level athletes in the sport must work at the basics continually.

"The sport is developing and some techniques have been changing,” said Qi, a former member of China's National Speed Skating Team and gold medalist in the 2006 World Junior Championships.

"The technique here can be a little bit old fashion. My job coming here is to deliver the new concepts.”

For instance: remembering to push with the heels rather than pushing with the toes in order to maintain speed.

Qi also worked on track patterns, strategies for passing and holding positions.

Skaters at the Olympic Oval work on similar techniques, she added.

"Even the national team, they're working on basics. It'll always be the most important thing. Even though you're fast, at some point in the season, you need to go back to basics. Without a good basic position you can't go fast.”

Henry worked on those basics for the better part of his life in Whitehorse and broke out of the territory to skate at the Olympic Oval.

This year, Henry's hoping to break onto the national team, having made the national team trial qualifier in Sherbrooke, Que., in December, when he finished in the bottom 16 out of 32 skaters.

Getting the chance to compete at that level took a lot of work, he noted.

"You have to work everyday to make it out, to get better, to reach your goals, because it's a lot harder once there's no one else to try and chase – you're the one that's setting the pace,” he said.

"You just got to look towards the future and know where you want to go, and you also have to out-train the guys down south, you got to be stronger, you got to be better technically for a very technical sport such as speed skating … and mentally stronger.”

Leading up to the 2007 Canada Games, Henry did weight training and dry-land training in addition to skating as much as possible.

That rigorous schedule increased when he moved Outside.

"Down there they skate five days a week – sometimes six, seven days a week – and that's something that really helps, being able to get on the ice every day,” Henry said. "You don't lose anything from day-to-day: if you have a two-day gap, something you're working on two days ago, you can lose a little bit of it.”

Hoffman said he hopes that his skaters learn a thing or two about Henry's drive.

"I hope the clinics will boost our three skaters going to Canada Games in a couple weeks and to the rest of the kids hopefully it will carry over to Arctic Winter Games next year,” Hoffman said, adding of Henry:

"It's good to know that there's some place they can go to and somebody they can look up to and say, ‘I can get there too if I try.'”