I'll try to remember some good stories from my skating days and add some more here as they happen. :)
"Give up that sport!"
I had just started learning to skate and I fell down more times that I could count. At the end of a couple of weeks, my knees were covered in bruises. It was time for some extra help from.....knee pads!!! Fortunately, I was wearing sweat pants at my skating sessions, so I figured that I could camoflage them under the pants. Looking for a place to buy them, I ended up at a sporting goods store and asked the salesclerk about them. I was wearing shorts at the time and he took one look at my knees and said, "Give up that sport!" ::chuckle:: Needless to say, I didn't. After a while, I stopped needing the knee pads and I don't wear them now unless I'm learning a new jump.
Tips on Jumps and Work-outs on the Ice
These are both from a journal entry of June 1, 1995:
One way I was able to force myself to get more consistant on my jumps was to do 3 or 4
jumps in a row, like 3 waltz jumps in a row, etc. I kept trying to make the next one
bigger than the last, and forced myself to keep going. It really helped!
Before going on the ice, I jog in place a few minutes until my heart rate is going pretty
fast and I'm warmed up. Then I stretch, do 5 or 6 jumps on the floor and then some
more stretches. After getting on my skates and going out on the ice, I do 3 laps of
forward skating, 3 laps of reverse forward stroking (clockwise), 3 figure eights of
backward crossovers around the rink, and then 5 waltz jumps in a row and a spiral.
Then I stretch at the boards. After that, I work on each jump about 5-10
times. If it's a new jump, I break it into segments and practice those separately,
then I do the whole jump. Then I do combination jumps (like waltz jump-toe loop,
salchow-loop, etc.) and then I work on my spins. This all takes about an hour or
more. Then, if there is freestyle music playing, I like to improvise to it and put
in all the elements I've been working on. After that, I stroke around about 8 laps,
or at least 5 minutes straight. For the following hour, I would work on the
moves-in-the-field that I'm learning, sections of figures I'm having trouble with, or
particular elements of jumps or spins.
Figures vs. Freestyle
Before the USFSA and international skating associations eliminated Figures from competition, there was much heated discussion about them. Back in 1995, it was a hot topic, especially among those who had spent many years perfecting their technique going around and around in circles on the ice. Proponents of Figures argued that they taught clean, deep edges and proper technique. Others thought that the expense of the inordinate amount of ice time needed to learn them was driving young people from the sport, especially boys. Kid prefered to skate freestyle, with jumps and moves. Also, in looking at the top international skaters of that time, it was interesting to note that Surya Bonaly, who had passed her 8th figure test, had poor edges, whereas Oksana Baiul and the other Russians didn't do figures and had excellent edges. In my opinion, the advent of televised performances of the big competitions is what finally decided the direction Figures would go. No one wanted to watch skaters tracing circles on the ice. They wanted to see riveting performances with spectacular jumps and spins. In order to do these, skaters needed to devote more time to practicing freestyle, not 6 hours per day learning figures. It was only a matter of time before figures were phased out. I competed in Adult Bronze Figures in the fall of 1996, and just a couple of years later they were eliminated. It is now very difficult to find ice time to practice figures, but I still believe that they are useful for older adults who do not have the physical capability to do difficult jumps and spins but still want the discipline of working on something to perfect their technique.
Watching Kristi Yamaguchi in Practice
There was a field trip of 160 students coming to the rink where I used to practice on Fridays, so I decided to skate at the rink in Dublin, instead. I had just finished my patch session and was packing up, when I saw Kristi Yamaguchi and her mother and grandmother walk in the rink! There was another skater left from the patch, and we both went up to Kristi and asked for her autograph. I always carried an autograph book in my skate bag, and she signed it with her trademark flower and '95. Then she started jogging inplace and doing the same warm-ups that my coach has me do before skating. Unlike me, though, she started doing double and triple jumps on the floor, doing just the spins in the air. She is able to get very fast, tight rotation. Afterwards, she taped up her ankles and got her boots on. I couldn't resist staying and watching her skate. She warmed up on the ice doing forward crossovers, backward crossovers, 5 very big waltz jumps, some back spirals and then several axels around the rink. Then she went through all of her doubles, and a bunch of different triples--triple lutzes, trip flips, triple loops, triple salchows...whew! Kristi then did some run-through of two new programs. One was a jazzy number choreographed by the same person who did her choreography to her Doop Doop routine. It was really a pleasure to watch her skate, and this was the first time I had ever seen her in person. I had a nice chat with her mother, Carol, and we discussed the controversy over eliminating Figures in competition. Interestingly enough, Figures were eliminated for the 1992 Olympics, and I've often wondered if their elimination may have helped Kristi score well enough to win!
Skating as a Stress Reliever
Skating is an excellent way to reduce stress. Sometimes when the kids are driving me crazy or I'm just having a bad week, skating is wonderful because it requires complete concentration on whatever movements I'm working on. When I have to put my full attention to what I'm doing on the ice, I'm able to forget everything else. Actually, the concentration demanded to learn something new is enough to put anything else out of mind! The physical exertion itself, especially those continuous minutes of stroking around the rink, are also a great release. I guess it must be all those endorphins at work!
Those Elusive Freestyle Moves
My coach once told me that if you don't practice something in Freestyle, it will take
you twice as long to get it back. For example, if you don't do it for one month, it
will take two months to get it back. Not a cheerful thought, but I think it's true
when it comes to jumps and spins and some of the more esoteric moves in this sport.
From my journal entry of July 10, 1995: Another thing to remember is DON'T LOOK AT THE
ICE!!! This is true not only with spins, but also with moves-in-the-field and
three-turns. One time my spin had disappeared (a pretty usual occurrence) and I realized
that I was leaning over at the waist a bit, and that threw everything off. It's
essential to stop EVER looking down at the ice. As soon as I do, if I'm bending my knees
(which is most of the time, of course!), I have a tendency to lean over. I never
look down with moves that I can do well, but with new stuff, I always look at my feet!
ugh!
My Pre-Preliminary Moves-in-the-Field Test
On July 20, 1995, I passed my Pre-Preliminary Moves-in-the-Field Test. I was really nervous that afternoon, because I had never taken a skating test before. My stomach was in knots! I wasn't too much better during the warm-up. Not being able to wear gloves for the test was yet another distraction. (Next time I need to remember to run through my required moves a few times without gloves so it won't seem so strange.) One thing I noticed is, if you are going through your moves in the warm-up and you mess up, it is really nerve-wracking! You then think that you can't do them at all! However, once I started the test, the judge in charge was very nice, and I concentrated and did everything perfectly! Whew! After it was over, I watched some of the skaters doing their tests, especially the ones doing the tests I would be taking later in August. That helped a lot because I got some ideas from watching them.
More Tests and a Very Bad Thing!
On August 17, 1995, I took my Pre-Preliminary Freestyle Test and the Preliminary Moves-in-the-Field tests. I took the first test in the morning during the adult St. Moritz session. There were so many people taking tests that day, that the club asked me to take it in the morning. That was fine with me because I got it out of the way. The only problem was that I had to hang around the rink almost the whole day because after the Adult Session was over at 1:30pm, my next test was at 3:30pm, so there wasn't time to go home in between.
Needless to say, I had major butterflies but managed to do everything without any mistakes. My first test included the waltz jump, salchow, toe loops, half-flip, half-lutz, and one-foot spin. After the test was over and the judge said I had passed, I was so excited and I went upstairs to get a piece of cake that I was keeping in the rink refrigerator for the judge. I walked into the room where the refrigerator is, and after about three steps, I looked down at my feet in horror! I had been walking on concrete with my skates and with NO BLADE GUARDS! I never go into the refrigerator room, and that happens to be the one room in the rink that does not have rubber mats on the floor! I got the cake and gingerly went back out and gave the judge the cake. My skates still felt kind of sharp, but when I went back out on the ice, I couldn't do any of my jumps or spins very well. There was no one around to resharpen them (and besides, I was at the Dublin rink, where I had had a terrible fiasco with a sharpening a few months before), so I just decided to skate on them for the next test.
Somehow, I managed to do the moves OK, and all the judges passed me. One judge did say that one of the moves looked "tentative"--ha! I would like to see him skate with blades just freshly wrecked on concrete! Needless to say, the next day I got them resharpened in Berkeley. The guy who sharpened them took one look and said, "Wow, these look like they haven't been sharpened in months! I had just had them sharpened the week before, so that shows you how much those six little steps wrecked the edges! Well, now I have a new skater's excuse: "I couldn't skatae well because I ruined my blades on concrete getting a cake for the judge."
Too Much of a Good Thing
From a journal entry of October 4, 1995:
Skating is wonderfully therapeutic and a great stress-reliever, but one thing I have learned in the past few weeks is that you can indeed skate too much. I skated every day for fourteen days straight. About the 11th day, everything was great--I landed all my single jumps, my spin was great, and the moves-in-the-field were really improving. The next day was OK, but not as good. Then the next day, it seemed to get worse. I was falling on things that I never fall on, like waltz jumps or Mokawks! The next day my body just would not do anything I wanted it to do. I did not feel sleepy or tired, and I had lots of energy, but my legs just said, "Forget it! We will not obey anything you want us to do!!" Well, they're the boss, right?
I saw my Sports Medicine doctor and he said it was a case of simple fatigue. I also had been too busy to do all my off-ice exercises. I would have thought that after a whole year of doing the exercises, I could just skip a few days while continuing to skate and not notice the difference. WRONG! The doctor said, "Well, you could do that if you were 12 or 13!" Oddly enough, this month's issue of Skating Magazine has an article about off-ice exercises and their importance in building endurance and strength which in turn protects against muscle pulls and other skating injuries. It seems that the best skaters (or maybe I should say, especially the best skaters) all do off-ice exercises because otherwise they would not have the strength to do their jumps and the endurance to do their programs all the way through. I have added a few new exercises to my routine, and it is amazing what the added strength does to give you spring and height in the jumps! Anyway, my doctor made me promise not to skate more than 5 days a week. I've taken several days off since then, and now everything is coming back.