HP #7 - 3 turns? I can barely manage one...
Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See my first HP post for the full notes on these.
Background: This snapshot of the past follows pretty soon after my historical perspective post about learning to do crossovers.
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Ashley reported that our group had essentially covered the Skate UK 1-4 stuff by this point. We weren't doing it all gracefully or with great skill, but we were good enough to move up to the 5-8 class. We hadn't had anyone new join the 1-4 class for a while and, as Ashley also ran the 5-8 class, he told us that, in the interests of keeping the groups' experience levels at a similar place relative to each other, he was going to continue teaching us the 5-8 material but not actually move us up, so the other class wouldn't have to backtrack to our level. He'd reassess the situation when some new people joined our group as it wouldn't be practical for them or us at that point, so we all agreed this was fair.
With that in mind, we started learning how to do 3 turns. Just your average, forward outside 3 turns, nothing crazy... Except for the fact that they're insane.
Now, reader, you can give 3 turns a go to from the safety and luxury of wherever it is you read blogs. Stand up, take off your shoes - or leave them on, whichever - and find a laminate surface (carpet will work in the absence of actual laminate flooring). Keep your weight on the outside of your "skating" foot and push it forward in a curve away from you - if you're following the diagram above then start on the left if you're "skating" on your right foot and start on the right if you're "skating" on your left foot. After about a foot and a half into your curve, move all the weight from the outside of your foot to the ball of your foot, pivot about 90°-120° on the spot, re-shift all your weight to the inside of your foot and imagine you're now skating backwards. Continue to complete a backwards curve mirroring the one you did before the pivot.
Congratulations, you have done a 3 turn!
3 turns are generally the first one-footed turn you learn and, much like the basic two-foot turn, it consists of shifting your weight to blade's "rocker", (just behind the toe pick), and using the reduced surface area at the front of the blade to do the rotation. You generally twist the top half of your body before doing the turn then, when you rotate your lower half in the turn itself, your lower body and upper body should finish in line (like the untwisting of a corkscrew) and you should now be travelling backwards still on one foot.
I didn't care what Ashley'd told us about crossovers in the past. This was skating. When he demonstrated it, the 3 turn looked stylish and seamlessly transitional in nature; one moment you face one way and with a snap of your ankle (the good kind of snap!) your body is instantly facing the other as you glide backwards to the thunderous applause of the crowd. Sadly, my own attempts were more like the jerking neck of a pigeon on the move. Every time I reached the turn, I'd put my arms across and then just THROW my body round the turn. The actual rotation-of-the-blade part of the move (you know, the turn itself) seemed an insurmountably difficult distance away, hauling the blade all the way round and then settling back in to the opposite edge. A lot of falling ensued. Ashley had made it seem so effortless!
One other tricky feature of the 3 turn is the change of blade edge (see here for more on edges). You recall in my example earlier I asked you to have all your weight on the outside of the foot, then on the inside after the turn? Well that's to reflect that you begin a forward outside 3 turn skating on the outside edge of your skating foot, but as you do the turn you have to settle the blade back down on an inside edge now going backwards. This was pretty hard for the class, mostly because we hadn't done a lot of backwards edge work yet and forward inside edges weren't my favourite in the first place so backwards was only going to be worse.
It became fast apparent that the real trouble the group was having was that while the entry to the turn was relatively easy (you are going forward after all), if we made it past the turn then balancing the backwards exit on one leg was very troublesome for us all!
"Practice," Ashley told us, "that's all it is. Practice, practice, practice."
It wasn't entirely surprising when I found out that 3 turns were just the first of MANY possible turns and they were all harder than 3 turns. "That's fine," I though, "I can just get good at these 3 turns and that'll serve for a long time." Mmm, yeh, about that. You've got to be able to do them on both legs, like most things in skating, and once you've got past the outside 3 turns then you can also do inside 3 turns, which are harder than outside for no readily apparent reason. If that's not enough then buckle up because you can do exercises where you do multiple 3 turns in a row and if you're still hungry then you can do the whole lot going backwards to forwards as well, inside and outside.
And those backwards ones are nightmarish.
And they're still the easiest one-footed turn.
Great. I can hear the Saturday skate session calling... Again!
Background: This snapshot of the past follows pretty soon after my historical perspective post about learning to do crossovers.
-------------------------
Ashley reported that our group had essentially covered the Skate UK 1-4 stuff by this point. We weren't doing it all gracefully or with great skill, but we were good enough to move up to the 5-8 class. We hadn't had anyone new join the 1-4 class for a while and, as Ashley also ran the 5-8 class, he told us that, in the interests of keeping the groups' experience levels at a similar place relative to each other, he was going to continue teaching us the 5-8 material but not actually move us up, so the other class wouldn't have to backtrack to our level. He'd reassess the situation when some new people joined our group as it wouldn't be practical for them or us at that point, so we all agreed this was fair.
With that in mind, we started learning how to do 3 turns. Just your average, forward outside 3 turns, nothing crazy... Except for the fact that they're insane.
 |
| This isn't the motion your brain does at the idea of doing a 3 turn... This is a 3 turn. The rough skate pattern of one at least. Doesn't seem so bad, right? |
Now, reader, you can give 3 turns a go to from the safety and luxury of wherever it is you read blogs. Stand up, take off your shoes - or leave them on, whichever - and find a laminate surface (carpet will work in the absence of actual laminate flooring). Keep your weight on the outside of your "skating" foot and push it forward in a curve away from you - if you're following the diagram above then start on the left if you're "skating" on your right foot and start on the right if you're "skating" on your left foot. After about a foot and a half into your curve, move all the weight from the outside of your foot to the ball of your foot, pivot about 90°-120° on the spot, re-shift all your weight to the inside of your foot and imagine you're now skating backwards. Continue to complete a backwards curve mirroring the one you did before the pivot.
Congratulations, you have done a 3 turn!
3 turns are generally the first one-footed turn you learn and, much like the basic two-foot turn, it consists of shifting your weight to blade's "rocker", (just behind the toe pick), and using the reduced surface area at the front of the blade to do the rotation. You generally twist the top half of your body before doing the turn then, when you rotate your lower half in the turn itself, your lower body and upper body should finish in line (like the untwisting of a corkscrew) and you should now be travelling backwards still on one foot.
I didn't care what Ashley'd told us about crossovers in the past. This was skating. When he demonstrated it, the 3 turn looked stylish and seamlessly transitional in nature; one moment you face one way and with a snap of your ankle (the good kind of snap!) your body is instantly facing the other as you glide backwards to the thunderous applause of the crowd. Sadly, my own attempts were more like the jerking neck of a pigeon on the move. Every time I reached the turn, I'd put my arms across and then just THROW my body round the turn. The actual rotation-of-the-blade part of the move (you know, the turn itself) seemed an insurmountably difficult distance away, hauling the blade all the way round and then settling back in to the opposite edge. A lot of falling ensued. Ashley had made it seem so effortless!
One other tricky feature of the 3 turn is the change of blade edge (see here for more on edges). You recall in my example earlier I asked you to have all your weight on the outside of the foot, then on the inside after the turn? Well that's to reflect that you begin a forward outside 3 turn skating on the outside edge of your skating foot, but as you do the turn you have to settle the blade back down on an inside edge now going backwards. This was pretty hard for the class, mostly because we hadn't done a lot of backwards edge work yet and forward inside edges weren't my favourite in the first place so backwards was only going to be worse.
It became fast apparent that the real trouble the group was having was that while the entry to the turn was relatively easy (you are going forward after all), if we made it past the turn then balancing the backwards exit on one leg was very troublesome for us all!
"Practice," Ashley told us, "that's all it is. Practice, practice, practice."
It wasn't entirely surprising when I found out that 3 turns were just the first of MANY possible turns and they were all harder than 3 turns. "That's fine," I though, "I can just get good at these 3 turns and that'll serve for a long time." Mmm, yeh, about that. You've got to be able to do them on both legs, like most things in skating, and once you've got past the outside 3 turns then you can also do inside 3 turns, which are harder than outside for no readily apparent reason. If that's not enough then buckle up because you can do exercises where you do multiple 3 turns in a row and if you're still hungry then you can do the whole lot going backwards to forwards as well, inside and outside.
And those backwards ones are nightmarish.
And they're still the easiest one-footed turn.
Great. I can hear the Saturday skate session calling... Again!
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