Skating 101 - On the subject of tricks...

I like to think I'm a friendly person, the rink is pretty good for this kind of personality as well because people are usually pretty happy to approach others and chat about skating, so you can make friends pretty fast if you're a regular at your rink. Despite my friendly interior, I'm fairly certain that I look somewhat aloof and distant when I'm just skating around on the ice.

If only I could actually have this much poise on the ice!

However, even with this icy facade, I do still occasionally get approached by members of the public that are persistently attempting to learn some ice skating move. Maybe I don't actually look all that aloof and I'm just super unthreatening, but either way they must've decided that I've demonstrated sufficient skill to be "the right guy to ask", which is obviously immensely flattering.

"Moi?"

This process always goes fairly similarly:

Them: "Hey, you look like you know what you're doing, I'm trying to learn how to do X."
Me: "Oh right. (I watch what they've got so far) Well, what you're doing right now is almost right, but you need to have your weight at this point and focus on this aspect more."
Them: "Oh I thought there must be something I'm doing wrong."
Me: "No, no, you're basically right."
Them: "Is there some trick to make this move easier?"
Me: "Bad news I'm afraid... THERE ARE NO TRICKS."

The sad news is that ice skating is all about the hours. Time spent on the ice is the only "trick" to learning how to be a better skater. Something the Tammasaurus would like to remind me with regards to learning the Axel...

So, whatever your goal on the ice, the only way forward is to get on with it and practise!

Comments

  1. The411Lauren10/04/2018, 18:53

    I'm definitely feeling this now, the more I Skate the more I realise everything I'm learning is going to come down to my own experience and personal practise into making it work for me. No tricks indeed!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the beginning there was... A bad skiing lesson

I meant to post this earlier in my post schedule, but it didn't quite fit into my HP format so here it is, late, my "origins" story behind getting into ice skating. ------------------------- I first encountered an ice rink the way most people do. You're 12, your parents take you, a little girl half your age cuts you up and promptly falls over right in front of you. Your blades are heading for her head; you have no idea how blunt rental skates are, but 12 year old you assumes you're going to give her a lot more than just a close shave. In a panic, you're forced to half-jump, half-fall over her and, incredibly, no one's injured in the end. Girl skates off like nothing happened and you start a blog 15 years later to commemorate the occasion (absolutely not why I started). I don't actually remember the experience of skating that time though, just the seemingly dramatic incident, so I'm going to pretend my first time was two years after that event
Read more

Straight Up Pain

Previously in my quest for the vaunted single Axel , I experienced an unpleasant series of injuries and MY GOODNESS did those injuries become the bane of my skating pretty much over the course of the last two months. It turns out that you can't drop hard on your hip as an adult, twice, without repercussions, which is a shame, because like all reckless, young men (I'm not sure I can keep claiming I'm 'young' but hey ho), I like to think of myself as indestructible. In the weeks following my injuries, I endured pain in my hip whenever I climbed stairs or tried to do basic stroking on the ice. Life was sad and skating was making me miserable. I had no motivation to try anything because I was in pain and not trying anything meant I wasn't progressing, which made me not want to come in and practise, which set my progress back even more. I confess that the reason my blog's posting rate suffered lately is almost entirely because I just haven't been in the
Read more

HP #2 - Getting another perspective

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See my first HP post for the full notes on these. Background: I'd been skating for about three weeks by this point, which is roughly six hours total on the ice. I'd mostly just done forward stroking, forward lemons and two-foot turns by now. I'd done a little bit on backward lemons as well, partly self taught, because I wanted to get to grips with going backwards after the two foot turns. ------------------------- Ashley was at a conference this week so we had a stand in for the group lesson today. Jane introduced herself as the head coach for the rink. THE HEAD COACH!? She confessed that she was mostly locked up in the office making sure all the admin was in order. In the face of our quietly awed expressions, she skipped checking what we'd been doing for the last few weeks and ran us through everything we'd done so far from the beginning. In every exercise she would give pointers and we blitz
Read more