We Don't Just Excel, We Axel

Disclaimer:  I've written a small disclaimer for these articles on jumping  over on this link . Reading it isn't obligatory, but it does cover a lot of ugliness that I don't want to type every time I write one of these, so if you're about to pick me up on the finer points of jump execution then please read that first! The Salchow You have a beloved, imaginary friend called Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a human-sized teddy bear with the classic posture of a sitting teddy bear: both arms and legs open in a welcoming embrace. He's accompanied you through many of the big occasions in your life: first day at school; first relationship; first drunken escapade when you stole a traffic cone; your wedding/civil ceremony of choice; your first kid; etc. etc. However, Lorenzo's a  needy , imaginary friend, he wants to be hugged every so often, which would be simple enough, except he's only happy if you employ his preferred patented hug technique, which is a hug whilst swing...

Disclaimer:  I've written a small disclaimer for these articles on jumping over on this link . Reading it isn't obligatory, but it does cover a lot of ugliness that I don't want to type every time I write one of these, so if you're about to pick me up on the finer points of jump execution then please read that first! The Toe Loop You run a money laundering operation, I keep telling you not to, but that hasn't stopped you yet. It's a  typical day for you as a money launderer (whatever that looks like, you tell me) and you're just on your way out of the house to pick up some ill-gotten gains. You step your right leg forward and raise your left foot heel off the floor so just your toes are touching the ground. In this position, you suddenly realise you've forgotten your keys, you clutz! Still facing forwards, you push down through your left toes into the floor behind you, with the intention to pivot to the left on them so that you can reach your keys...

Personally, I think all skating progression carries a degree of risk and, in the pursuit of jumping perfection, then you fall a lot . I literally cannot emphasise how much falling you do. However, I don't want anyone doing themselves a mischief because of the insanity I'm going to be spewing in the upcoming articles, so I am putting together a little disclaimer that goes a little something like this... I am not a trained skating coach and I strongly recommend that you learn any and all skating elements with assistance from a coach. That said, attempting the jumps isn't THAT dangerous at all unless you're a total maniac, so while the below can all be attempted off ice, no liability is accepted for your own fooling around when attempting any of them, whether on or off ice. Watch out for any objects nearby. Furthermore, none of my jumping explanations are intended as a comprehensive primer on jump execution, they're largely intended as a simplified, jokey versio...

I have always wondered the secret to the dashingly youthful looks that so many ice skating coaches have. The Tammasaurus once explained that the chill of the rinks that they spend so much time in provided enough of a cryogenic freezing effect to keep their skin nice and taut as they age. Never has the Tammasaurus spoken more untruth than in that moment! This reporter comes to you now with what he believes to be the true source of the stunning looks that our venerable ice skating coaches continue to sustain not through the rink's natural benefits, but through the evil draining of young childrens' energies! I stumbled into this sinister plot while doing the most innocuous of acts: finishing off my time on the evening patch session with a few poor attempts at improving my upright spin. Typically I'm the only adult on this session (not counting the coaches) and the rest is made up of kids that have come straight from school to practise. Little do they know the disturbing...

My face every time the Tammasaurus asks this: PLEASE TAMMASAURUS, I LOVE YOU, DO NOT MAKE MY PRACTISE MY SPINS. I KNOW I NEED TO, BUT I AM AN INCAPABLE CRETIN THAT WAS NEVER MEANT TO SPIN! And she just looks at me...

Rink regulars tell me I should get some programme music, I'm all: But inside I'm all: The search begins, late one night so that plausible deniability remains intact... Initially I'm all: But, after several hours of suggested playlists, everything starts to sound the same... Then anytime I walk into ANYWHERE that's playing ANY SONG, I'm all: I drop by the Tammasaurus for advice, she's all: Which I know means "Choose something you love... but 90% of your choices will be..." And so the search goes on...

A combination of nagging from the better skaters and their mums at my rink; my growing obsession with obscenely long run ups to my paltry, single jumps and starting work on the Lutz jump with its absurd entry all came together to push me into moving my lesson and regular training schedule into a patch session instead of public sessions. Some people find the prospect of transitioning to patch a bit daunting as it's where the serious folk go to learn to skate, but when I talk about "the serious folk" then what I really mean is mostly girls aged 8-13. Most adults are afraid of the judgement that might come from this group, however one of the first things I discovered when training on patch is that it's a bit like going to the gym: all the regulars care about is their own work out and they're happy that you're making the effort to be there yourself, whatever your ability. So I got started by trialling myself on the busier after school session, just to see how...

It was a school break this week in the UK, so the rink was overflowing with parents and their kids looking for something to distract them. I've had this post about exactly those kind of times in draft for a while and I think now is the time to deploy... Are you able to tell a Red Zoner from a White Zoner? Welcome to my lecture on public session skater taxonomy, which is an optional module you can take for 15 credits. There will be an assignment to collect samples of taxonomic specimens and a written exam on the tendencies of the various zones. You can buy my recommended text for the course (my own book of course!),  Rink Etiquette 101 ,   from any good academic book store. If the people at the back of the class are done yawning... yes , I'm talking about you guys... then I'll begin. Public sessions are the destruction derby of ice rinks. Actually, that's ice hockey, but if you don't want to strap on more armour than a medieval knight and smash a tiny piece of ru...

"You've dropped some money there," the Tammasaurus noted as my body crashed into the ice, another spectacular fall during a loop attempt gone wrong. I knew, rather than saw, that she was referring to the two pound coins I'd had in my pocket that I'd heard clatter to the floor as I fell. I have some trousers with zip pockets to stop stuff like this happening, however I hadn't had those to hand when I'd dressed that morning. "Well, strictly speaking," I began as I picked myself off the ice and started to look around for the coins, "they're yours. At least, they're part of what I was going to pay you with this week." The Tammasaurus bent down to collect her money off the ice. People talk about paying for ice time, but here the ice was paying for her time. I had intended to be chivalrous and collect the money from the ice for her, but she was already at it so there seemed no point in stopping her. I retrieved the rest of her pay...

I tend to make something of an effort to speak to some of the new skaters on the rink basically because it seems to be a general rink tradition that everyone's just so friendly to everyone else on the rink. To that end, I recently got talking with a new guy in the beginners' class. That's right, alert reader, a new guy , which, as will be no surprise to ice skating regulars, is a rare thing, made rarer still by the fact he's in his 20s, like me. You see -  clears throat -  LEGEND HAS IT... For every generation of skating learners (adult or otherwise) there is born just one male into the flock of women (heterosexual men take note of this gender imbalance) . It has been this way since the dawn of time and we must nurture these rare adult males who might go on to be a lonely female's ice dance partner, or perhaps they will one day perform such adult free skating wonders as the double Axel, double to--- "Yeh, so, I'm learning in secret because my missus pla...

I arrived at the rink today with my favourite waistcoat and white shirt combo hidden under my coat. I'm not ready for a routine yet, I can barely manage the basic coordination required for the simple steps I'm doing at the moment, let alone a minute and a half of flowing steps, jumps and spins, so I'm holding off until the Tammasaurus basically insists that we get on with it. However, I wanted to see what it felt like to skate in a waistcoat and shirt in case that was the sartorial route I went down when I do get to a routine. I unzipped my jacket in the cafe, the waiting eyes of the assembled skating mums lingering on me as I revealed the outfit. The cafe audience cooed appreciatively at my choice, the ladies in the locker room nodded admiringly... Some suggestions that I should add glitter and stones were made, but, for now, just the Tammasaurus's approval to go. "Looking  very nice today!" she said admiringly as she joined me on the ice for my lesso...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. ------------------------- " Valar Fallghulis " or "all men must fall." (Or "all people" for the modern thinker, but those that don't get the reference need to pop to their nearest bookstore and look for the George R. R. Martin section!) I have always embraced the spirit of falling in skating, indeed  ' falling is learning ' has become my personal motto. It will never stop happening, even the professionals are dropping here and there, so we might as well welcome it and use it as the learning experience that it is. However, even though I know everyone does it, it still came as something of a surprise when, one typical lesson, the Tammasaurus tumbled to the ground. We were discussing the loop jump, which we'd only started a week or so ago (after I'd cheekily demonstrated that I'd secretly been practising it bef...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. Background:  The Tammasaurus and I had been working together for about 3 months now and I'd been having some troubles over the preceding few weeks. Things aren't always peachy in the skating world (as in life)! ------------------------- "Can we stop a sec?" I wheezed in the middle of another intense lesson with the Tammasaurus. "Sure," she waited for me to catch my breath. "I think I'm okay now," I said after a few seconds. "Okay, let's try for some nice big 3 jumps." I took two strokes to get going. "Nope, no good, I feel sick. Can we get off the rink for a second?" Lessons with the Tammasaurus were always vigorous, no doubt about it, and I liked it that way. They were very productive and counted as some actual exercise in my otherwise slothlike existence, but for the last few weeks I ...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. ------------------------- "So you see, it's more like this," the Tammasaurus proceeded to execute the step sequence that she'd been trying to teach me. When I say "step sequence" then I don't want you to imagine a complex intertwining of wondrous and challenging skating finesse, so I'll confess it was just alternating mohawks with crossovers we were doing as an exercise. As usual though, I was utterly incapable of stringing them together - coordination has never been my strong point. My mohawks were scrappy and bad most of the time, we'd been using them as the entry for my consecutive backward edge practise and I always imagined the Tammasaurus cringing as I scraped my way through the mohawk entry. Now she was expecting me to do the mohawk nicely and add a crossover on the end, which shouldn't even be that complicated...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. Background:  Part 2 of my ongoing quest to find new skates. ------------------------- I once wrote a post, not so long ago in fact, about my first mission to buy new skates . Past Me resolved at that moment in time that the issue of properly researching how to buy skates would be tackled by Future Me. After all, Past Me assumed that Future Me would know much more about this sport and would just be generally better at everything in life ever. Unfortunately, Future Me was now Present Me, a mere six months ahead of Past Me, and Present Me was absolutely no better off than before. I took to the internet to begin my search and started with all the classic internet search terms "buying new ice skates, buying advice, how to choose ice skates, what brand should I use" and was soon swamped with a mash up of articles, forum posts and informational sites that al...

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 just set up my first one-on-one lesson with the Tammasaurus . Some called me insane, the others were taking bets on how long I'd survive... This is a rather long post, I apologise for that, but if you want a taste of what my first private lesson was like then I recommend consuming the whole thing in one sitting - that's right, the food metaphor has already begun - as my first lesson proved to be a similar feat of endurance. ------------------------- Sweat poured off my face, my hair was already soaked and I was beet red as I puffed for breath in the middle of the rink. I hoped, in that instance, that I could've been described as a "hot mess", but I've long suspected that my hair drenched in sweat doesn't look in any way as sexy as it can do on some people. Side note - At this point, I was going to illustrate ...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. Background: Another departure from the usual HP format. Time to introduce a new cast member! Note: this post probably won't display well on mobile, apologies if you're reading via that medium! ------------------------- She tosses her lustrous, blonde locks over the shoulders of her gilet as she sets her coffee down on the rink barrier and steps out firmly onto the ice. Your eyes are immediately dazzled by the neon pink snow pants now emerging from behind the barrier as she strokes slowly around the ice, her eyes sweeping the rink as she surveys her realm. These snow pants are her crown jewels; a striking pink beacon on the ice that sets her apart amongst the sea of fast-moving black leggings and grey tops the other skaters are wearing. As you watch her skate, you start to appreciate her stance: precisely-balanced and graceful, her years of training clea...

Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See  my first HP post  for the full notes on these. Background: As per my  last HP , I've just bought my first pair of skates. ------------------------- I strutted into the rink with my new skate bag - black with (what I thought was) a tasteful, embroidered logo of a figure skate on the back, see picture - slung over one shoulder. My ego was momentarily put in check as I remembered that the bag's design had someone more than half my age in mind (it had a Velcro strap for goodness' sake), but you have to own these things so my strut returned. I plonked myself down in the locker room and a heavenly chorus erupted from the bag opening as I drew forth my new skates. One of the ladies in my skating class looked over. "Ah, you've bought some skates?" she noted with curiosity. "Oh, I have? I hadn't noticed... Now you mention it... Well would you look at that? They certainly look...