The third law of ice skating is "Keep your hands out to your sides" (but don't wave them about). That may seem like a strange rule, especially if you see advanced skaters running around with their hands in their pockets, but there's a lot of sense to it.
When you are just getting your confidence on the ice, and you are feeling like you might fall at any moment, keeping your hands out to your sides helps give you better balance. Like a tight rope walker using her arms to give her extra balance as she crosses from one platform to the next, you can feel more confident and in better control with your hands out.
On the other hand, you don't want to wave your arms about unnecessarily while you skate, as that will do exactly the opposite. There's a little demonstration I do for new skaters where I move forward by using just my feet, then I go back and, with my feet firmly held together, I wave my arms around and I move forward again. Then I show how moving your feet and arms in opposite directions, as you normally do when you walk, actually sets you in opposite directions top-to-bottom, and makes you more likely to fall.
The thing about ice skating, and you'll hear this from me lots, is that it's all about the small, subtle things that you do. When you make big movements or add extra things into the equation, you are more likely to fall than to do what you wanted to do.
And speaking of small, subtle things you do on ice, having your hands out helps you to steer your body better. Whenever you want to go around a curve, you can put the hand on the outside of the curve in front of your body and the other hand behind you, and you will go around the curve much more efficiently. If you watch figure skaters, you'll notice that they do that while they are doing crossovers on a curve. Hockey skaters will have their hands on their sticks, but if you pay attention, you'll see that they are actually doing the same move with their shoulders. I call this "hugging your circle".
In life you have to keep your balance, too. Know how to move forward with a minimum of effort and maximum results. Another way to say that is, "Work smart not hard." When you work too hard on something that could have been done more simply, you wear yourself out and you might not accomplish what you need to at all!
If you don't know how to work smarter? Ask your friends who seem to be doing it better than you are, or get yourself a coach of whatever flavor makes the most sense for your situation. Remember, coaches do two great things for you: they teach you how to do things more effectively and they push you to do the things that you want to do but don't think that you can. You can! So get out there and do it!!
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Showing posts with label 3 laws of skating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3 laws of skating. Show all posts
Sit down!!
Labels: 3 laws of skating, sit down
OK, so "tomorrow" kind of got stretched out by a few days. Sorry about that! But, at long last, here's the promised post on the second rule of ice skating. (And no, it's not "Don't talk about ice skating." That's something different, entirely.)
The second rule of ice skating is that whichever foot has your weight on it, that knee should be bent. That's a lot of words, but the gist of it is, "Sit down!"
No, seriously, sit down. If you are a beginner, you will probably feel pretty funny doing this, but really bend those knees when you are standing on the ice. You should feel a bit like you are sitting in a straight backed chair. Don't lean forward, just bend your knees.
When you push, stay down. The pushing leg will straighten out as it goes behind you, but the skating leg (where your weight is) should stay exactly as bent as when you started the push. When you bring the pushing leg back toward your skating leg, bend your knee and put it right next to the skating leg.
Sometimes you might feel as though you are going to fall backwards. If that happens, Sit down! Bend your knees more, and you will almost always keep yourself from falling. But, if you do fall, at least you'll fall down on your tush which will hurt less than falling on your head!
Keeping your knees bent under you is so important for lots of reasons, but the number one reason that we'll look at today is that it gives you flexibility of movement overall. Your knees serve as shock absorbers when you skate. If your knees are straight, every little bump and divot in the ice will threaten to knock you over. But with bent knees, you are able to make little adjustments all the time without even noticing it. That keeps you on your feet and in control.
In life, you need to stay flexible, too. If you are too rigid in your plans, your ideas, or your actions, you will have a very hard time dealing with the bumps that life throws you. If you relax a bit and let yourself make the tiny adjustments needed to get through life's adventures, you'll fare much better. There are times when you have to bend a little more than others, and sometimes you just have to sit all the way down and take a little break. Having a warped sense of humor can help sometimes, too. 1 comments
The second rule of ice skating is that whichever foot has your weight on it, that knee should be bent. That's a lot of words, but the gist of it is, "Sit down!"
No, seriously, sit down. If you are a beginner, you will probably feel pretty funny doing this, but really bend those knees when you are standing on the ice. You should feel a bit like you are sitting in a straight backed chair. Don't lean forward, just bend your knees.
When you push, stay down. The pushing leg will straighten out as it goes behind you, but the skating leg (where your weight is) should stay exactly as bent as when you started the push. When you bring the pushing leg back toward your skating leg, bend your knee and put it right next to the skating leg.
Sometimes you might feel as though you are going to fall backwards. If that happens, Sit down! Bend your knees more, and you will almost always keep yourself from falling. But, if you do fall, at least you'll fall down on your tush which will hurt less than falling on your head!
Keeping your knees bent under you is so important for lots of reasons, but the number one reason that we'll look at today is that it gives you flexibility of movement overall. Your knees serve as shock absorbers when you skate. If your knees are straight, every little bump and divot in the ice will threaten to knock you over. But with bent knees, you are able to make little adjustments all the time without even noticing it. That keeps you on your feet and in control.
In life, you need to stay flexible, too. If you are too rigid in your plans, your ideas, or your actions, you will have a very hard time dealing with the bumps that life throws you. If you relax a bit and let yourself make the tiny adjustments needed to get through life's adventures, you'll fare much better. There are times when you have to bend a little more than others, and sometimes you just have to sit all the way down and take a little break. Having a warped sense of humor can help sometimes, too. 1 comments
Beginners' Advice
Labels: 3 laws of skating, look where you want to go
When I first meet a brand new skater I teach them the 3 fundamental laws of ice skating:
The first one seems pretty obvious, but almost no one puts it into practice. Nearly ever new skater, most intermediate skaters, and a frighteningly large number of advanced skaters spend all their time looking at the ice. You do not want to go down there. Why are you looking there?
An ice skating blade is not like a knife with just one edge. A skate blade has an edge on each side with a hollow space in between. It's a bit like an upside down U. When you are moving straight, you are on both edges at the same time. When you are moving to the right you are on the right-side edge(s) of your blade(s). When you are moving to the left, you are on the left side edge(s) of your blade(s).
Here's the tricky part: any little shift in your weight can push you to one side or the other. When you turn your eyes in one direction, your body moves in subtle ways to put just a little more weight on that side. That makes you tip onto that edge of your blade, and then you find yourself moving in that direction.
With lots of practice you can overcome this tendency, but most of the time you are better off using it to your advantage rather than trying to fight it. Fighting it means that you are working less efficiently. Looking where you want to go means that you are using small, subtle, light-weight things to help you get big jobs done instead of strong-arming your way to whatever it is you want.
Looking down at the ice is generally the most deadly thing you can do. You see, ice skate blades don't just have a hollow with two edges on either side, they also have a rocker. On the front of a hockey skate, you can lean right over and just run out of blade. When that happens you go *splat*. On figure skates, you have a toe pick at the front of the blade. When you hit that, you will also fall over and go *splat*. Either way, this is not the direction you want to go. Don't look there.
This isn't just beginners' advice, either. All of these three laws are things I repeat again and again to students at every level, just in different contexts.
When you jump? Don't look down. You can't get up in the air if your eyes are looking down. That's not just because of your edge and your rocker. It also has to do with the body mechanics of launching yourself into the air, getting the most spring out of your legs, and making your body straight enough to go up and turn around while you are in the air.
When you are concentrating on footwork? Don't look down or you will go *splat*. Do look in the direction of travel or in the exact opposite of your direction of travel -- with only a few rare exceptions.
When you are working on edges, figures, three turns and brackets? Look in the direction of travel and you will stay on your lines better, keep your body straighter and have more control over your edges.
All of this advice about looking where you are going goes just as well for the rest of life. The things that you concentrate on are the things that you are going to become. The actions that you focus on are the things that you will do.
If you don't want to be like your evil stepmother, then don't think about her. She's the ice that will make you go *splat*. Keep your eye on the people that you do want to be like. Focus on the person that you would like to be, on the actions that you think make for a good person, and that is what you will become.
If you want to get good grades in school, or make a certain goal at work, then focus on that goal. Don't think about failure. Don't worry about what will happen if you don't make it. Don't think about the mistakes that you've made in the past or the way that someone else is trying to cause you problems or any other tangential or disconnected matter. Keep your eye on the prize, and you can reach it.
Tomorrow I'll talk a bit more about the second of the 3 fundamental laws of ice skating. In the meantime, tell me, what are you looking at these days while you skate through life? 0 comments
- Wherever your eyes are looking, that's where you are going.
- Whichever foot has your weight, that knee should be bent. (This rule is also known as, "Sit down!" )
- Keep your hands out to your sides, but don't wave them around.
The first one seems pretty obvious, but almost no one puts it into practice. Nearly ever new skater, most intermediate skaters, and a frighteningly large number of advanced skaters spend all their time looking at the ice. You do not want to go down there. Why are you looking there?
An ice skating blade is not like a knife with just one edge. A skate blade has an edge on each side with a hollow space in between. It's a bit like an upside down U. When you are moving straight, you are on both edges at the same time. When you are moving to the right you are on the right-side edge(s) of your blade(s). When you are moving to the left, you are on the left side edge(s) of your blade(s).
Here's the tricky part: any little shift in your weight can push you to one side or the other. When you turn your eyes in one direction, your body moves in subtle ways to put just a little more weight on that side. That makes you tip onto that edge of your blade, and then you find yourself moving in that direction.
With lots of practice you can overcome this tendency, but most of the time you are better off using it to your advantage rather than trying to fight it. Fighting it means that you are working less efficiently. Looking where you want to go means that you are using small, subtle, light-weight things to help you get big jobs done instead of strong-arming your way to whatever it is you want.
Looking down at the ice is generally the most deadly thing you can do. You see, ice skate blades don't just have a hollow with two edges on either side, they also have a rocker. On the front of a hockey skate, you can lean right over and just run out of blade. When that happens you go *splat*. On figure skates, you have a toe pick at the front of the blade. When you hit that, you will also fall over and go *splat*. Either way, this is not the direction you want to go. Don't look there.
This isn't just beginners' advice, either. All of these three laws are things I repeat again and again to students at every level, just in different contexts.
When you jump? Don't look down. You can't get up in the air if your eyes are looking down. That's not just because of your edge and your rocker. It also has to do with the body mechanics of launching yourself into the air, getting the most spring out of your legs, and making your body straight enough to go up and turn around while you are in the air.
When you are concentrating on footwork? Don't look down or you will go *splat*. Do look in the direction of travel or in the exact opposite of your direction of travel -- with only a few rare exceptions.
When you are working on edges, figures, three turns and brackets? Look in the direction of travel and you will stay on your lines better, keep your body straighter and have more control over your edges.
All of this advice about looking where you are going goes just as well for the rest of life. The things that you concentrate on are the things that you are going to become. The actions that you focus on are the things that you will do.
If you don't want to be like your evil stepmother, then don't think about her. She's the ice that will make you go *splat*. Keep your eye on the people that you do want to be like. Focus on the person that you would like to be, on the actions that you think make for a good person, and that is what you will become.
If you want to get good grades in school, or make a certain goal at work, then focus on that goal. Don't think about failure. Don't worry about what will happen if you don't make it. Don't think about the mistakes that you've made in the past or the way that someone else is trying to cause you problems or any other tangential or disconnected matter. Keep your eye on the prize, and you can reach it.
Tomorrow I'll talk a bit more about the second of the 3 fundamental laws of ice skating. In the meantime, tell me, what are you looking at these days while you skate through life? 0 comments
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