Yesterday I talked about moving balance. You might have thought, what the heck is that?! Well, I don't like to make it too easy on you. I'm a coach after all. I'm hoping that you reach a little to see what you can find on your own before I start telling you how I see everything. After all, a lesson that you learn from your own exploration, experimentation and experience is far better than anything you can pull from a book. But now that you've had a bit of time to imagine moving balance on your own, I'd like to give you my take on this concept in ice skating and in everything else.
I once heard walking described as "highly coordinated falling". With every step you are falling forward, but you catch yourself before any disaster happens and then you allow yourself to fall forward onto the next foot. But, of course, we don't focus on the falling part. Walking is a great example of moving balance. Each step is an opportunity to fall, but we don't, because we are in balance even as we move.
It takes longer to learn how to walk than it does to just stand up on your own. That's because moving balance is more complex than balancing yourself when you are completely still. There are more muscles involved and more variables to deal with, too. But you aren't going to spend your whole life standing in one place to hold your balance. You learn to walk and then you move confidently through life.
Moving balance is that equilibrium which is always in flux. It's a controlled fall that doesn't feel scary because you are confident in your ability to hold it, to stand upright throughout the motion, and to continue to move in the direction you want.
Ice skating is all about moving balance, of course. It's about working with the forces that work on your body: gravity, acceleration, inertia or momentum. When you have learned a move it becomes comfortable as you become confident in your ability to control the fall, to manage the equilibrium throughout the entire process.
Life is all about moving balance, too. Life is always in motion, and you are always balancing yourself within it. Your mental, spiritual, and physical health are all affected by your equilibrium in life. Work-life balance is only a piece of this big puzzle. You balance your desires, your dreams, your family, your beliefs. You balance what you want to do with what you can do and what you must do. You shift your weight, sometimes subtly and sometimes drastically, in order to continue to move onward.
1 comments
The Layback
Labels: balance, physics, yoga
Layback spins are a particularly difficult challange in equilibrium for a lot of skaters. By the time you are working on a layback spin, you have a pretty good idea of what good balance in a spin feels like. But, face it, this spin is weird.
First off, this spin is strange because it completely messes with your sense of direction. In a moderately good layback you'll be looking at the ceiling, but in a really good layback you'll actually be looking at the world upside down. You can get used to that feeling of disorientation by practicing headless spins before you start doing laybacks.
A headless spin is just a regular one-foot spin, but you tilt your head back to look at the ceiling and hold your hands together in front of your throat, with your elbows pointing outward. This spin is a lot easier than a layback because, other than your head getting tilted back, your whole body is straight the same way it is for an ordinary scratch spin. You may find it takes a little practice, though, because the disorientation from looking up can make it hard to keep that perfect straight-spine position.
Once you are comfortable with the headless, you are ready to move on to the layback, but here's the catch: The layback is NOT just a headless that you lean back further. In a layback, your whole spine curves backwards. But we've already learned that you have to maintain equilibrium -- equal balance/equal forces -- in any move on ice. So, if your whole spine is curving backwards, how do you maintain balance?
The answer is in the hips! In a layback spin you push your hips in front of your skating foot to counterbalance the weight of your upper body leaning backwards.
The thing is, this is not a natural or a comfortable position for most skaters when first learning this spin. Most skaters who are just learning a lay back end up keeping their hips too much in line with their skating foot as their head leans back and they curve their back just below the shoulder blades. The thing is, your body is very smart. It's not going to let you spin like that, because your brain knows that it can't hold you up in that position. So, you push forward on the rocker of your blade, and next thing you know you're all the way up on your toepick and the spin is a mess.
Practice layback balance everywhere until you get it right. When you are standing in line, waiting for a bus, whatever -- whenever you have a couple of seconds to spare. Start by standing on your skating foot. Put your "free leg" behind you. Push your hips forward and lay back from the waist so that your whole back is as curved as you can get it.
When you first start practicing this, you'll need your "free leg" to stay on the ground, even if just your big toe is there for balance. As soon as you can, though, start lifting that free leg into the air until you can balance in the layback position anywhere and any time.
Now you're ready to take it to the ice.
First you need to center yourself in the comforts of your normal life: family, home, friends, faith, routine, and whatever else brings you to your point of moving balance.
Next you step out of this safe space, and create a new balance that is out of the ordinary. If you travel far from home, you might find comfort in the presence of new and old friends. A travel buddy may become your lifeline of normalcy as you explore new foods, new languages, and new cultures. Or you may find that you rely more heavily on calls home to mom than you normally would in your workaday life.
Finally, knowing that you've found a balance that you can hold comfortably for a while, you relax into whatever adventure you are on. You reach for those stars, throw yourself into an ambitious task, and rest assured that this odd equilibrium that you have will keep you steady until it's time to return to your center and get back to ordinary life. 0 comments
First off, this spin is strange because it completely messes with your sense of direction. In a moderately good layback you'll be looking at the ceiling, but in a really good layback you'll actually be looking at the world upside down. You can get used to that feeling of disorientation by practicing headless spins before you start doing laybacks.
A headless spin is just a regular one-foot spin, but you tilt your head back to look at the ceiling and hold your hands together in front of your throat, with your elbows pointing outward. This spin is a lot easier than a layback because, other than your head getting tilted back, your whole body is straight the same way it is for an ordinary scratch spin. You may find it takes a little practice, though, because the disorientation from looking up can make it hard to keep that perfect straight-spine position.
Once you are comfortable with the headless, you are ready to move on to the layback, but here's the catch: The layback is NOT just a headless that you lean back further. In a layback, your whole spine curves backwards. But we've already learned that you have to maintain equilibrium -- equal balance/equal forces -- in any move on ice. So, if your whole spine is curving backwards, how do you maintain balance?
The answer is in the hips! In a layback spin you push your hips in front of your skating foot to counterbalance the weight of your upper body leaning backwards.
The thing is, this is not a natural or a comfortable position for most skaters when first learning this spin. Most skaters who are just learning a lay back end up keeping their hips too much in line with their skating foot as their head leans back and they curve their back just below the shoulder blades. The thing is, your body is very smart. It's not going to let you spin like that, because your brain knows that it can't hold you up in that position. So, you push forward on the rocker of your blade, and next thing you know you're all the way up on your toepick and the spin is a mess.
Center, Leg, Hips, Back
These are the steps for a perfect layback:- Center yourself
- Get your free leg back
- Push your hips forward
- Lean back from the waist
Practice layback balance everywhere until you get it right. When you are standing in line, waiting for a bus, whatever -- whenever you have a couple of seconds to spare. Start by standing on your skating foot. Put your "free leg" behind you. Push your hips forward and lay back from the waist so that your whole back is as curved as you can get it.
When you first start practicing this, you'll need your "free leg" to stay on the ground, even if just your big toe is there for balance. As soon as you can, though, start lifting that free leg into the air until you can balance in the layback position anywhere and any time.
Now you're ready to take it to the ice.
Om...
I'm always saying that ice skating is like yoga, and it's not just because of the positions that you have to hold when you do moves, either. The layback spin is like a mini-meditation on accomplishing anything really difficult.First you need to center yourself in the comforts of your normal life: family, home, friends, faith, routine, and whatever else brings you to your point of moving balance.
Next you step out of this safe space, and create a new balance that is out of the ordinary. If you travel far from home, you might find comfort in the presence of new and old friends. A travel buddy may become your lifeline of normalcy as you explore new foods, new languages, and new cultures. Or you may find that you rely more heavily on calls home to mom than you normally would in your workaday life.
Finally, knowing that you've found a balance that you can hold comfortably for a while, you relax into whatever adventure you are on. You reach for those stars, throw yourself into an ambitious task, and rest assured that this odd equilibrium that you have will keep you steady until it's time to return to your center and get back to ordinary life. 0 comments
A Balancing Act
Labels: balance, physics
A lot of people think that ice skating takes some special feat of balance. In reality, just basic skating around the rink isn't all that difficult as long as you have a decent pair of ice skates on your feet. You should have strong boots and the blades should be balanced properly under your feet. Notice, I said that the blades should be balanced under your feet, not that you need to balance on the blades. If your boots are supporting your ankles and the blades are positioned correctly on your boots, you shouldn't have any difficulty keeping your feet upright. Standing upright on skates doesn't take any particular balancing skill, but controlling where you go and what you do on your skates, that's another issue entirely.
It seems a bit unlikely that you should be able to stand up on a small blade under your foot. It's not that hard to understand, though, if you take a pencil and balance it on your finger. You know that there is a point on the pencil where the weight balances perfectly. You can even balance it on something smaller -- a pin or the point of another pencil.
In Hebrew, the word for balance, shivui mishkal, literally means something like "equivalence of weight", much like the English word "equilibrium" which comes from the Latin words for "equal" and "weight". That mental image helps me lot when trying to understand how any given move actually works.
But what is weight, anyway? It's not how big something is. That's size. It's not how much matter is in something, that's mass. Certainly you learned in school that the mass of a thing isn't the same as its weight. Weight is the force that is exerted on a thing by gravity. In physics that's the mass of the object times the local gravitational acceleration. That's why your weight is different on Earth than it is on the moon. The moon doesn't have as much gravity to pull you down.
So, what we can say, then, is that equilibrium, is really about evening out the forces on the two sides of some specified point. In ice skating, that point is somewhere on your skate blade, but where?
If you take a look at the bottom of your blade you'll see that you don't really skate on 5mm or so of steel. You're really skating on two, much thinner edges. When you go straight you are fully on both edges. When you turn to the right you are putting most, if not all, of your weight on the right-side edges of your blades. It doesn't take a lot to push you onto an edge. Moving your arms, shifting your shoulders or hips, leaning a little, or even changing where your eyes are looking can all change your balance and push you over onto one edge or the other.
But still, whether you are on one edge or two, you are balanced because the forces that are pulling you in one direction are equal to the forces that are pulling you in the other direction, whether that force comes from gravity or muscle power in any given position.
Tomorrow I'll talk about balance in the layback spin. But first, tell me, what are the challenges to balance in your life? How do you equalize the forces that pull at you? 2 comments
It seems a bit unlikely that you should be able to stand up on a small blade under your foot. It's not that hard to understand, though, if you take a pencil and balance it on your finger. You know that there is a point on the pencil where the weight balances perfectly. You can even balance it on something smaller -- a pin or the point of another pencil.
In Hebrew, the word for balance, shivui mishkal, literally means something like "equivalence of weight", much like the English word "equilibrium" which comes from the Latin words for "equal" and "weight". That mental image helps me lot when trying to understand how any given move actually works.
But what is weight, anyway? It's not how big something is. That's size. It's not how much matter is in something, that's mass. Certainly you learned in school that the mass of a thing isn't the same as its weight. Weight is the force that is exerted on a thing by gravity. In physics that's the mass of the object times the local gravitational acceleration. That's why your weight is different on Earth than it is on the moon. The moon doesn't have as much gravity to pull you down.
So, what we can say, then, is that equilibrium, is really about evening out the forces on the two sides of some specified point. In ice skating, that point is somewhere on your skate blade, but where?
If you take a look at the bottom of your blade you'll see that you don't really skate on 5mm or so of steel. You're really skating on two, much thinner edges. When you go straight you are fully on both edges. When you turn to the right you are putting most, if not all, of your weight on the right-side edges of your blades. It doesn't take a lot to push you onto an edge. Moving your arms, shifting your shoulders or hips, leaning a little, or even changing where your eyes are looking can all change your balance and push you over onto one edge or the other.
But still, whether you are on one edge or two, you are balanced because the forces that are pulling you in one direction are equal to the forces that are pulling you in the other direction, whether that force comes from gravity or muscle power in any given position.
Tomorrow I'll talk about balance in the layback spin. But first, tell me, what are the challenges to balance in your life? How do you equalize the forces that pull at you? 2 comments
Yoga in motion
Labels: physics, simplicity, yoga
Not long after I started coaching figure skating in Moscow, Idaho, I signed up for a yoga class at the Moscow Yoga Center This was the first time I ever took an entire series of yoga classes as opposed to just a one off class here or there, and it totally changed the way that I thought about ice skating and has influenced my teaching ever since.
The thing I realized in that class was that a lot of ice skating is essentially just a string of postures that you have to hold precisely in order to accomplish the most with your body. If you don't hold yourself properly, you often end up exerting more energy and always get less benefit. What's more, if you are doing things exactly right, people looking at you will have no idea how much work you are actually doing because your moves will look absolutely effortless.
Like yoga, ice skating properly will use muscles that you rarely use in any ordinary context. Crossing your legs just right and holding a rotational position in a spin or a jump takes a lot of muscular control, but it definitely gets easier with practice.
Yoga also taught me a few things about getting bodies lined up properly for various moves in ice skating. Hearing the yoga instructor in that first class tell us several times each day to fix our posture by lifting our shoulders up and then rolling them back and down into proper placement gave me a great tool for getting skaters to straighten their backs while stroking or preparing for toe jumps. It also taught me to check in with my own body regularly to sense whether I've lapsed into a lazy posture. That same instructor had descriptions of getting into the right position in a pose that helped me to think of the lines in our body that create the best balance for each move. It's because of that class that you will often here me explain to a student how they need to get the "nose-knee-toe" line fixed in one foot swizzles, pivots or the start of two foot spins.
Most of all, yoga taught me that breath is important in every posture, and that knowing when to breath and how can give you more power in everything you do. When you get tense and nervous, you tend to take shallow breaths or forget to breathe entirely. Part of that comes from tensing your throat and chest. Breathing in deeply as you prepare for a jump, and breathing out just as you launch into the air can both release unwanted tension and give you a burst of power right when you need it most.
Of course, whether you are in a yoga pose, ice skating, or running down the street trying to catch a bus, you don't want to stop breathing. In fact, you don't want to tense up any muscle that doesn't need to be tensed for what you are trying to accomplish. And that, is the real trick to relaxing even in the midst of difficult moves or difficult situations. Don't waste energy on worry or unhelpful tension. Breathe through your fear and keep your muscles trained on exactly what they need to do -- nothing more and nothing less. It's a delicate task, but it brings spectacular results! 0 comments
The thing I realized in that class was that a lot of ice skating is essentially just a string of postures that you have to hold precisely in order to accomplish the most with your body. If you don't hold yourself properly, you often end up exerting more energy and always get less benefit. What's more, if you are doing things exactly right, people looking at you will have no idea how much work you are actually doing because your moves will look absolutely effortless.
Like yoga, ice skating properly will use muscles that you rarely use in any ordinary context. Crossing your legs just right and holding a rotational position in a spin or a jump takes a lot of muscular control, but it definitely gets easier with practice.
Yoga also taught me a few things about getting bodies lined up properly for various moves in ice skating. Hearing the yoga instructor in that first class tell us several times each day to fix our posture by lifting our shoulders up and then rolling them back and down into proper placement gave me a great tool for getting skaters to straighten their backs while stroking or preparing for toe jumps. It also taught me to check in with my own body regularly to sense whether I've lapsed into a lazy posture. That same instructor had descriptions of getting into the right position in a pose that helped me to think of the lines in our body that create the best balance for each move. It's because of that class that you will often here me explain to a student how they need to get the "nose-knee-toe" line fixed in one foot swizzles, pivots or the start of two foot spins.
Most of all, yoga taught me that breath is important in every posture, and that knowing when to breath and how can give you more power in everything you do. When you get tense and nervous, you tend to take shallow breaths or forget to breathe entirely. Part of that comes from tensing your throat and chest. Breathing in deeply as you prepare for a jump, and breathing out just as you launch into the air can both release unwanted tension and give you a burst of power right when you need it most.
Of course, whether you are in a yoga pose, ice skating, or running down the street trying to catch a bus, you don't want to stop breathing. In fact, you don't want to tense up any muscle that doesn't need to be tensed for what you are trying to accomplish. And that, is the real trick to relaxing even in the midst of difficult moves or difficult situations. Don't waste energy on worry or unhelpful tension. Breathe through your fear and keep your muscles trained on exactly what they need to do -- nothing more and nothing less. It's a delicate task, but it brings spectacular results! 0 comments
Work with physics, not against it
Labels: physics, simplicity
At first glance, today's title might seem like an obvious bit of advice. In reality, human history is full of us trying to fight physics. Think of the dream to fly, and the many early attempts that were doomed to fatal failure. Or think of the aesthetic idea in many cultures that the harder you make something to do, the more civilized or refined it is.
That second idea is what was behind the rule in early ice skating competition that all skaters had to keep their hands below their waist. You see, keeping your hands up helps you to work with physics and therefore makes skating easier. By keeping your hands low and trying to avoid using them at all you were increasing the difficulty of ever move. Thing is, if competitive skating had maintained that rule, we never would have gotten the rich variety of spins and jumps that we see in figure skating today, nor would we be able to choreograph in the beautifully expressive ways that make figure skating and ice dance so much fun to watch.
If you want to make a plane fly, you have to work with physics to create an aerodynamic vehicle and get it up into the air. If you want to ice skate you have to cooperate with physics in order to create the most spectacular moves. We pull our hands in tight and cross our legs to rotate faster and check our spins with open arms and pointed free leg toe to stop rotation. We use leverage in toe jumps to get up into the air. We use our legs and feet like springs to launch on edge jumps. We control our center of balance in order to minimize the effort put into any move.
So, if you want to understand what's going right or wrong with your skating moves, you should think carefully about the physics of the move. Take a look at videos of top skaters who can do what you are trying to do perfectly and at videos of skaters who are making mistakes. Take a look at videos of your own skating. Think about what the physical forces in play are, and learn to skate smarter, not harder.
Of course, skating smarter doesn't mean you don't need a lot of strength and coordination to do the moves. It's a lot easier to contemplate the physics behind a move than it is to actually accomplish the move itself, but understanding what you need to do is definitely a step in the right direction.
And really, all of technology is a result of wanting to do something that seemed impossible before someone figured out how to use the resources around them and the laws of physics to accomplish their goal. Airplanes and cars, modern construction equipment and robots are all amazing inventions, but none of them work without a source of energy and without being properly constructed themselves. There is a huge gap of learning between understanding how an airplane flies and actually being able to design and build one of your own. But the journey is half the fun, so it's well worth the time and the effort. 0 comments
That second idea is what was behind the rule in early ice skating competition that all skaters had to keep their hands below their waist. You see, keeping your hands up helps you to work with physics and therefore makes skating easier. By keeping your hands low and trying to avoid using them at all you were increasing the difficulty of ever move. Thing is, if competitive skating had maintained that rule, we never would have gotten the rich variety of spins and jumps that we see in figure skating today, nor would we be able to choreograph in the beautifully expressive ways that make figure skating and ice dance so much fun to watch.
If you want to make a plane fly, you have to work with physics to create an aerodynamic vehicle and get it up into the air. If you want to ice skate you have to cooperate with physics in order to create the most spectacular moves. We pull our hands in tight and cross our legs to rotate faster and check our spins with open arms and pointed free leg toe to stop rotation. We use leverage in toe jumps to get up into the air. We use our legs and feet like springs to launch on edge jumps. We control our center of balance in order to minimize the effort put into any move.So, if you want to understand what's going right or wrong with your skating moves, you should think carefully about the physics of the move. Take a look at videos of top skaters who can do what you are trying to do perfectly and at videos of skaters who are making mistakes. Take a look at videos of your own skating. Think about what the physical forces in play are, and learn to skate smarter, not harder.
Of course, skating smarter doesn't mean you don't need a lot of strength and coordination to do the moves. It's a lot easier to contemplate the physics behind a move than it is to actually accomplish the move itself, but understanding what you need to do is definitely a step in the right direction.
And really, all of technology is a result of wanting to do something that seemed impossible before someone figured out how to use the resources around them and the laws of physics to accomplish their goal. Airplanes and cars, modern construction equipment and robots are all amazing inventions, but none of them work without a source of energy and without being properly constructed themselves. There is a huge gap of learning between understanding how an airplane flies and actually being able to design and build one of your own. But the journey is half the fun, so it's well worth the time and the effort. 0 comments
Books and Skating Stuff
You may have noticed that there is a section in the right hand navigation called "Books and Stuff". That's a menu of links to the Two Edges, One Pick Amazon store. Shopping at this store helps to support this blog and helps me continue coaching on ice.
I have hand picked a selection of books for relevance and usefulness to skaters. Some of the books describe skating moves, others have helpful information about cross training techniques, and some are just about the history of the sport itself. The books are categorized so that you should be able to find what you need pretty easily.
There is also a selection of skating gear available through Amazon. I've tried to make sure that most of the gear is shippable to Israel, but not all Amazon Market vendors will ship things here. Please leave a comment here to let me know if something you tried to order was marked "not shippable to your address" in your Amazon checkout process.
Of course, I'd love to hear from you if you think that I've missed something important or if there is anything I can do to make this store even better for you.
Thanks for your support! 0 comments
I have hand picked a selection of books for relevance and usefulness to skaters. Some of the books describe skating moves, others have helpful information about cross training techniques, and some are just about the history of the sport itself. The books are categorized so that you should be able to find what you need pretty easily.
There is also a selection of skating gear available through Amazon. I've tried to make sure that most of the gear is shippable to Israel, but not all Amazon Market vendors will ship things here. Please leave a comment here to let me know if something you tried to order was marked "not shippable to your address" in your Amazon checkout process.
Of course, I'd love to hear from you if you think that I've missed something important or if there is anything I can do to make this store even better for you.
Thanks for your support! 0 comments
Looking to the future
Labels: be here now
In the context of jumps and spins, there are two places where you will find yourself looking to the future, and they map onto two places where you should do the same in ordinary life.
The first is right before you step into a spin. You usually set up a spin from back crossovers and then hold a back inside edge for a moment right before you step onto your spinning foot. Before you step onto that spinning foot, you ought to be looking at the spot where you intend to center your spin. You need to have that spot in your vision before you step into it, but as soon as you've stepped toward it, your eyes need to move up "to the present" so that your body will be straight and your spin will be fast and centered.
The same can be said of the entrance to some jumps, actually. Most of the time, people enter waltz jumps or axels from backwards crossovers and then turn around and step forward into the jump. There's a moment before you turn around where you just look straight ahead, away from the direction of travel. That's the moment when you are "looking to the past". But then, just before you step forward, you look over your shoulder and check out the place where you are about to jump.
Life takes planning. Even the simple things have to be thought through before you do them, and you don't want to act rashly without looking. On freestyle practice sessions, not looking forward may get you into a head on collision with another skater. At work, not planning your day well might cause you far bigger problems. This is the realm of task lists and thinking before you speak.
But there are times when you need to look forward even more intensely. Sometimes you want to do something really big, something harder than your average task, and just planning ahead isn't enough. In those cases, you may need to hyper-focus on the goal you are trying to reach while you are on your way to it. Double jumps are like that.
In order to get the maximum rotation on double jumps, you need to turn your head in the direction of your rotation and "look to the future". It seems so unintuitive after you've spent so much time working on keeping your head straight on all your previous jumps and spins. But this time, that little bit of extra reach helps you get the hard stuff done. 0 comments
The first is right before you step into a spin. You usually set up a spin from back crossovers and then hold a back inside edge for a moment right before you step onto your spinning foot. Before you step onto that spinning foot, you ought to be looking at the spot where you intend to center your spin. You need to have that spot in your vision before you step into it, but as soon as you've stepped toward it, your eyes need to move up "to the present" so that your body will be straight and your spin will be fast and centered.
The same can be said of the entrance to some jumps, actually. Most of the time, people enter waltz jumps or axels from backwards crossovers and then turn around and step forward into the jump. There's a moment before you turn around where you just look straight ahead, away from the direction of travel. That's the moment when you are "looking to the past". But then, just before you step forward, you look over your shoulder and check out the place where you are about to jump.
Life takes planning. Even the simple things have to be thought through before you do them, and you don't want to act rashly without looking. On freestyle practice sessions, not looking forward may get you into a head on collision with another skater. At work, not planning your day well might cause you far bigger problems. This is the realm of task lists and thinking before you speak.
But there are times when you need to look forward even more intensely. Sometimes you want to do something really big, something harder than your average task, and just planning ahead isn't enough. In those cases, you may need to hyper-focus on the goal you are trying to reach while you are on your way to it. Double jumps are like that.
In order to get the maximum rotation on double jumps, you need to turn your head in the direction of your rotation and "look to the future". It seems so unintuitive after you've spent so much time working on keeping your head straight on all your previous jumps and spins. But this time, that little bit of extra reach helps you get the hard stuff done. 0 comments
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