Learning to Skate

Finally, it was time for the Learn to Skate kids (and adults) to take the ice. Jerry, one of my favorite Blade and Edge coaches, worked with me. I learned about the center of gravity on figure skate blades and discovered how different figure skate blades are from hockey skates.

Hockey skates rock you forward on the blades so that your center of gravity is closer to the ball of your foot. There's a kind of built-in forward momentum, I think, in a hockey blade. Figure skates place your center of gravity further back on the blade, closer to your heel. Hence, you might notice when you watch good skaters (not me), that they stand upright and kind of stretched between ice and sky.

I wobbled and bobbled around for quite a while. But then Jerry started to talk about feeling your center or core and the way every motion begins there. And he started to describe the way that, as you move, you gather strength in your center, push down, and bend your knees so that the ice softens beneath you. That image made sense to me. And it sounded a lot (and reminded my body) of all those years spent in dance and movement classes.

I tried forward swizzles (your heels are together, you gather your center, bend your knees and stretch your feet out and around in a forward motion till your toes come together again. And I tried backward swizzles (your toes are together, you gather your center, bend your knees and stretch your feet out going backwards until your heels touch again). If you go one-forward-one-back, that's a "rocking horse" and if you keep going forward or backward, then you're doing actual swizzles. I learned one foot glides and some stroking. I worked on snowplow stops and a standing turn in which you torque your upper body at the same time as you rotate your feet in a half turn. Scary, but cool.

Jerry is a great teacher and he was really encouraging. At one point he told me that he thinks he has learned so much about coaching from working with adult skaters. He said that adult skaters are never ambivalent about being on the ice. They ask good questions and they're excited to learn. At the end of my half-hour with Jerry he said, "Now you know why we get addicted to this sport!" And he was right; I did know and this time from a skater's perspective. It's fun and not because it's easy. Figure skating is challenging. You learn the skills in small enough chunks to be successful quickly, at least in the beginning. But you know, even as you're learning, that you are capable of making those movements more solidly, more fluidly, with greater balance and beauty. And, in watching other skaters, you can see how this small movement you're learning in this moment will become a part of some much more elaborate and complex movement later.