Ain't Misbehavin'

As far as I'm concerned there are no bad kids, there are only mismatched (I won't say bad) teachers.

Any group of children, even one with no behavior issues, is hard to manage and control. As I mentioned in a previous post, a 16 to 1 student teacher ratio is not unheard of in a skating class, and there are no chairs to put them in so they stand still. On skates, you can move and a lot of kids really really want to.

Move.

Constantly.

Especially boys.

If you luck into a Learn to Skate level class with a lot of sweet girls who stand and listen when you speak, hooray. It does happen, but it's pretty rare.

More common are classes where about half to 2/3s are kids who can focus and stand still even on the ice. The rest of the kids will be what I call noodles (no muscle control), exploding brains (Must. Say. All. Words. Constantly.) and astronauts-- they're in outer space. You have to radio them to get their attention. "Earth to Suzy! Come in Suzy!"

I recently watched a coach explain at length how to create beautiful stroking using the entire blade and stretching then pointing the toe to create power, grace and line. It was a brilliant description of the art of stroking.

Delivered in monotone, with no eye contact, to a group of 8 year olds.

Who all wanted to just watch the tots next door playing some sort of boisterous and obviously engaging game.

I've seen sweet young coaches make kids stand still for 5 or 6 minutes while taking attendance. Five or six minutes is an eternity in a skating class, especially for a child with what I call the "exploding brain"-- they cannot stand still. Cannot. Not "will not." Not "don't want to." They Cannot Stand Still.

Don't make them. Let them move. Give them something to do that isn't "oka-ay. Let's do one foot glides. Oka-ay. Let's do that again. Now lets do swizzles! I'm not going to offer any specific advice for those of you struggling with this, we're just going to keep going back and forth until Xan claws her eyeballs out!"

Like the trope says, you don't teach the skating class you wish you had, you teach the skating class you get. If you get one with an astronaut, two noodles, an exploding brain and a kid with oppositional defiant disorder, you better have strategies ready to keep that class engaging for all of them.

Struggling with a deadline

Here's a multiple choice pop quiz:

Which of these is a reasonable deadline:
     A. Inside 3 turns by June 1
     B. All the singles before her next birthday
     C. All my students have their axels by age 7
     D. None of the above

If you answered D, you are correct.

But I have heard all the other three, and similar ones, and that's just in the past couple of weeks.

As I told one of these people, it's common for skaters to get stuck on specific skills, and deadlines like these are most notorious for being missed.  If you, or your coach, are setting deadlines, make sure that they are in your skater's control, and not either misplaced psychology, or something for the coach's ego (that would be answer C, and yes, I know a coach who brags about that. Guess what happens to the kids who ruin her record.)

Ineffective psychology
It is good to set goals as a way both to motivate and to benchmark progress. But deadlines have a way of superseding the actual goal, which is the skill itself. Especially for a skater who is struggling with a skill, that looming deadline can make it worse, not better. "Land the axel" is a goal. "Land the axel by Christmas" for some skaters, is a burden and a threat. I'm not completely opposed to calendar goals, but they should be used cautiously, and not arbitrarily. For instance, "all the singles by your Xth birthday is not a reasonable goal for a 7 1/2 year old who is struggling with back 3 -turns and scissors her waltz jump (i.e. lands with her free foot behind her). It's arbitrary, focusing on the date rather than the quality of the skating.

Damaging psychology
Comparing your skater's progress to that of other skaters, or setting up the coach's needs as the primary motivation is a terrible thing to do, especially to a young child. It removes her from the equation; the important thing becomes not her progress, but how her lack of it reflects badly on others-- her mother, her coach, her program. This is how you make children hate skating.


More damaging psychology 
"Your child can be a champion" is coachese for "I think you have a lot of money for lessons." "I want to make your child a champion, but she has to land her axel by age X" contains the unspoken threat "Or I will dump her" and is particularly egregious when coming from prestige coaches. This sort of thing sets my blood boiling.

Why is that skill so important?
There are skills that inform everything that comes after-- in particular edges, mohawk turns, inside 3s back spin, axel, all  must be perfected in order for other skills to follow. But focusing in on a single skill and placing a deadline on it can obfuscate the real problem, especially with kids who have blasted through the basics (which, in my opinion, is another mistake a lot of parents and coaches make-- the idea is not to get through basics as fast as possible, but to get the basics as good as possible).

Difficulty with axels, for instance, can often be traced back to a lousy back spin which can be traced to lousy edges. A coach who is too focused on that "axel by age 7" for instance, may let the skater get away with a bad back spin. Watch a skater who is struggling with the axel enter a back spin sometime-- I'll lay even odds that she's spending too much time on the entry edge and then spinning on her inside edge for 5 or 6 rotations before "catching" the proper outside edge. Slow to get into proper backspin position? Axel is not going to happen, I don't care what your deadline is. Can't do a flip? I'll bet you anything that skater has a spinny salchow and can't check her turns (i.e. closes her free shoulder right after the turn).  Rushing to the "sexy" skills on deadline often means cheating the critical basics.

Anyway, it's not your problem
If you're the parent, your child's skating deadlines have absolutely nothing to do with you. Let her/him talk about it if they want, but don't impose deadlines on them, or dwell on those deadlines if the coach has set them. You can't fix it, and you can't motivate or advise your skater into fixing it. Best to sit back and let your skater and the coach work through it.

There are other skills, you know
While axels, or flips, or three-turns, or whatever it is that's holding you up are important, there are so many skills to work on. If you're stuck on a skill, set a certain amount of time to work on it, per lesson or per week, and then move the bleep on. Spending an entire lesson being told, essentially, that you're a failure if you can't do this one skill is pretty much like signing a contract in the blood of virgins to keep you from getting that skill.  Double loop giving you trouble? Do ten of them and then practice spirals.

Have you or your skater gotten stuck on a skill? What helped you work through it?

Triples at 9

You'll see me complaining a lot on this blog about pushing kids too hard, too young.

To a large extent that's because I like to focus on what ordinary kids can get out of the wonderful sport of figure skating, and also to help parents keep in perspective exactly how extraordinary their kids are (or, ahem, are not).

But some kids are extraordinary. We've seen the phenomenon over the past few years of elite boys pushing the age envelope downward, with younger and younger kids winning at Intermediate and Novice before they run up against minimum age restrictions at Junior.

As an email I received queried,

"What if you're talking about a reasonably talented 6 y/o with solid single jumps and axel and there seems a bit of time yet to worry about triples but they've been bitten by the competition bug. ... Do you go with that and delay and possibly limit progress or do you pull them away from competing so they make hastier progress but barely compete for the next few years?"

In fact, I had this exact question from my Alpha students this week. They all claimed to "be really good" at cross overs. And y'know, they are really good at cross overs.

But their cross overs can be better-- more confident, more advanced.

And that's really the crux of the matter.

Whatever skill you're working on right now-- whether it's simple cross overs or a double axel-- it can be better.

So the first answer to "why not move on to the next thing" is actually another question, namely, are you properly identifying what the next thing is? If you've got all the doubles, is the next thing really the triples? Or is it consistently landing all jumps in competition, or improving your GOE, or landing more difficult combinations, or improving the technique?

I like to point out the brilliantly managed career of Jason Brown, a skating phenomenon who was one of those 9 year-olds with all his doubles. But, knowing that he had tons of time because of his young age, his coach has parsed out his milestones. The goal was not "national champ by 17" which he arguably might have pushed for, but rather to hit specific measures-- land the triple axel in competition, then land it in a major competition, then skate a clean program that includes a triple axel, etc. Jason's going to have a long, injury-free career because his coach understood that his youth was not a goal in itself, but rather a gift that allows them time to develop a brilliant skater.

Skating skills in and of themselves are not the goal. They are sign posts along the way. A child with doubles at 9 is certainly going to be landing triples by the time they're done with high school.

The reader asks, essentially, "do you delay their progress or do you have them compete with their age group."

I ask, in return, what, exactly, do you consider "progress?"

What choice have you made, or would you make, with a skater who pulls ahead of their age restrictions in competition?

Organizing practice time

Everyone should follow the same basic plan to warming up: ten to fifteen minutes off-ice to bring your heart rate up and raise your core temp before you step on the ice (this is why they call it a warm up). Before skating you want just a light stretch. Don't over stretch cold muscles.

Once you're on the ice have an on-ice warm up pattern. This can be something your coach gives you, or your own plan. It can be as simple as stroking around for 2 or 4 laps, or it can be a combination of forward and backward skating and turning patterns. A great warm up pattern is the power moves from the last Moves test you passed (unless you haven't taken a Moves test. In which case, use the Pre-Bronze/ PrePreliminary test as a warm up). Don't worry too much about skating quality on the warm up.

A specific warm period is important for health and safety reasons, and to get your head in the game, as it were. You want to see who is on the ice, and if you're an adult, exactly what creaks and groans you're dealing with today.

Once this is complete, you're on to the actual "practice." So, how do you organize the actual practice?

Notebook
A lot of coaches insist that their students carry little notebooks around. These contain teaching tips, suggestions on what needs work, and sometimes very specific practice plans. I mostly observe these being used as an excuse to hang around on the boards.

Move through the moves
This is my own method. I do my warm up, and then skate through all the Adult moves starting with Pre-Bronze and finshing with those skills at Adult Silver that I can actually do. For someone like me, who isn't trying to acquire new skills, this is a great way to fill practice time without clock watching, while making sure that you cover a range of skills and keep moving. I don't jump, but you could also use this method with freeskating skills...

Easy to hard
...in other words easy to hard. From simple stroking through Senior power moves. Waltz jump through your highest jump. Scratch spin to combination spin. Et cetera.

Hard to easy
I encourage my students, on the other hand, to start with the hard stuff. For one thing, this gets it out of the way, so you're not spending the whole practice worrying about screwing up the axel again. You screwed it up early on, now you can move on. Also, if you do the hard skills while you're still fresh, you're less likely to do them poorly, not to mention being less susceptible to injury.  The other advantage of starting with the hard stuff is that it allows you to finish your practice session on an upnote, with skills that you're good at.

Counting
5 laps stroking. 5 crossover circles. 10 of each jump. Etc. This is also a good method for clock watchers, or for people who are bad at organizing their practices, like little kids. This sort of thing is also conducive to the notebook. Make a list, and check it off as you complete each item.

MHR
This one is for competitors and adults. Work out a practice that keeps your heart rate in the cardio range for a specified period (generally 20 minutes, and usually defined as 60 to 70% of MHR or maximum heart rate for an adult doing exercise, and 70 to 85% for a competitor). Here's a calculator). This basically means a strong warm up period and then continual movement to keep it there.

Run-throughs
If you're a competitor, then you need to work run-throughs of your programs into some, though not necessarily all of your practices. Where in the sesseion the run-throughsgo, and the nature of those run-throughs, depends where you are in the competitive season. I'll talk about run-throughs in another post.

How do you (or your skater) organize your practice time?

Unmotivated elite skaters, part 1: Why?

A few months ago, we talked about how to motivate recreational skaters.  But how do you motivate an unmotivated competitive skater, especially when you know s/he doesn't really want to quit?

This is especially critical at this time of year, when 1,500 elite-level singles skaters start competing for just 360 spots at Sectionals, and only about 130 spots at Nationals/Junior Nationals.

That's 1370 mighty disappointed kids.

Of course, most of those kids understand that they really don't have a realistic chance even at final round at Regionals, let alone making it to Nationals. But even if you just count those with "a shot," say the top 30-35%, that's still a few hundred really sad kids who didn't land the double axel when it counted. And face it, sometimes kids (and coaches) are delusional, and even a predictable loss comes as a shock and a giant demotivator.

If there isn't an obvious issue like disappointment over competition results, you need to look a little deeper.

The first thing to do is identify why a formerly enthusiastic and currently ambitious skater stops working. Is there an injury that they haven't fessed up about? Are there social problems at the rink or school, or personality (or more ominous) issues with the coach? Are there family issues that you as the parent don't realize your skater is concerned about, including money, stability, etc.

Coaching issues are a little harder. First, tell the coach about difficulties you're having getting your skater to the rink. It's possible that she's giving you grief, but then is fine once she's at the rink. The proper solution to this is the patented parental eye roll when she starts up.

If that's not it, then drop in at lessons and practices unannounced (because you are totally not hanging out watching every single practice and lesson for your high level skater, right? RIGHT?) and observe the coaching and on-ice dynamics. Does your skater appear distracted?  Is she using her practice time poorly (i.e. hanging out at the boards, getting on and off the ice, poorly organized approach)? Does she appear isolated from other skaters? Do skaters seem to be interfering with her practice patterns, beyond the general chaos that is a freestyle session? Is her coach focused on her (and she on the coach?) Observe in as non-judgmental a way as possible, and then ask neutral questions about what you think you're seeing.

All well and good to figure out why your skater is unmotivated. What do you do about it? Tomorrow, we'll explore some of the things you can do to help your skater overcome her loss of skating mojo.

How did your skater show a loss of motivation?

Too much fun

From a reader:

My skater's coach wants her to spend more time practicing and less time socializing with her friends at the rink.  I've asked her coach to give me a set amount of time she should be practicing but he keeps it vague and says things like "a balance between work and play" "keep skating fun and progress" but then also thinks she shouldn't be able to stay and socialize if she hasn't done enough practicing.  I told my daughter that if her coach didn't think shed been practicing enough she wouldn't be able to stay for social time. She told me I was "ruining it for her". Any advice?

I tell a story about my daughter at practice ice one day. She and a couple of friends were having a spinning contest-- longest spin, most features, most creative, prettiest--and having a really good time doing it. A coach called her over to yell at for for "having too much fun. Skating is serious and if you're not taking it seriously you should leave." Being my daughter, she told him to take a flying leap.

Even elite skaters love skating. They do it because it's fun to skate, it's fun to be the best, it's fun to win. They wouldn't be doing it if it was a horrible slog that made them constantly miserable, with no social or emotional rewards. Work is important, and work ethic is important. But reward is important too.

Why are you at the rink?
Well, to skate, but there are lots of other reasons too. To avoid starting homework. To avoid being at home. To see your friends. However, I'm with that coach on this one. The reason you are at the rink is to skate. So that's the first priority, and blowing off skating is a reason to withhold the reward, in this case socializing. But it doesn't have to be punitive. More of an if-then proposition. If you goof off in class, or hang at the boards instead of practicing, then we go home straight after practice and no socializing today.

But your RUining it
(Imagine that 9-year-old whine). Tough love, baby. Mom's not ruining it. Skater is ruining it by not taking the skating seriously, so that she earns the downtime afterwards.

Social Pressure
Many skaters blame social pressure on the relentless socializing, clique-forming, and hanging-instead-of-working at the rink, so that girls also feel pressure NOT to work. Skaters who insist on taking the skating seriously at a recreational rink can develop a reputation for being snobbish or unfriendly. They feel pressure to not seem to above themselves by working too hard. Some coaches are really good at making the work part of the socializing, but if you've got a coach with a smaller program, or a different philosophy, they work needs to be rewarding. If you've got a skater whom you want to work, make sure the rewards are clear and immediate. Don't yank her out of the rink the second she's done, don't monopolize her time while you're there. Let her have her social time.

You are not the coach
The hardest part of getting the skater onto the rink is that the coach is out there, and the kid is hanging in the lobby wasting time. Coach is most likely not going to get off the rink to track down your skater. But you can also not assume the role of the coach. So be the parent. If your skater is dillydallying, rather than continually demanding they get on the ice (coach's role), just pick up their stuff, and say, hey if you're not going to skate, let's go home. Remember--the socializing is the reward for the skating.

Make the skating social
Goofing off or socializing during class or lesson of course is verboten, and earns the removal of the reward. Practice is another thing. While skaters do need to focus on their own skating during practice, you and the coach can probably come up with a system that allows the skating and the socializing to blend sometimes. Maybe one practice session a week is on my daughter's model--the girls were working (on spins) but had come up with a way to make this fun and social. That other coach was first, a putz, and second unprofessional (because he wasn't their coach, and they weren't interfering with anyone's ability to skate). So choose a session a week, and let the girls direct their own practice; no coach or parent interference. The only proscription is no hanging on the boards to talk.

Off-ice
Like the last suggestion, this one requires some cross-parental and -coach coordination. See if the culprits can do an off-ice or conditioning class together. This adds work+socializing as well.

Class
Yes, take class. A lot of higher level skaters stop taking classes because they think they're too good, or the coach is a snob about it, but class is another place where there are many more opportunities to both work and hang out. Higher level skaters don't need to be taking skills-based classes, so look for specialty classes like Jump Workshop, Moves, Ice Dance, Choreography, or whatever your rink offers.

What have you or your skater done to keep the fun in figure skating? How do you balance work and socializing?

The cookie cutter coach

This is one of those "there are two types of" posts. Because there are two types of coaches.

Well, okay, three (um, four).

The first two types have a good handle on their own teaching style, and respect for students.  These are, first, the coach that adapts their own goals and teaching style to each student. This coach will have a couple of serious students, a synchro skater working her way through the tests, a once-a-weeker, someone working on the axel, and a couple of tots. She works with each student at their own pace and learning style.

The second coach has one of those types of skaters, 17 times over. This coach has identified the type of skater she works best with and seeks them out. She's honest with parents up front, telling them exactly what she expects of her skaters.

Then there's the cookie cutter coach.

This coach has the range of the first coach above, but forces every student into the same mold. This is the coach that is telling some poor clueless parent that their child isn't working hard enough, or has the wrong body type for figure skating, or needs more lessons. Or worse, drops the child, loudly blaming the child or the parent for the child's poor success.

Some cookie cutter coaches aren't dishonest in this way, they're just clueless. They don't have a good range of teaching approaches to adapt from, so they just keep giving the same lesson to everyone, regardless of whether it's working or not.

The cookie cutter coach will take any student that approaches them. Rather than actual successful (whatever your definition of that is) skaters, she's got PR--she's the coach of the "popular" kids, or makes a big fuss when they're all going to some competition (but no corresponding fuss when they all do poorly). She sells her kids matching outfits, makes a production of group lessons, and talks a big game.

In a way, the cookie cutter coach is like coach #2--they are able to teach just a certain type of student. But unlike coach 2, they're not being honest with themselves or their students about their own teaching style, whether deliberately or not.

Have you ever encountered, or taken lessons from, a cookie-cutter coach?

Involving your family

A reader tells me

I started skating a few months ago, with lots of practice, plus private lessons. Since I'm able to get to the rink on my own mom has never really watched me skate. For some reason, she seems really uninterested in my skating--she hasn't even met my coach! Do you have any ideas on how to get my mom involved with my skating?

Here's some ideas:

Adult presence required
Ask around your home school group if you can do a once a week half hour "baby sitting on ice" with younger children, either ones you already babysit for, a local homeschool network, or the younger sibs of friends.  You could even ask the rink if you can post a notice. Charge them or not, your call, but I would suggest $3 per kid, plus the cost of ice and skate rental (if you get 5 kids, that's a nice chunk of change). Tell your mom you're not comfortable doing this without her on the premises; she doesn't have to skate.

Impresario!
See if the rink will allow you to set up an exhibition. Again, you could ask around a home school network if you're home schooled, or open it up to skaters from the rink, or just ask around to see if any of your friends skate.  Ask your coach to see if the local synchro team would like to be your headliners, or if she's got a high level skater who'd be willing to show off her program. Your mom might have friends who used to be skaters and might like to show off a little as well.  Municipal rinks might even donate the ice for this purpose if it's in the middle of the day when it's just sitting around empty anyway. Your school or home school might give you some kind of service learning credit for something like this; my own daughter arranged an exhibition her senior year.

I need your help
You could also just tell your mom flat out, "I really want you to come watch me skate, would you come once a month and see how I've progressed"? Or even ask her to "test" you--make up a little skills sheet based on the ISI levels and have her check off what you've learned.

Coach insists
Tell the coach you want her to discuss your progress with your mom every couple of weeks.

Ice shows, local competitions, and exhibitions
Signing up for the ice show, competition, or the rink's exhibition (with your own solo program) is a sure fire way to get family and friends to learn about your skating. ISI and Basic Skills competition sounds scary, but in fact they're a lot of fun, even for beginning skaters. A good coach can come up with choreography that makes even a Pre Alpha skater look really good. Don't worry if you "can't do anything." Non-skaters find a simple glide completely miraculous, especially if it's accomplished by someone they know, who they didn't know skated!

What have you done to get your family involved in your skating?

Adults and training intensity

I started skating seriously at the age of 37, although I had gone through what I think was probably the equivalent of Freestyle 2+/3 in college (this was before ISI had codified the levels, that is how old I am).  Then I didn't skate for 17 years.

When I started skating again, I didn't "train;" I skated a few times a week, and took a couple of classes. It wasn't until I decided to do USFS tests that I really started thinking about it as "training."

So what exactly is "training" and how does it differ from simple improvement?  How does it affect goals, and how does it affect that broken-down, over-scheduled, overweight body that you seem to have suddenly been saddled with?

Training vs. recreational skating
For adults, really, all skating is recreational. Like other hobbies, you can invest a nearly professional level of commitment to it, or you can do it for fun or as a social activity.

The biggest difference between a skater in training and one there just for fun is that the people in training usually have a goal, and it's often time-specific, like a test, show solo, or competition.

I like to define training as

a specific schedule of directed, dedicated activities designed to lead to a time- and/or skill-specific goal. It includes skill development, conditioning and strength training, and happens on a regular schedule, at least some of the time under the direction of a professional.

If you're just skating to keep up with the class levels, and to do your rink's shows, you're probably not training.  Even if you're skating every day, you're probably more recreational than training if it doesn't much matter to you when you land that jump or learn that dance, as long as you land it/learn it eventually.

A lot of adults (a lot of skaters in general) slide into a training mode without really thinking about it. Suddenly you realize you're taking 3 lessons, running and stretching before skating, and checking your pulse rate after your warm up, which has now become a serious effort to make you breathe hard.

Why train. Why not just skate?
For adults who are seriously trying to improve their skills, whether it's landing difficult jumps, or dancing with a partner, training mode is a better option, even if you're only skating a couple of times a week. If you think of yourself as training, you're not only helping your skating, and your health, you're helping your brain to take this frankly dangerous activity seriously. I see a lot of adults who won't follow a coach's technical advice because it's hard to fix technique, and they think that what they're doing is fine, it's not like they're in training, right?  So they keep making dangerous mistakes, because they think it doesn't matter.

Training while working
As any adult knows who has tried to have a job, a life, skating, and 8 hours of sleep a night, something's gotta give. For me, it was the job (haha). It was after I left my downtown executive position to teach and run my consulting business that I finally found time to train properly.  Other adults sacrifice the 8 hours--I see a lot of serious adult skaters on really early morning ice. I'm talking the 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. sessions.  When I worked downtown, I gave up lunch in the winters so I could go skate at the nearest outdoor rink, a 10 minute bus ride from my office.

Starting when you retire
This solves the time problem, but brings serious health concerns. Women who start skating hard after menopause should get a bone density scan. If it's problematic, I wouldn't say stop skating, but I would say stop jumping.  And don't skip the conditioning and strength training components. For older adults in serious athletic pursuits this is extremely important. Find an off-ice trainer who understands the issues of older adults, and has some familiarity with the specific conditioning and strength needs of skating (for instance focusing on core has opposed to extremity strength).

Health
While you should understand your limitations (asthma, osteoporosis, certain medications like blood thinners and other medical issues do need to be shared with a medical professional), any reasonably healthy person can skate with no more risk than if they decided to start jogging. I actually started skating again because of back problems--my doctor gave me the choice of PT, surgery, or exercise. I told I had been a skater, and she loved it, because skating improves core strength, where my issues were. Sure enough, combined with the PT, this fixed my back issues.  It helps a lot that I had a doctor who didn't immediately freak out at the idea of skating (some of them do).

Training will definitely help with any weight issues you have, but you don't have to avoid skating just because you're overweight.

Isolation and confirmation
These two things are the biggest issues with being an adult skater. Find a program that honors adults, with sympathetic coaches and understanding of adult issues. This is easy in an urbanized area, where you have several rink choices.  You might end up somewhere farther than you would like, but trust me it will be worth it.

A lot of "good" coaches don't understand the slower trajectory, fear issues and schedule difficulties that plague adult skaters. I have also heard coaches, and I'm talking about coaches who accept adults as students, poking fun at, not only other adults, but at their own adult students. You'll know a program is good for adults if they have a lot of adults, a couple of coaches who focus on adults, and (the gold standard) dedicated "no one under 20" adult practice ice.

If you're in an area without choices, work to make your own coterie. Introduce yourself to other adults. Whenever you see an adult skater, ask them where they skate/train and who their coach is. Set up after-ice kaffeeklatches.

Skating as an adult is incredibly rewarding. I love the dropped jaws when people find out I didn't skate seriously until I was almost 40. Some of my best friends I met through skating.

How do you define training? How do you fit it into a grown-up schedule?

The limits of talent and desire

I'm the sort of person who does not believe in limits. I especially get my hackles up when confronted with the suggestion that I "can't" do something. My philosophy, and the one I share with discouraged students, is "if someone is doing it, it's possible, and if it's possible you can do it."

But if this was the case, wouldn't every skater have a double axel?

And not to mince words, yes. Every skater that put in the work required IS capable of that double axel. A naturally athletic skater will get it sooner, and more easily. A naturally motivated skater will find the longer athletic slog less onerous because of their inclination to accept hard work. A skater with a lot of time to skate will appear to have learned it quickly, even though they've devoted the same number of hours to it. A more timid skater will have more difficulty than a courageous one. A courageous one may accept falls that she doesn't need to accept, and slow down her progress.

I never tried the harder jumps. I could probably eventually have done them, but I was too scared. So I never tried. In other words, my ability to do an axel is not in question. I believe it. It was my desire to do an axel that got in the way.

This is what I see over and over--skaters, and their mothers, blame their failures, if you want to see it that way, on their native ability, narrowly defining that as meaning athletic ability. But ability is the same thing as body type; it's just another quality that you need to understand and accommodate. The skater gets discouraged, and stops being responsive in lessons. She doesn't practice. She takes one lesson a week. She won't make attempts when the coach isn't there. She jumps from coach to coach, looking for the one who will "give" her the axel (or the double, or the jump sit...).

It is okay to give up a goal. But be honest with yourself. If this goal remains important in itself, for you and not for your mother or your popularity, then don't give up on it. If you're just going through the motions, then rethink the goal. I decided the skating tests and higher freestyle skills were not the best use of my time, and put my energy into the PSA ratings instead.

Understand what you desire and why you desire it. Understand where your talent lies and use that to achieve your goal. Pointless to rely on athletic ability alone, if your talent is persistence.

There are no limits to talent or desire. You only limit yourself.

What does a skater look like?

There's an ideal skater type; coaches sigh and flutter their eyelashes when these kids walk in-- they are naturally slender, look taller than they are, with a low center of gravity and short legs. If their legs are slightly bowed, even better. Sasha Cohen is the perfect example; Yu Na is another one-- they look so tall and slender, but when you see them in person you can't believe how tiny they are. Evan Lysacek and Carolina Kostner are unusual in that they are tall with long legs. As Johnny Weir once remarked, he admired Lysacek because it's really hard to jump "when you're 13 feet tall."

We like the little fireplugs with the power thighs, too. I call them mini-mights. Think Tonya Harding (well, the skating and body type anyway).

And gee, they never seem to wear glasses.

Coaches do talk about your children's looks. We're perfectly awful about it. Sometimes in admiration, sometimes mean, sometimes with a wistful "too bad he doesn't (get contacts, lose weight, tuck in his shirt, come to the rink without his mother...)."

But I hear worse stories, naturally, of the children who are told that they can't be skaters unless they lose weight, or get contacts, or wear their hair a certain way, or that they can't be skaters at all because they are knock-kneed, or slope shouldered, or some other physical attribute completely beyond their control.

So what's the truth, can anyone be a skater?

In a word, yes.

However (you knew there was a however).

Certain body types and morphological issues will limit your "career"-- if you are really overweight (medically overweight, I'm not talking about what we used to call chubby kids who slim down when they hit puberty), then the higher level jumps will be hard. You're just fighting gravity too much, and your flesh will literally be in your way. There is a limit to how hard a fat person can pull in, or how low they can get for a sit spin. (Sorry).

Glasses will fly off your face on a layback or a triple jump. You can get a strap--common in other sports--but because in figure skating presentation is also important, this is just not going to happen. Canadian champion and Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette actually got eye surgery to correct her bad vision because glasses were out and she couldn't handle contacts.

On the other hand, Joannie Rochette is a multiple international medalist, so this kind of step makes sense for her. Your child is just taking Preliminary Moves. So here's the low down:

Glasses
Yes you can skate in glasses. If your child can handle contacts, fine, but this should be under the consultation of a medical professional, not a skating coach whose self-esteem is wounded by an "ugly" child in glasses. You can take ALL the moves tests in glasses. There is nothing in any Moves level that would be difficult in glasses.

Yes, you can do low-level competitions in glasses. Until you are doing lay backs and double jumps, you are not going to notice them. If they make the skater nervous, get a strap and arrange hair to disguise it. Or not. Make the nerdy look the kid's signature.

Overweight
There is a very talented obese child at my rink. Yes, there is an upper limit right now to the skills she could acquire, and she cannot compete at a national level with the weight; for one thing training at that level she would simply lose it. But even with the weight there is an axel and probably a couple of doubles in her future. I have seen many many overweight children test at the lower levels without any penalty from the judges.

Her mother knows she is overweight. She doesn't need the coach to tell her. She especially doesn't need the coach to refuse to let her test because the coach disapproves of her weight. Testing is about the quality of the skills, not what the skater looks like. Judges, especially in the lower and recreational levels, understand this. Judges in testing situations are not allowed to take a child's appearance into account, unless it is interfering with the quality of the skills.

Now, if you go to the coach and say that you want her to be nationally competitive, then the coach has a right, even an obligation to tell you what that will take, including losing weight. No child should be on a diet regimen unless they are under medical supervision.

Not classically pretty
It's a sport not a beauty pageant. The next coach I hear who says "she'd be great if she would get a nose job" is going to get her own nose broken. I'm sorry, I have difficulty focusing on a skater's nose when they're spinning at 40 revolutions a second. This attitude is also responsible for generations of black and brown kids who don't even try because they figure they'd be penalized for their skin color. This, thank god, is starting to change.

Too tall
Like the overweight ones, the tall ones have greater difficulty. Even when they're very thin, they simply have more weight to heft off the ice. The center of gravity is necessarily higher. But just as they do not have trouble figuring out how to handle stairs when they are this tall, they also figure out skating.

Slope shoulders
Two words-Rachael Flatt.

Here's the low down--coaches love kids who are easy to teach, we're only human. Medical and morphological issues make kids hard to teach. A competitive coach may not want to be bothered with a skater whom she judges has no shot. And you know what, with this shallow coach the kid doesn't have a shot. I'm also extremely bothered by the prognosticating-- how they heck does any coach know that some kid who wears glasses at the age of 8 or 10 can't ever be nationally competitive because of this? In this culture, how dare a coach hold a child back because she doesn't conform to some ideal? Soviet Russia, okay. Middle class West? Please.

Proprioceptive activities on the ice

This is the first in a series of posts about the use of tools in teaching figure skating. Tools can aid understanding, body position, spatial orientation. They can aid or distract attention (and one is not necessarily more desirable than the other). Tools can be specific figure skating tools (a figures scribe, for instance), a general sports aid (like a stretchy workout band), or a toy (we use beany babies more than might be actually healthy). You can use them to reinforce good habits, to teach new habits, to overcome bad habits.

I'm currently working with two cognitively challenged children. One is a kid who in my own (long ago) childhood would simply have been that crazy boy; we would not have recognized his behavior as having a clinical definition, much less a condition that could be both named, understood and compensated for. I haven't asked his mother (feel free to chime in, since I know you're reading this) what exactly his diagnosis is, but I would say he's got attention issues. Let's call him NoisyBoy. (He takes lessons with his friend, and they're in my book as "skating with noisy boys".)

The other, Miss E, I've written about before; she is dyspraxic, a sensory and motor processing disability.

Both of these children do occupational therapy, and I owe their OTs a great big box of chocolate, because they, indirectly through the moms, introduced me to the wonderful world of using proprioceptive tools to reach these kids (I had never even heard the word before. It is now my new favorite word). As the new class sessions get underway in a couple of weeks, I will be watching for other children, and adults, who might respond to these techniques.

Proprioception is the ability to orient your body in space; to sense the position, location, and movement of the body and its parts. Noisyboy's mom first introduced me to the concept when she mentioned that he liked "heavy load" exercises- these are activities that involve weights, and/or sharp sudden movements like jumping, falling, crashing, pulling. You get the idea. Noisyboy does in fact love these, I had noticed this. Either because I am a genius, or because he was faster than me (you never know), I generally, within limits, let him. Clever me, because this turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

Oddly, the same week, Miss E's mom mentioned that her occupational therapist recommended the use of stretchy workout bands for physical activities. One of the deals with Miss E is that she does everything at a very high level as long as you hold onto her, sometimes quite closely. As soon as you let go, she goes back to either tot marching or racing around the ice (singing). We found that when you use the bands you can gradually let go and she still feels the right kind of pressure to continue the activity properly (of course, you have to catch her first).

So meanwhile Noisyboy's mom sent me a list of proprioceptive activities from NorthShore University Health. Their handout includes a long list of proprioceptive activities, saying "these activities can be calming, organizing, or alerting to the nervous system. It can calm people when they are aroused, and arouse them when they are calm"

Bingo.

I started trying this out with these kids and what a difference. Stretchy bands. Two pound weights. Jump exercises. Pushing and pulling exercises. Stomping the ice. All of these things anchor these kids back to their bodies, place them in space, and focus them on their surroundings.

I'm still learning how to use these tools with the kids, and their mothers are exhibiting blessed patience as I sort it out. I'm pretty sure Miss E is onto me, because she often just decides not to play anymore, lets go of the tool and off she goes! Noisyboy is still intrigued by the novelty, so I'll need to try to stay one step ahead of him, also to keep him from getting the bright idea of bashing Noisyboy 2 over the head with the weights (good times!). I'm looking forward to an aisle-foraging trip to Sportmart to see what inspires me.

Just as we've come to understand different learning styles (tactile, visual, aural, etc.) kids also have different proprioceptive abilities. Miss E and Noisyboy are outliers; mainstreamed kids with diagnosed difficulties. But there are plenty of kids farther inside the bell curve who can probably benefit from this awareness. Sometimes it's the challenging kids that make you grow.

Learning styles- the movers

People have different learning styles, and it's one of the challenges of teaching, #1 to identify that style for each skater, and #2 to incorporate each skaters's learning style into a group class, where you might have 4 visual learners, 2 aural learners, a couple of process learners, 1 of the visual learners only works if they also get challenges or competitions, plus there's a tactile learner and 3 kinesthetic ones.

Their are four types of kinesthetic learners-- the tactile ones, where you have to actually place their bodies in the position; the process ones, who have to do in order to learn; the spatial ones, who have to understand their relationship to the space around them; and the "connectors" whom you must be touching or they can't hear you (not being facetious). This last type aren't always kinesthetic in their actual information processing, but because of the physicality involved in teaching them they tend to fall into this group.

Tactile learners are the most challenging for sports coaches, because of the very skittish (and litigious) environment in which we teach. One of the first things experienced teachers will tell you is "never touch a child." Careers get ruined because other adults misinterpret physical interaction between teacher and kid. Better to keep your hands to yourself. (I have a "no hug" rule, which just kills me, because I love these kids to death.)

Of course, in a sports environment this is next to impossible, especially for the kinesthetic learners. Therefore, if I have to touch a child, I will always go to the parent after class to explain what was going on.

Here's some teaching methods for these kids that you may have observed:

Tactile learners
These skaters need their limbs held in position. Very young children almost always learn well this way; for instance when teaching scooter pushes (one foot pushes the other along), kids will generally favor one side and have a lot of difficulty switching sides. If you physically hold down a child's foot and make them push with the other (yes, while they're moving--it's hard on the back!), they will start to understand the feeling of balance and propulsion on the "hard" side. With these kids instead of saying "point your toe" you do it for them. You stand them at the wall in a spiral position and physically left the leg to the proper height. You adjust their arms for crossovers, turns, and stroking, and so on.

If you must touch a child, you find the least "fraught" body part-- the hands, the feet, the head (i.e. the extremities). I have only one child, a disabled girl, whose mother has basically given me carte blanche because you have get right in there with her.

But there are other ways to help these kids that involve no touching at all. Tools work extremely well--exercise stretch ropes, hula hoops, beany babies (you'd be amazed at the skating skills you can teach with beany babies), their own gloves. You can have the kids themselves partner up and place each other in positions (if you luck out and get a tactile with a visual, they both benefit hugely).

I recently had a mother casually mention to me that her son likes "heavy load" exercises, so I started incorporating races that end with a thump against the boards, or we do two foot jumps, with noisy (therefore hard) landings. These exercises focus him for a good chunk of time after they are done-- amazing. It's this sort of thing you need to be on the look out for. I'll now incorporate these sorts of things in every group lesson too, in case there are "heavy load" kids among them.

Process learners and spatial learners
Kinesthetic process learners need to do (you find process learners among all the types--the aurals will repeat instructions out loud, the visuals will need to draw them). You can't stand them around while you explain things to the aurals, or draw pictures or do demos. Spatial learners fall into this group because they also must move-- they feel themselves in space and in relation to other skaters, and again, can't process technique that they aren't actively engaged in.

The best way to help these kids is to give the class one thing at a time to do or improve, so that explanations stay short. For instance, if you're working on stroking, tell the class "no toe pushes" (and exactly what that means) or to focus on proper arm or head. Then keep adding corrections. The point is to make sure they're moving and attempting the proper technique. They'll get it eventually just by doing it over and over. But they'll never get it standing around and listening, no matter how brilliant your explanation.

Games, choreography, "add on" and solo demos (where they are the demonstrators) also help these kids learn.

Connectors
Not all connectors are necessarily kinesthetic learners-- they may not learn by touch, but touch is how they relate and communicate. These skaters don't need to have their limbs placed just so, but they need a hand on the shoulder in order to understand where the information is coming from. You'll often see me in class with a "helper" standing in front of me or next to me, with my hand on his or her shoulder; this is because without that physical contact, these kids don't know how to listen. You can spot them easily, because they are unable to have a conversation with a friend or classmate without touching the friend; sometimes the friend does not like to be touched. Ice is slippery. Hilarity ensues.

Adults
Kinesthetic adults are very problematic in figure skating. First, adults, if they ever knew, have often lost touch with their learning styles. Most adults in skating class want you to talk them to death, even if they aren't really absorbing the information. Further, adults are big, so handling them is trickier from a safety viewpoint, and they're skittish, so that touching them can set off unintended and undesirable consequences, which just makes them more skittish. Adults will also tend to grab you and hang on for dear life, when all you're trying to do is put their arm in the proper position.

Read about other learning styles by finding the "learningstyles" tag in the cloud.

What's your or your child's learning style and how has your coach or group teacher used it?

Using visuals

Kids learn in different ways. One of the challenges of teaching is identifying the best way to get information from the coach's brain into the student's muscles. "Learning styles" are now an accepted philosophy of teaching, although when they were first proposed, it was extremely controversial, because, gasp, it treated each student like an individual.

It's especially challenging to work with different learning styles in a group class, where you might have representatives of every type, and every one of those kids needs to be reached. The kinetic/spatial learner can't stand still, and won't learn by listening anyway. The visual learner needs a map, and a demonstration. The aural learner has to hear you describe it. The tactile learner must be placed in the proper position.

This is the first of a series on ways to use all these styles in group teaching.

There are lots of things you can do to help the visual learners. If you're lucky enough to be teaching in a rink that lets you draw on the ice (with heavy markers), it's easy-- you can draw pictures. For tots, this might be icons-- a bunny or a frog for jumping, an ice cream cone for "dip" a big 1 for one-foot glide. But on-ice visuals work for older students as well. Of course, there are the actual hockey markings already in most rinks. Want a circle? Put the kids on a hockey circle (believe it or not, there are kids who can't follow a circle, even if it's drawn. If these kids are spatial learners, you can tell them to follow someone, or touch a marker- the wall, you, a cone, etc.) I love to amaze everyone by taking a big marker and drawing a perfect circle (I'd say it's from years of figures classes, but frankly I've always been able to do this.)

Other drawings that help some kids are the different turns, stroking, jumps. One of the things coaches learn to recognize, in fact, is the proper "print" for each jump-- the skate leaves a distinctive mark on the ice for each jump. It's very important for a visual learner to know this mark, because like as not, they can't "feel" it. But they can see it.

Visual learners are also good at visualization, meaning, giving them concrete images to imagine to help them understand where their bodies are in space, which is often difficult even for the athletic kids in this group. Visualizing is also fun, and can make a challenging, frustrating or difficult skill more enjoyable to work on.

One of the most difficult concepts in figure skating is the "open" hip. Hips, of course, are not a hinged joint, or in fact a joint at all, and yet skating coaches are always yelling at kids to "open your hip! lift your hip! you dropped your hip!" Huh?

I like to take a metaphorical arrow, and stick it through a skater's hip (pretending, folks, just pretending). Then I'll tell them where the arrow should be pointed. For a mohawk, the arrows have to point away from each other. For a cross over, they have to be parallel.

The other difficult thing in a crossover is the shoulder position--hips closed, shoulders open. Again, huh? So you tell them to hug the circle with their arms. Want them to lean? Have them lean against you, then step away and tell them to lean "on the invisible coach."

When learning swizzles, kids never glide between swizzles--they just go from swizzle to swizzle to swizzle. So I tell them "it's shaped like a spoon, with a bowl and a handle. Don't forget the handle" I might actually draw a giant spoon, and then trace it myself, skating the swizzle over it.

Visual learners also do well with physical objects, i.e. something they can see. Using objects is great, because it also reaches the spatial and tactile learners, so everyone benefits. Hula hoops can be used to keep a skaters arms in proper position, to get them to stand straight, and to learn shoulder rotation and check. The coach's hand or body is a great tool for both visual and spatial learners, both in demonstration (although I cringe when I see coaches demonstrating things badly-- please don't demonstrate if you are not absolutely positive that you are doing it right). Objects on the ice are great too--kicking a puck, or aiming for cones, for instance.

What style learner is your skater, and what are some clever teaching tactics that have helped her?

My coaching philosophy, part 1

• Anyone can learn to skate.
• I want my students to love skating.
• I believe in group lessons.
• But everyone is an individual.
• Talent is not the most important thing.
• There's always something new to learn.
• It's about the journey, not the destination.
• Kids are great.

This is turning out to be a difficult post to write. I know that I have a coaching philosophy, but what is it? Such a dramatic word-- philosophy-- it sounds like I should be describing it in words of 9 letters or more, with footnotes.

But when you come right down to it, my philosophy is bracketed by the first and last statements-- anyone can learn, and kids are great. That I believe these two things leads to everything else about this journey of mine into teaching this sport. So let's break it down:

Anyone can learn to skate

I am exhibit A for this one. It was my bad experiences with coaches who just dismissed me because I wasn't naturally talented that made me want to teach. I remember asking a coach why I couldn't do a waltz jump. She looked at it and shrugged, saying "I dunno." I just looked at her and thought, I could not possibly teach any WORSE than that. That is the moment that my ambition to teach, and my coaching philosophy, was born. There's a pervasive mythology in this culture, propagated by the media, that you only take skating lessons if you want to skate in the Olympics, and that only pushy parents "make" their children skate. Imagine this attitude applied to soccer, or music lessons. It's absurd.

I want my students to love skating
Every single person in a class deserves to be taken seriously, to have their time and effort honored, and to be given the best chance to succeed that they can. This means finding ways for each skater in a class to succeed in that class, especially challenging with younger and/or beginning skaters, who travel at vastly different speeds and levels of fear. It can be as simple as knowing everyone's name. I find it appalling when coaches, in the 8th or 9th week of class, don't know children's names. (see below, "Everyone's an individual"). Even if you decide that skating is not for you, you shouldn't leave because you hate it. People who quit should leave the ice liking, or loving, the sport, and not in defeat. But I have to say-- most of the kids who take my classes come back.

I believe in group lessons
I have actually had colleagues tell me that "classes are bullshit" and ask me "why do we have all these students who can't skate." Group lessons, and recreational skating in general, is where the sport starts. Read the biography of any world class skater from the US or Canada, and every single one of them started in classes or even on public skating, just for fun. There's also a fairly common attitude that if you're a high level coach you're too good for beginners (at any coaching seminar, you'll find most coaches at the session on double jumps, and very few learning how to make learn-to-skate classes productive). If basic skills classes are boring, that's the coach's fault.

Everyone is an individual
Again, you should really know everyone's name. But more, you should work to reach each skater in a way they understand. A coach should understand the concept of learning styles-- visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic. And he or she should have strategies using every learning style for every single skill from marching at the tot level, up to and including multiple rotation jumps. You should *see* your skaters, too. If you consistently notice that a child has her skates poorly tied, or the wrong size; if she's wearing inappropriate clothing (too much or too little), go and talk to the parent. If the parent knows that you see and understand their child, and care about him, that's going to go a long way toward engendering that love of the sport.

I'll start up in a later post with talent and learning.

If you're a coach do you have a coaching philosophy? Do you think you need one? How would you describe it? If you're a parent or a skater-- ditto, but for your coach. Do you know your coach's coaching philosophy, or do you even know if he has one? Has this ever come up?

Part 2