Bunny hops are not just for fun

Why Learn To Skate?

By which I don't mean why learn to skate-- that's obvious. Because it's fun.

Learn To Skate (also known as weSkate, and similar to CanSkate, and Basic Skills) is where you get the fundamentals, including the part where skating is both fun and mental. If you don't get it here, you're not going to get it in Freestyle.

There's a skill in every level of every beginner curriculum that coaches blow off. "I'm not going to hold a kid back just because she can't do [XX].

Here's the skills, and here's what happens if you let it go.

PreAlpha or Basic 1
Skill that teachers let slide (so to speak): One foot glide on the weak foot.
Consequence: Really really hard and frustrating to learn crossovers
Outcome: they switch to hockey, or quit skating because it isn't fun and everyone is better than them

Alpha/Basic 2-3
Skill: Proper underpush (i.e. no toe push)
Consequence: since weSkate and Basic Skills are set up to teach a skill and then basically drop it until the kid decides to do USFS testing, toe pushes become embedded in a skater's muscle memory, and they will never unlearn it. Watch for a post about the curriculum model that drops a skill once you move to the next level.
Outcome: competitive decision made for you. I'm not saying every kid wants to or should be a competitive skater. But why make that decision for them by teaching poor skills at the outset.

Beta/Basic 5
Skill: t-stops, especially on the "hard" foot.
Consequence: snow plow stopping in the higher levels, which just looks stupid. The close-foot T position is also the basic position for a mohawk turn. Think about it.
Outcome: the embarrassment of the utter disbelief on the FS5 teacher's face when she finds out you can't do a T-stop.

Gamma/ Basic 6-7
Skill: hockey stop
Consequence: the hockey stop teaches opposition much more effectively even than drilling turns. You can make a turn without really understanding opposition. But you can't do a hockey top without getting it right.
Outcome: Poorly executed turns. Also faceplanting on 60-second drills (also never completing it in under 60 seconds)

Delta/Basic 7-8
Skill: bunny hop
Consequence: the  bunny hop teaches the basic lift and landing for every jump. Shoulders square, rock to the toe, lift the free knee through. Land on your toe pick. It also requires an absolutely solid understanding of right and left (this is harder than you think, for kids as old as 10).
Outcome: let this skill go, and that kid will struggle with every single jump.

I could go on: waltz jumps that are taught with the free leg already behind on the landing (this is a consequence of the stupid commonly used term "landing position" to mean "check out position"). Pivots that quickly just turn into spins. Never teaching mazurkas (I'm looking at you, ISI.) Back spins on the wrong edge.  Toe loops that take off forwards.

Skaters: take the time and learn the techniques properly.  Coaches: keep kids in each level until they've mastered every skill.  Skating directors support your staff by letting them keep kids in levels, and your skaters by having other classes that they can do while they're mastering the boring stuff.

In the end, it will catch up with you. If you get to testing, the judges are not going to let this stuff slide, and if a skater has been getting away with it, they're not going to understand what those judges are talking about.

What skill do you wish you or your skater had really mastered before moving on?

Basic skills aren't all that basic

I've had parents in higher level classes yell at me for teaching cross overs.

Because as everyone knows, once you learn a basic component of your discipline, you never have to learn it at a higher level, ever. So once you've learned addition, it's just foolish to teach multiplication (which is really just fancy addition when you think about it.) Did you learn how to read in first grade? Hooray! You never have to read again.

Or maybe not.

Every basic skill: glides, crossovers, turns, have both basic and advanced applications. What's a spiral if not just a really really advanced one-foot glide?

You can simply do skills better as well-- you don't really need to teach power for Alpha and Beta skaters learning forwards and backwards crossovers (you can, but you don't need to). But higher level skaters need to understand how to use basic crossovers to achieve more power. And this has to be taught. If you're in an ISI curriculum, you have to learn "cut backs," i.e. back crossovers with no lift. And yet, strangely, it's not in the curriculum and parents get all bent out of shape when they see you teaching them. So much  better to let the kids figure them out on their own and do it wrong (which they all do because it's not very intuitive).

You can use basic positions learned early to remind skaters what you're looking for-- how do you push for outside back edges? Think about the first push of a backward crossover. Where should your free foot end up for a basic one-foot spin? It's the same as a nice Pre-Alpha one foot glide.

CanSkate, the Canadian Figure Skating beginner program, has incorporated this into their curriculum.

" Instead of just introducing a skill at one level and then leaving it, the skater will work on the same skill at many different stages. The coaches have a chance to introduce the skill, develop it and then perfect it over a longer period of time. One of the early skills is a push-glide sequence. In the old system, it was introduced only in stage two, and then skaters moved on to other skills in different stages. But now the push-glide sequence is part of every stage."

(CanSkate also gets it right by not differentiating hockey skills and figure skating skills in the early stages-- it's all just skating skills).

Basic skills are called that for a reason-- they are the basis for everything that comes after. You can't learn a proper jump if you don't understand how to check out of a turn. You can't get power if you never understand how to use your blade properly.

What are some examples of advanced applications of basic skills that have helped you or your skater?