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?

Coach? Xan

Joanne Schneider-Farris is usin' fightin' words, by trying to draw a distinction among the various levels of "commitment" to skating professionals. While she uses the terms "coach," "pro," "instructor," and "teacher," the gist of the article seems to be that you're only a "coach" if you are a serious, full-time skating professional with competitive students.

Everyone else is "just" a teacher.

I have fought this attitude throughout my career as, yes, a skating coach.

Painting with a broad brush, Joanne's definition does not take into account the coach's own motivations, the constraints of the market she's in, or the nature of the students she is best with.

I see what she's getting at-- just being on the ice with students doesn't make you a "coach" with all the connotations of that word. But she then goes on to define the term with almost purely mechanical definitions, and by defining out anyone who doesn't have competitive students.

I did fine on two of her bullet points:

"A Figure Skating Coach Does More Than Just Teach:

• A figure skating coach is more than just a teacher: he or she is a figure skater's mentor, guide, and role model.

• A successful figure skating coach will draw figure skaters to a rink or a figure skating club".

but then, oops!

"Figure skating coaches teach lessons and manage figure skaters' lifestyles and training".

I leave their lifestyle and training alone. This is because I don't teach competitive skaters. I take beginners, special needs, and other kids that a lot of coaches turn up their noses at, especially the "coaches" (by Joanne's definition). I turn them into skaters. I can always see that moment when suddenly I'm not just that adult skater who thought she could teach figure skating. It's when Coach World Famous suddenly notices that the awkward little boy whom he wouldn't have slowed for at a stop sign looks like a skater. And starts offering me tips in the middle of my lesson.

But he's a "mentor, guide, and role model" who "draws skaters to a rink." And also "tampers with an existing coaching relationship" otherwise known as "poaching students."

So how about ethics? Do you get to call yourself a coach if you violate one of the most basic tenets of the profession? I guess so, because Joanne doesn't mention it.

Nor is there a word about credentials, which I consider the marker between a weekend teacher and a committed coach. PSA ratings and ISI judge credentials is the first thing I ask any coach about. An ethical coach takes the continuing education. That Gold at Sectionals in 1994 is great and all, and I honor you for it, but it's time to move on and get some current credentials.

Then there's this one:

"Skating Instructors and Teachers Give Group and Private Ice Skating Lessons [implied 'but'] These people may or may not also take on the skating coach role. "

Oops. That's me again, and lots of other really great coaches that I know. She goes on to talk about 5 a.m. lessons, traveling to competitions, managing the training, and yes, even what they charge. (But no guidance for us mere "teachers" on what we can charge.)

And then there's the real killer:

A Skating Instructor Can Teach Part-Time, But a Skating Coach Must Teach Full-Time:

Nail in the coffin. I do this part time. Of course I work in a market where only the most competitive coaches with the wealthiest students have a prayer of making a full time living at this, but that's just my bad luck. I don't get to call myself a coach. I'm just a teacher.

Fine. I'll wear it proudly. I'm a teacher, who has changed the lives of countless children through my love, skill, commitment and support of the sport. I guess I'll have to stop my students now when they call me, as they affectionately do, "Coach Xan."

A Junior Coaching curriculum

I know that there are programs that get the coaches' education thing right.

But in many programs, junior coaches are just left on their own: no education requirements (even though there are lots of opportunities from ISI, PSA, and USFS). No mentoring. Sometimes they're put on classes by themselves. Sometimes their own coaches use them as subs-- how would you like to pay for the highly credentialed freestyle coach and end up with the inexperienced junior instead? Happens all the time.

Coaches that I have spoken about this with almost universally tell me (sometimes rather patronizingly) that "kids learn how to coach from taking lessons". So, I've been to second grade, I guess that means I'm qualified to teach second grade? And that's how old some of these kids were when they learned these skills "in lessons".  I remember when my daughter started teaching and came home one day asking, how in the world do you teach a swizzle? Because she had learned it when she was 3--for her, it was like trying to explain to someone how to breathe.

I can't think of another profession where you jump from student to pro with no training in between.

The Professional Skaters Association is working on the problem through programs like Excellence on Ice, where rinks get benefits if the entire staff are PSA members, through the Entry Level Coaching Course and Apprentice Program, and through a comprehensive national education program. But until rinks insist on teaching credentials and not just skating credentials, you might not even know if you've got the pro or the junior.

Several years ago, at the request of my Skating Director, who knew I was interested in this issue, I created a Junior Coaching course. Being able to implement this is one of the reasons I've always wanted that  Master Group credential from the PSA-- so that I could work with young coaches on this. Sadly I never got to implement it, as that SD left and the new one was not interested in training her junior coaches.

But I have continued to tweak the program in hopes that someday, someone will implement it. The basic outline of the course is as follows:

Participants must:

• Have passed at a minimum the in-class ISI FS 4 or USFS FreeSkate 4 test.
• Be at least 14 years of age.
• Have a signed parental waiver.
• Have a recommendation from a coach.
• Arrange an on-staff “mentor” among the professional coaching staff.
• Be an individual member of the Ice Skating Institute or USFS Basic Skills, and join the Professional Skaters Association at the appropriate level.
• Attend an Orientation Session.
• Be available for  a minimum of 4 hours up to a maximum of 10 hours per week, including at least one peak class session.
• Be available for each entire session.
• Attend at least one ISI, USFS, or PSA training seminar every 6 months.
• Participate in ice show rehearsals for Tot and Pre Alpha levels in any capacity deemed necessary by the Pro in charge.
• Work at the annual competition, including trial judging.
• Clock 10 hours (about 1 session) of supervised coaching at a given level before handling a class at that level on his/her own as a Junior Coach.

I suggested that all Junior Coaches start in Tot and Pre-Alpha classes where the need for additional staff on the ice is the most critical.  Based on hours clocked and mentor recommendations, Junior Coaches could then be assigned to higher level classes Alpha through Pre-Freestyle as they progress.  I also suggested that the mentoring relationship be a real one, with the Junior coach observing their mentor teaching higher level classes, and taking one-on-one lessons in teaching techniques.

Junior coaches would receive Community Service credit hours, discounts for rink programs, and priority in hiring over other similarily-qualified applicants, once they had audited or taught in at least 4 different levels, and had booked 100 hours in any combination of assigned classes or events, private lessons in instruction technique, audited classes, seminars, ISI or USFSA tests taken.

Sadly, I know of only one rink that has anything approaching this comprehensive a junior coaching program, and rumor has it that this much-vaunted program is more honored in the breach than in actual reality.

Does your rink have a comprehensive junior coaching program? 

Is "Champion" too narrow a measure?

From the PSA Professional business practices pages, on how to judge a skating coach:

6) Student Achievement/Rankings - This is an undisputable [sic] test of a professional’s worth. Coaches who consistently produce champions and who are able to get the best from each of their students are worth their weight in gold!

But what if achieving "championship" level is not your goal? What if you're just starting out and have no idea what kind of skater you or child will, or wants to, be?

I agree with the PSA--student achievement is an excellent metric for coaching excellence. But the emphasis on champions is too narrow, although to their credit they follow up with "get the best from each of their students."

EDIT, due to some confusion over the nomenclature!
Just to clarify, there's "ratings" and then there's "rankings" in the PSA:

Ratings indicate that a coach has gone through competitive exams before a panel of judges in one or more of 11 different disciplines such as Group, Dance, Pairs, Free Skating, etc. There are 4 levels through "Master" and you can get as many ratings as you want to put yourself through.

Rankings indicate your competitive success, starting with Level 1-- has students in recreational and nonqualifying competitions, through Level 10- multiple world medalists.

One is an indication of commitment to continuing education, and one is a measure of your success as a competitive coach. I would say that a coach with one or more ratings at the Senior level plus a mid-level ranking indicating that they've taken students to or through Regionals or beyond, would be a pretty good bet as a coach who takes instruction seriously.


I believe that all coaches should have, or be working on, a PSA rating as a minimum requirement to employment, but that ranking is a less important measure based more on your overall goal.

So what's the broader way to look at this metric?

Goals
From the outside, it's hard to judge the success of a student. A student who isn't competing by definition isn't going to be a "champion." Does that mean that coach isn't any good? You might look at a coach and think "her kids can't skate, I don't want to work with her." Or "he's only got the one really good student, he must be putting all his effort there and neglecting everyone else."

What you're not seeing are each student's goals, and where each one started. That teacher with all the "terrible" skaters? Maybe they were kids in trouble, who are now spending afternoons in the rink instead of on the street. Maybe that one really good student is a star, but the other ones started with time, money, or talent deficits that this coach is working with, to get "the best from each" of them.

Focus
A better "undisputable" test of a professional's worth is the focus and commitment they exhibit in the lesson. Is their attention on the student like a laser beam? Are the respectful and firm with the student? Do they have a good relationship with the parents? In a funny way, coaches who can turn out champions are a dime a dozen. But if you don't happen to have, or want, a champion, the firm, engaged, respectful, affectionate coach is the rarer bird, and the more desirable one.

Human beings
As in, you want the coach who is teaching her skaters to be good people, and not just good skaters. That coach with all the fabulous but cliquish, snotty ones? Forget him. Go with the sweetheart whose students volunteer to help with the tots and the special needs kids.

In other words, get the stars out of your eyes, and find the coach with her blades firmly on terra glacialis.

How good is good enough?

A reader asks:

Should you enforce perfect technique at lower levels (and hence hold people back until it is perfect) – or should you accept that there are differences in acceptable technique depending on your level? My local rink has started insisting on proper technique for even for the lowest levels, such as properly bent skating leg and properly extended free leg for the outside curves (UK or USFS Basic Skills Level 4, ISI does not have a corollary to this), rather than passing them if they can just hold the edge properly for a set time. What they seem to want is the easier moves at the lower levels to be done at the standard they would be done by someone who had passed the top levels.

So what should a passing standard be?

All the curricula: ISI weSkate, USFS Basic Skills, UK Levels, and CANSkate, have very specific descriptions of passing standards for each skill, right down to "fall and get up" and all the way up to triple axels. Here's an example for the edge skill above, from the USFS Basic Skills book:

Forward edges held two times the skater's height, right and left forward outside. The edges are skated while moving in a circle. After balancing on two feet, begin the edges by placing the skating side arm and shoulder forward with the free shoulder held firmly behind. Pick up the foot on the outside of the circle and glide on a forward edge in a balanced position over the skating side for two counts (instructor will count)[NB- I gather for the UK, the skating foot must be held back in a stroking position]

Pretty specific and clear.

If I had my preferences, a strong skating director willing to hold the line with parents, and a culture that supported it, absolutely, every single skater should be held to the standard. There is a reason for it, namely that the next skill up (cross overs in this instance) requires mastery of the prior skill or it will be too difficult. I'm working with a hockey skater right now who has never been required to balance on one foot. Needless to say, he's having difficulty keeping up in games and drills.

I know that there are rinks that are able to hold the line, but this is what happens out here in reality:

Blame the Skating Director
This is where it starts. If the skating director caves when a parent complains, rather than backing up her staff; if she lets one coach pass according to that coach's standards (this also happens with coaches who are too strict; it works both ways), then your rink effectively has no passing standards.

Blame the Coach
This is the number one reason why rinks start getting reputations for poor skaters and low standards--coaches don't care enough to hold a kid back. They pass a kid on because they don't like her or because he's a disruptive student (not kidding). They pass their own students up, sometimes skipping multiple levels, as a marketing ploy, or to consolidate all their kids in a single level for their own scheduling ease or ego-gratification. Some coaches are just incompetent, and don't understand the passing standard, or can't teach it properly. Coaches should not be allowed to skip students without an objective panel, preferably comprising people who don't know the coach OR the kid, agreeing to it (even in recreational programs).

Blame the student
Each of the curricula have about 6 to 9 skills to master per level. Often, a student will perfectly master all but one of them, and I'll tell you it is really hard, in a recreational class situation, to not pass a clearly superior student because their t-stop sucks even though you know it's going to come back to haunt them.

Blame the program
Sometimes the student will be just skimming the passing standard--they need 2 more weeks, not 3 more months at the level. This can be dealt with by splitting every level in an A, B, and even C sub-level, but not all programs have the creativity or will to do this. As far as I'm concerned, this is the obvious solution--you feel like you're passing and you get a little ego boost. Rinks don't need to have entire separate sections for the As, Bs, and Cs; they can all be in the exact same class, just working on the skills at a different standard. Which brings us to...

Blame the curriculum
Rinks routinely divide up the cross-over levels (Alpha and Beta, or Basic 4-5-6) into sublevels, but for some reason stop doing this at the higher levels, which is just mystifying. If rinks would divide FS5 (Axel) for instance, into as many as four sub-levels, kids would not be complaining they are "stuck" because they'd be passing something. This would get rid of the parents' complaints that a child couldn't pass. It would allow softy coaches to pass a student who's just too cute to leave behind.

If the reader's rink or federation has decided enough with the fuzzy passing standards, good for them. I hope they can hold the line.

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.

How do you judge teacher performance?

There's another in the perennial line of bills in the Illinois House for a statewide standard on teacher performance. I work in an industry where teachers are even less accountable than they are in a classroom, mostly because no one really pays attention to after school programs except inasmuch as it affects their own child.

As such, it's a microcosm for what's wrong on all aspects of the teacher accountability debate: how do you judge a teacher, why, when, and the big question should you? Teacher accountability standards can only work under the following ideal conditions:

All teachers have proper training and understanding as to what "accountability" and "performance standards" means. I might think my kids have satisfied a performance standard if they come to every class, are attentive, happy and respectful, and practice outside of class. The guy in the next class might only consider the child successful if they accomplish the task at hand each day. Another might not care at all. One might consider a "D" level performance passing, another might want all kids to pass with the equivalent of an "A." Everyone has to agree as to the meaning of success.

All students have the same resources at their disposal. The kids with money will do better, period. They take lessons, their friends take lessons, they skate all the time. If I've got a class full of these kids, I'm going to look like a better teacher than if I have a class full of poor kids who only skate once a week in rental skates.

There are mechanisms to catch cheaters. I'm not talking about the kids-- unlike a math test, you can't copy proper crossovers (or home runs, or laps) off someone else's paper. You can do it or you can't. But coaches pass kids up to the next level for all sorts of bogus reasons.

Differences in a child's ability is considered. Some kids are more talented than others. It's easier to teach them. If you think I'm good with the clumsy ones, you should see what I can do with a child that has talent.

Passing standards are enforced. Every youth sport has passing standards, sometimes written down in impenetrable and tedious detail. At the recreational level, it is very difficult to insist on them. The problem is exacerbated in that every coach you talk to will insist that they are "tough" and never pass kids who aren't ready, when the evidence of your eyes tells you this isn't so.