The gag rule

UPDATE, November 2014: The gag rule is dead! The Federal Trade Commission got wind of it happening (across many professional associations, not specifically the PSA), and put a stop to it. PSA has changed their guidelines in compliance.

ORIGINAL POST:
Imagine a job where if someone else's client approaches you about switching, because they were unhappy with the current relationship, you are bound by your professional association to report this to your rival.

Imagine you're the client. If you are seen talking to the rival firm, you can yourself be reported for an ethical violation, you risk destroying your current relationship, and the current firm can, in fact is encouraged to, sabotage your ability to hire a new firm. Doesn't matter if the current firm is abusive, incompetent, or unresponsive. If you talk to another firm, even if you leave your issues out of the conversation, you are in violation of the ethical standards of the industry.

Imagine an industry that tacitly encourages its clients to stay in arrears, so that they can prevent the client, legally, from switching to another firm, based on unpaid bills.

Imagine an industry where your firm doesn't offer a product that's available at the rival firm, and that your client needs. The client isn't allowed to seek it, and the firm isn't allowed to advertise it to your client.

Imagine an industry where my client isn't allowed to tell your client how much they like me.

Welcome to figure skating.

The issue is Solicitation, Tampering and Promotion, and it's a big big topic of discussion in coaching circles. Famous coaches have lost their right to attend competitions over it. Skaters have ended careers rather than run up against the rules. Reputations have been destroyed over rumors of violations.

Solicitation is the Big Bad Wolf of the issue-- seeking to acquire a student who already has another coach. Of course, you don't always have control over it, because if the student or parent comes to you and you don't immediately shut down the discussion and report the student to the current coach, and it gets out, you are in career-ending trouble. Tampering is "undermining a coaching relationship" for instance by encouraging, or even by not discouraging your skaters from singing your praises to the skater of another coach or his/her parents. Promotion is just marketing--neutral advertisement of your services, like this website. Just be careful who you market to. Some rinks are so skittish that they don't even allow you to pass out business cards on the premises.

Coming from a performing arts background, I could not wrap my head around this when I learned of it. What do you mean, I can't talk privately to a different teacher if I don't like the current one? And they have to "report" me? It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.

If you're a serious competitor who needs to be with a different coach, you practically have to quit skating before you can switch. If you're in a small market, the dumped coach can make your life miserable.

If you just suspect that your coach is not what you need, you cannot ask around and find out. Other coaches won't talk to you. Other parents won't talk to you. You literally cannot get the information that you need to make an informed decision. It's patronizing, insulting and paternalistic, assuming that all coaches will try to steal students, and that parents aren't capable of recognizing good vs. bad information from their own or other coaches.

I have run up against this often. Because of the types of students I take (recreational and low level only), and because of the blog, parents do approach me looking for neutral advice. I'd give it, if I was allowed. I recently had to tell a parent, who in fact has an unqualified coach that is holding their skater back, that I could not talk about it.

I call it the gag rule.

So here's a career-ending opinion:

The gag rule is bullshit. If you can't hold onto your students, that's not my problem. If you let bills go unpaid, you're just a bad businessperson and it serves you right if the student leaves without paying you. The gag rule is unfair to the parents, allows incompetent coaches to thrive, and prevents young coaches from establishing themselves. Get rid of it.

Thank you

I've been in a really bad mood lately. Chalk it up to the endless grey weather. So I felt like I needed to remember the things that make this work so joyful. Anyway, thank you:

Class student mom MP for telling me she thinks I'm the only teacher at my rink who really cares about every student. I don't think it's true, but it was nice to hear.

NB's mom, for understanding both loyalty and bullsh*t.

Miss E, for having the most beautiful disposition, despite more barriers than anyone should have to deal with.

Mom A for telling me, in so many words, "I appreciate what you do! "

Sasha for fixing my ruined skates, and giving me the cleanest edges I've had in years.

Adam, for asking me to skate with him for 10 minutes the other day.

B, K, N for being coaches who take the garbage with a giant grain of salt, and remind me that I should too

My Friday Pre Alpha class, the craziest, most fun group of little girls you can imagine.

Summer Skating

Originally published April 11, 2010

It's always puzzled me that in the winter when it's freezing cold outside, everyone goes to the freezing cold ice rink, and in the summer, when it's steaming hot outside, everyone goes to the steaming hot beach.

Ice rinks are great in the summertime. Nice and cool, and often, empty. They often turn over the ice to the figure skaters all morning and the hockey players all afternoon (or vice versa), and you can basically spend all day in skates. Many rinks run skating camps, at both learn to skate and freestyle levels, or you skate on your own; take your coach's summer program if she or he has one, sign up for one of the many sleep-away skating camps, or just come once in a while for fun.

For skaters who want to compete, summer is pre-season, one of the most critical training periods. You want to make sure you're at the correct test level, start solidifying the new programs, make sure you have all the latest rules updates incorporated into your choreography, and strengthen your newest elements. Serious off ice endurance and strength training starts building up in the summer too.

Even for non-competitive skaters, you can use summer as your pre-season push. Maybe there are synchro or ice show auditions in the fall, or you're trying to make it up a level or two in class. This is the time to learn a new jump or spin, even if you're not planning to compete, just because there's so much ice available.

By May you're going to want to have had a conversation with your coach about your goals for the summer and the coming year, so you know how much ice to sign up for and what the training arc is going to be. Find out which competitions the coach is expecting you to do, what costumes you're going to need, and what the requirements are for your various goals. Here are some of the summer skating options:

Sleep-away camp
Like any sleep away camps, there are serious highly competitive ones for "career" skaters like Ice Castles (although anyone with the cash can go if I'm not mistaken) or USFS camps for the current Team Envelope members. But there are also many many quality camps for skaters from serious to recreational. Ask your coach, club rep, or local USFS or PSA area representative how to find a skating camp that matches your skater's goals and level.

Local skating camps
Many rinks have both interim skating seminars and summer-long camps, ranging from half to full day. These camps usually consist of on ice and off ice components and may include things you won't get during the school year season. At my own rink we offer ice dance, figures, moves, and choreography as part of the summer program, as well as off-ice components that include ballet and jazz dance, pilates, soccer, arts and crafts and field trips to do things like roller blading or swimming. These camps are extremely cost-effective; often you don't have to sign up for the entire time, or even for every day, but can create your own schedule according to your vacation schedule, finances, and other activities.

Coach-led camps
Many coaches will set up their own summer programs, if their rink allows them to. You'll pay the coach a retainer-type fee based on the number of participants and hours, plus you'll pay the rink directly (in most cases) for ice time. Depending on how many skaters your coach gets involved, this can be the cheapest option, and easily incorporates your private lesson time into the ice schedule. Not all rinks allow coaches to do this; if your regular rink does not, you may need to follow the coach to a different rink for the summer. Many coaches will allow only their own students into these camps, even if you are not taking from someone else.

On your own
You can also set up your own training schedule without a supervising camp structure, but I would recommend this only for older and very self-directed kids. It is extremely difficult to maintain your own practice when you feel like the odd one out, where everyone else is in a program and you're just on your own. A couple/few times a week it will be just like school year skating, but if you want to try to skate every day, I would recommend finding a program to be part of, for the social aspect and the supervisory safety if nothing else.

Just for fun
Summer is also a great time to just take a break from structured lessons. At many rinks, practice ice is much emptier in the summer, and at every rink public sessions are very very sparse. Just come and skate for fun. Then go to the beach or the pool, where it's hot and sunny.

Me? I'll be waiting for you in the nice cool rink.

For more about skating in the summer see: Summer Skating

Welcome to summer ice

120 skaters, 10 hours of ice daily. The form is a 3 pages long grid, including black-out dates. Literally. Here's a hilarious conversation about it from Facebook.

R (mom)-Is it just me, or are the practice ice forms even more confusing than they've been in the past? WTF, I have to do maths now? ARGH.

A- See what you get for encouraging your kid?

P (dad)-If Tuesday = (x3/y2) - 7z, and z = minutes on ice, solve for cost.

R-SHUT UP!!

P- If a skater begins lessons in March at level 1 and is in level 10 by the following February, what has cost more in that time: general lessons, private lessons, gasoline burned getting to lessons, or psychiatrist/alcohol bills for coaches dealing with skater who has been bumped up too quickly?

R-You missed the variables of cheap skates and glitter.

A-Don't forget amount spent on brownies at the snack bar.

Should you be giving your skating coaches vacation pay?

I ask, because your skating coach is in fact paying you to take vacation, by foregoing his or her pay when you're out of town.

I had one of those weeks-- two students out of town for spring break, one sick, another more or less kidnapped by grandma "for Easter." Hope they had fun, because it meant my income was down 40% for the week, and I didn't know about it ahead of time. (Even the vacationers didn't tell me until last week.)

How would you like to never know, from week to week, what your income would be? I actually only plan for 40 weeks per year from any single student; even though I have to hold those lesson times for 52 weeks, I can only count on getting paid for 40 of them. Further, I can't take my own vacation, because then I lose another week or two of income.

High level coaches on retainer presumably don't have these issues because they've negotiated a season's retainer fee-- they get paid the same amount every week for a set range of lesson times. If they're smart they've worked days off into this.

But most of us don't have that luxury. We work week to week for casual, recreational skaters, who never realize that their Florida vacation is costing some hapless coach (or nanny, or piano teacher, or tutor) a couple of days groceries.

Take the poll-- do you think it's fair to have to cover your lesson fee even when you're on vacation?

Where your axel went wrong

When I first start teaching bunny hops, I always ask the kids-- do you know what you're learning? They all shout "BUNNY HOPS!" "Nope," I tell them, "you're learning axels."

The complex high free style skills are not something you "get to." You don't learn an axel in FS5 or Prelim, or Freeskate 6. You build an axel, and a double toe loop, and a lutz, and all your triples and complex spins over time, starting from the first moment you totter onto the ice.

Here's some of the basic skating moves that people gloss over, making the axel hard, if not unattainable:

Bunny hop
The first jump is not the waltz jump- it's the bunny hop. This is where you learn how to swing your arms properly, and where your free foot should be in the air (toe pick out in front, not underneath or behind you). It's not just about getting into the air. There's technique and it's important.

Basic back outside edges
The basic skating position. An effortless, clean back outside edge over your landing foot (right side for CCW, left side for CW jumpers) is the basis of the back spin, air position, and all landings. It mystifies me that coaches let back edges slide (haha), especially if they are older coaches that came up when School Figures were compulsory.

Waltz jump
Think of it as a one-third axel. The biggest mistake? Bringing your free leg through too soon; if it's already behind you when you land, how are you going to snap into the air position (free leg in front). To test for this error, try a waltz-jump/loop combination. If your free leg is in the wrong place when you land, you can't do the loop. Second runner up error: over-rotating the shoulders on the launch. When you see these two errors in the waltz jump, you're going to see them in the (non-existent) axel.

Back spin
Outside edge please, nine rotations. Biggest barrier to the axel--not getting over the outside edge right away. Doesn't count if you get over the back outside edge after a couple of rotations. If you cannot get quickly into a proper back spin position, you're not going to be able to do that axel. If the first two or three rotations are on the inside edge-- a very common error-- you are not going to have the understanding about the tiny amount of time you have to snap into that position in midair on the axel. You don't have time to do a couple of rotations over the wrong edge. You can't do it in the axel, and you shouldn't do it in the back spin. And coaches shouldn't be passing them (and the back spin should not be in the same level as the axel, it should be in the level before-- ISI are you listening?)

So, where did your axel go wrong? Basic 7 & 8. Delta-FS1. That's where. When your coach skipped you quickly past these levels, she wasn't doing you any favors.

From the keyword search

Competition as a learning technique for 3 to 5 year olds
What, exactly, are you trying to teach them?

Where do you put US figure skating patches
Well, my daughter's are in a ziplock bag in my closet. I am absolutely convinced that someday she will thank me for saving them. (With any luck she won't find out that because trophies won't fit in ziplock bags, those have all been discarded.) But a lot of kids put them on their warm up jackets, which I think looks pretty cool.

Putting white skates on your little boy
Only do this if there are other obvious indications that it's a boy. This helps the teacher. If the question is "will kids make fun of him if he's in white skates," the answer is first, no and second if you're worried about it, get some shoe polish. If the question is actually "will white figure skates make my son gay" then please get counseling before you continue being a parent.

Establishing boundaries between coach and athlete/coach relationship student cross line/ice skating coaches that cross the line
These three were within about 10 minutes of each other. Someone needs to have a serious discussion with their coach. Also, I hope the kid is okay.

Do kids play hockey and figure skating lessons together?
Yes. It's especially useful for hockey players to take figure skating lessons, because hockey programs tend to be weak on skating skills development (they focus on rules, stick/puck handling & scoring, and speed/agility and seem to just hope that the skills develop). I just got a new student whose mom put them in hockey to help them be tougher and less skittish on the ice, which sounds good to me.

How many hours practice before you test the American Waltz skating
How good a skater are you?

Should I let my son carry on learn ice skating or not
Does he like figure skating? (See also above, "will white skates make my son gay.")

Can you skip a level in ice skating
In lessons, yes. In testing, no. You must test every level in order in both ISI and USFS.

What question do you have that I can make fun of? (Oh, I'm kidding, you know I love you.)