Overcoming One-Sidedness: there has to be a better way

[dreamshark]

Somewhere around the middle of September I stopped making noticeable progress in my figure skating, even though I was skating 2-4 times per week. Oh, I was getting more comfortable with the moves I already knew, but just couldn't master anything new. In particular, I was stuck dead on the basic 1-footed turns: mohawk and 3-turn. I could do each of them on one foot, but not on the other, and my final position was awkward even on that foot.

I do not have good balance. Although I've always been active, I'm also something of a klutz. I can mostly keep from falling down when I'm in motion (riding a bike, for instance) but I've never been able to simply stand on one foot. With concentration and practice I can learn to do it in one position at a time. With foot raised close to ankle, but not with the knee raised. Then with the knee raised, but not straightened. With hip facing forward, but not opened to the side. And so on. It's a slow process, and when I don't keep practicing I tend to regress.

And I get practically NO transfer of body knowledge from one side of my body to the other. I have to learn balance positions and moves separately for each side, and it's like starting all over from scratch. This just does not seem right. The knowledge is in my brain, and there has to be some way to mirror it from one side of the brain to the other. Everybody has this problem to some extent, but I can see from observation that most people do not struggle with it as much as I do.

My various skating instructors were of no particular help when I asked them for tips on this. The universal answer was, "Oh, everybody has one side they're much stronger on. Practice and it will come."  There has to be a better answer than that. Sure, if you practice long enough you'll probably pick up the skill eventually, but I can't believe there aren't specific exercises what would facilitate the mirroring of a physical skill from one side of the body to another. Besides, I was practicing and practicing and it wasn't coming.

If there are specific techniques for mirroring body learning, they clearly aren't being taught to skating instructors, so I've been working them out for myself.  For the last month I have been doing exercises of my own devising, some on the ice and some on dry land. The basic idea is to break down a problem move to the smallest atomic component, and then to do the move first on the right foot, then immediately mirror it on the left. The key thing is that it has to be really quick, just a few seconds.  I started with just drawing my arms in to my center, bending my knee slightly and raising one foot to ankle height for maybe 3 seconds, and have been varying foot positions from there. It seems to be helping. My balance has noticeably improved on my left foot, and I'm starting to make some progress with the RFI mohawk (which ends up on the left foot). We'll see how it goes.

Comments

[hakatrip.livejournal.com]

Have you tried yoga workouts? They are always balanced side-to-side and facilitate a high degree of body-awareness.

Another thing to try is Pilates. I find it really helps my form in skating by strengthening the core muscles, and thus posture and balance.

So does my ballet training, though I've not had lessons since I was a child it is still a strong influence. I can totally see and feel it.

Everyone favors a side. Learning to be bilateral is a challenge that must be focussed on. Take heart! You are not alone and you will conquer this by determination. :)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I pretty much hate yoga because it involves two of the things I find difficult and painful - holding uncomfortable positions for extended periods of time and trying to balance on one foot (it's just frustrating when everybody else can do it and you can't). I love motion, but I hate static stretching.

However, I have found a class at the Y that combines yoga, tai chi and Pilates with gentle music, and that has helped a little bit with the balance. However, it doesn't work as a mirroring exercise because there's too much time spent on one side before switching to the other. The only way I get any sense of transfer from one side to the other is with very short moves. So when it comes to standing on one foot with legs extended in various directions I'm still learning each side from scratch, separately.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I have the situation: my balance is much better when I'm standing on my left leg as opposed to my right. I noticed it before the injury, so I'm not quite sure whether the more extreme difference I'm noticing now is due to the injury (it's the right leg's that's injured) or whether the rehabilitative exercises I'm doing now (i.e., stand on one foot for a minute, and boy, it's so much harder on the right foot) are just bringing it more to my notice, or whether the balance on that side has deteriorated further, due to the inactivity resulting from the injury OR from the injury itself.

Anyway, sensei tells me the same thing: balance for most people is better on one side than the other.

Either way, it drives me crazy. Or maybe it's the lack of karate due to the injury that is driving me crazy. As Fiona says quite often, I need to hit something.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And yeah, per hakatrip above, I've been thinking about trying to add more yoga to the rotation to help build strength and balance on the injured side.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

At one point last year I was having some pain in my left ankle (the weak foot) and it was at this point that I started to fall noticeably behind in my development on the left side. My ankle finally recovered, but by that time my right side was so far ahead of my left that I never caught up. That's when I started to get frustrated that there was so little transfer between the sides. Dammit, it shouldn't take 3 months to learn a move to the left and then ANOTHER 3 months to learn exactly the same move to the right.

"Anyway, sensei tells me the same thing: balance for most people is better on one side than the other."

True, but not helpful. It seems strange to me that with all the advances in athletic training and rehabilitative medicine in the past 20 years that there isn't a better answer to this than just repeating the obvious and then saying "Practice."