Today's skating exercises

[dreamshark]

Now that I've finally found a place where I can practice skating over lunch hour, I'm working on developing a standard set of warmups and exercises. Here's what I did today. Main progress - pretty much figured out the steps to the Canasta Tango. One more practice session and I think I'll have it. Minor progress: balance on left leg with right leg behind, shakily transitioning to outside edge, right arm shifted back to hip.

Warmup, phase 1 (10 minutes):  forward skating around the rink once or twice in each direction alternating between deep stroking and 2-footed slaloms. Crossovers at the corners of the rink. A couple of times in each circuit of the rink switch to backward skating on two feet with short 1-foot glides when it feels comfortable.

Warmup, phase 2 (not necessarily immediately following Phase 1):  Backward stroking, randomly breaking into back crossovers in whatever direction feels good. Extend glide on left foot as much as possible, occasionally extending leg to rear. Occasional right 3-turns and left mohawks (the easy directions).

Dutch Waltz: 2 full patterns in time to any 3/4 music that comes up on my iPod.
Canasta Tango: work out the full pattern from notes in my pocket. Repeat tricky transitions starting with progressive sequence in any corner. At this point the goal is to memorize the steps to approximately the right count. I think I have it except for a little confusion on the transition into the second corner lobe. This was probably my biggest accomplishment of the day.

Balance exercise:   Repeat the basic right-left balance sequences I've been doing on land, moving backwards. 

• 3 seconds on right leg, left foot just off the ice next to ankle. Repeat on left. Repeat on right.... and so on for the length of the ice.
• same thing, but with a longer stroke, leg extended slightly to the front... repeat for length of the ice.
• same thing, but with hip opened up and free foot behind the heel
• same thing, but with free foot extended slightly to the rear.  [v. difficult on left leg, but getting a little easier]

Mohawk exercise #1:  first L->R, then R->L.  I make just a little progress each time I do this sequence, but not a lot

• spread-eagle into mohawk, then bring free foot in to ankle [trivially easy L-R, getting easier R-L]
• actual mohawk, starting with foot in 2nd position at ankle [actually I don't think I did this R->L at all today]
• spread-eagly mohawk, extending foot behind

Mohawk exercise #2:  5-step mohawk.  The intent is to alternate directions in a line. I haven't got to that point yet. I'm still practicing this move in fits and starts. I can complete the sequence in the R-L direction if I cheat a little on the mohawk itself. The part that stops me dead is the L-R sequence when I try to step out from LBI to RFO. Even when I manage an awkward version of the stepout, I can't remember which foot to slide for the last step.

2-foot turn (Front to back):  Every time I do this turn to the right, follow it up with the same turn to the left. I find it awkward enough that I often "forget" but I can certainly do it. I'm not even trying to turn it into a LFO 3-turn at this point - I just have no feel for that turn.

2-foot turn or step-out (back to front):  Every time I do this turn to the left , follow it up with the same thing to the right. Okay, most of the time I skip the turn to the right. Even on two feet, it's hard.

Ice Dance Breakdown:  practice 6-count progressive sequence, concentrating on strong pushoff on the inside edge. This just recently came to me in an aha moment last week (I think), but only in the counter-clockwise direction (LFO). I'm trying to get the same feeling the other direction, but so far without success. In fact, concentrating on it tends to confuse me.

Hard stuff:  Started working on the Cross-Behind move, but only holding onto the wall. I have serious doubts that I'm ready to incorporate a move like that into a dance (it's coming up in dance #3, Rhythm Blues).

 

Comments

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I've ever said how impressed I am at your enthusiasm for ice skating and your determination to work at it. From what I can understand of your workout plan, it sounds really well thought out.

Regarding your earlier comments about not getting much help from your instructors on balance issues, I find it's often true that the people teaching something are those for whom it came easily. They can teach the stuff they had to work at, that someone had to explain to them, but not necessarily the things they learned easily. I'm imagine people who have explicit teacher training are better at this than people who are simply good at whatever the subject is (thinking of the many university professors who may be brilliant researchers but abysmal teachers). Glad you've worked out a way to do it yourself.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Thanks!!

I agree with you about people having a hard time teaching things that come easily to them. But in the case of the balance-mirroring I'm looking for something very specific, something based in recent discoveries about how the brain works. It's entirely possible that there is not yet any research on this. But there OUGHT to be. It would be of great interest to two groups: high-end trainers that work with elite athletes and physical therapists who work with people with brain injuries. I wish I knew where to start looking for this information.