June 2009
Week of June 1, 2009
Weight Training Class
Several of the regulars in my pilates class attend a weight training class immediately before. It gives them a good mix of structured exercise for one trip to the gym. If it’s working for them, I decided to give it a try. I like resistance training and spend a fair portion of my workout time in the fitness room using the machines. Muscle burns more calories than fat. My lower half is already quite muscular from skating, but I need to develop my upper body.
Barbells are utilized in class. I chose one and attached a conservative amount of weight and brought a couple of extra disks to my area to add as needed. I took a step and mat for sit-ups and push-ups. The studio was packed. People had so much stuff gathered around them, I wondered how we would avoid tripping on all of the equipment. Many of the exercises require the barbell to be held on the shoulders behind the neck. I found this very uncomfortable. It hurt my neck. I was not resting the barbell on my neck, but felt I had to tilt my head slightly forward to position the barbell. My wrists also hurt. I have had a serious hand injury and have to be careful of my wrist. For squats, I took a padded weighted bar hoping it would be more comfortable. It was slightly better, but my neck and wrists were already tired.
The push-ups put me over the edge. Even though I did girly push-ups with my knees on the mat, the force of my body concentrated on my wrist was too much. I had to take a break. I know my wrists are not strong, but I still felt discouraged. I am over forty years old and have had injuries. I am also a big girl. My body is not what it used to be. I am trying my best to get back into shape and lose a little weight, but it is a battle, especially when I have to face my physical limitations.
After class, the instructor, who also teaches pilates, asked how I liked the weight training. I told her about my hand injury and that the push-ups really bothered me. Apparently, a lot of people struggle with push-ups due to wrist strain. “Okay,” she said, “So you can’t do the push-ups”. Unfortunately, it did not stop there. Holding the barbell in what seemed like an awkward position was also difficult for me. I did not think of it at the time, but if I could use aerobics weights, maybe I could continue to participate in the class without discomfort. I liked the class. I sweated and felt sore (in a good way) afterward. Next week, I might try it again if I can substitute aerobic weights for the barbell. I will ask the instructor next time I see her.
Week of June 1, 2009 Part Two
Toe Pick!
Students toe pushing and not bending their knees are the two banes of my existence as a skating instructor. Toe pushing is such a tremendous problem, I will have to vent about knee bend in a future entry. Adults seem to give up the toe push habit much more readily than children. I attribute this to the ability of adults to understand and follow directions. Younger children seem to have trouble with these skills probably due to intellectual immaturity. Young children also lack body awareness and are still developing musculature and coordination. While children may be able to excel far beyond their adult skating counterparts with more advanced elements, they tend to be less receptive beginners.
Proper stroking, the foundation of movement on ice, consists of turning out the stroking foot and pushing against the ice with the blade as the knees bend. The feet come back together and the process continues with the other foot. The toe pick does not contact the ice. Saturday afternoon public skaters dig their picks into the ice to propel themselves forward. Most learn-to-skate students have some previous experience in public sessions and have developed the toe push habit by the time they enroll for professional instruction. Breaking the habit requires remarkable patience from the coach. Typically, kids will watch my demonstration then impale their toe picks into the ice and lift the leg to the side in a comic burlesque of my grace. But they are not mimicking me for the sake of humor. I draw blade positions on the ice and have the kids stand with one foot turned out. By the time they push off, the foot turns back in so the toe pick can engage the ice. I crouch down and position the kid’s feet and guide the push while the uncomfortable child places an insecure hand on my back. Sometimes they get it after this exercise, at least once in while. Most people have a stronger side. The stronger side usually conforms to the new motion before the other. It is very common to see a child blade push with one foot then toe push with the other.
I will only work on this very important skill for about five to seven minutes of a half-hour class and combine it with warm-up. After that, the kids are obviously not making more progress, and I am ready to scream. It’s time to move on. Stroking is a required skill for USFSA Basic 3. I have held many a student back because of completely unacceptable toe pushes. I cannot in good conscience pass a student on to another instructor who still toes pushes nearly 100% of the time. However, if the kid can stroke properly 50% of the time with both feet, the child will pass. Skating is an ongoing challenge, and the kid will have to continue to work on stroking throughout his or her skating career.
As a former childhood recreational roller skater, I have developed a theory about toe pushing. My first pair of roller skates (they were quads in the seventies) did not have toe stops. I had to turn out my feet to be able to engage the sides of the wheels to push forward. It has been years since I attended a public roller skating session, so I don’t know if untrained roller skaters push with their toe stops. If I were a gambler, I would bet real money on it. My theory has two parts. Part one: people walk by rolling to the ball of the foot and pushing off with the toes. This motion translates seamlessly to pushing with the toe pick of an ice skate. This is also why ice skating instructors discourage beginners from wearing hockey skates for their first lessons. The children fall right over the front of their blades and onto their bellies. The toe pick does provide some safety for the absolute beginner. We first teach beginners to march, so they will lift their feet without toe raking. Then we teach swizzles to get the feet to turn out and the knees to bend. Basic stroking follows. The second part of my theory involves removing the possibility of toe pushing once the student is able to move and glide on the ice. This is when children who are interested in hockey trade in their rental figure skates for hockey blades. I wish I could wrap every toe pick with duct tape at this point of a skater’s development. This would eliminate dependence on the pick to push forward. It might be useful to put skaters on inlines, which do not have toe stops so they must turn out their feet to push.
If I had a dollar for every time I have said “No toes!”, I could buy a villa in the south of France.
Week of June 7, 2009
Where is Everybody?
The season is just about dead. Almost no one showed up for skating class on a sunny afternoon. However, all of the pros were at the rink. During one class, there were almost as many pros as students. I am supposed to team teach a tot class with a younger instructor, serving as a mentor of sorts. Only one child came to the class, and another teenage instructor had no one to teach, so she wanted to buddy up with her friend. I simply will not do three-on-one. If I wanted to be tough, I could have told the other young instructor to take a hike. However, I preferred to skate guard the practice area, which gives me an opportunity to interact with students and talk to parents. Fortunately, once I am signed in, I get paid whether or not anyone appears for class. But how long can such an unprofitable system persist?
This is getting ridiculous. Why does the management keep so many instructors on the payroll? They may be needed during peak season or may be called to substitute, but they really do not need to have regular classes year-round. The manager’s heart is in the right place. She wants to give everyone classes. However, a one-student group does not make good business sense. As enrollment decreases, spreading classes thin prevents anyone from earning a decent living or being exposed to enough students to recruit privates. In my opinion, the management needs to decide who is on their core staff. Core staff pros should have a demonstrated record of reliability and experience. There is nothing wrong with hiring seasonal staff to absorb the winter overflow, but relegate them to the sub list in the summer. Keep the core staff working and satisfied. If pros are hired as seasonal help, their expectations will be in line with the rink’s needs. They won’t expect classes all year when there are few to distribute. Nobody wants their income to plummet five months out of the year. It is bad enough that recreational private students tend to take the summer off. Pros depend on classes for continued income and as a potential source of new pupils. While it might be argued that “something is better than nothing”, I find comparing whatever I have to absolute nothing paints a bleak economic picture.
Very small group classes with one or two students also spoil children and parents into a false sense of what group instruction is. They may become frustrated when business picks up again in the fall and the instructor’s intention must be divided among a larger number of skaters. Why pay for private lessons when “group” is essentially “private” anyway? I think running group lessons this way could be a potentially problematic decision.
I have worked as a seasonal instructor and a sub. Of course, it isn’t great. Some people call it “paying your dues”, and most skating coaches start that way. Many rinks hire teenagers to teach overflow classes in the winter or to help with tots. In my experience, these young people may be good skaters, but they completely lack teaching skills. Certainly this is not true of all teenage pros, but most require mentoring. In my experience, teaching technique is more important for learn-to-skate than high test levels or competitive achievements. So cut back on inexperienced staff when business declines and bring them back for more training at peak season when they can work with veteran coaches.
As long as I continue to have classes and get paid, none of this should not bother me. Last summer, the manager depended on me to teach because she did not have excess staff. Maybe that is one of the reasons she wants to keep extra pros around. However, once my workload decreases so less experienced unproven people can have classes, I will be angry. This is coming from an adult with bills to pay.
Week of June 14, 2009
Three-and-a-Half Years
The minimum age for ice skating students is usually set at three-and-a-half years; although, I know a coach who regularly teaches a two-year-old, but this is very rare. Even at the tender age of three-and-a-half, many students are not ready to learn to skate. Reasons for this include separation anxiety from the parent, emotional or behavioral immaturity, lack of muscular development, etc. Some coaches will limit private lessons to fifteen minutes for tots due to short attention span and physical limitations. I have a weekly student who is three-and-a-half years old. The little girl, who I shall call Madison*, is able to handle a thirty-minute lesson.
When I first began to work with the kid, she could not stand up on the ice, collapsed into my arms, and required more than a boost to get her back on her blades. Now Madison can march slowly by herself. She can dip, hop on two feet, glide, and turn around. I am struggling to teach her swizzles. Still she has made wonderful progress. She is beginning to understand the concept of turning out her feet, but Madison is limited by her ability to communicate. While her language abilities are age-appropriate, she is unable to follow directions or comprehend a demonstration. She is also easily distracted by other people in the rink and the presence of her parents on the other side of the Plexiglas. None of this is unusual given the child’s age. I draw on the ice for Madison and position her feet manually. I ask her to look at my feet and copy what I am doing. I make up silly names for movements such as “duck feet” for turn out and “fishes” for swizzles. Of course, I draw colorful fish on the ice for her.
Madison’s mother has extremely high expectations for her daughter, which could potentially backfire in the future. Little three-and-a-half-year-old Madison attends school five days a week (not daycare – school) and takes gymnastics and ballet in addition to ice skating. Mom wanted to get Madison on the ice for an additional lesson every week, but could not bring the kid to a daytime public session because Madison is in school. I wondered why on earth a three-and-a-half-year-old child needs to go to school every day, especially when Mom does not work. It seems she is afraid that if Madison does not get a jump on everyone else, she will be left horribly behind and will never be successful. There seems to be so much pressure on children to perform and on parents to offer them bountiful opportunities that these kids have no free time even when they are newly toilet trained. I am not a parent, so maybe I don’t understand, but I cannot help but be concerned about the stress placed on children like Madison.
Her family obviously has a few coins to rub together, and they want what they want. Madison’s mom can become a pain in the ass. She wants lessons when the rink does not have a session. On a rare basis, this can be accommodated, but not all the time. She wants me to come to the rink for the exclusive purpose of giving her daughter a half-hour lesson. If I lived five miles from the rink, this would not be an issue. Even though I need the money, there comes a point when certain things are just impractical. Again, I told her I can do this occasionally, but I cannot do it every week. If she decides to find another coach who will jump through her hoops, I will not be disappointed or surprised. This is the same parent who hired someone else to work with her son. She has no loyalty to me, and I don’t necessarily blame her. Coaching is a business, and it is her money to spend as she chooses.
I explained my situation with Madison and her mother to another pro who has experience teaching very young children. She thinks I might be better off if Madison went to another instructor. Eventually, Mom may blame what she perceives as Madison’s lack of progress not on her age or aptitude but on me as her teacher. Not every child is born to ice skate. The truth is: Madison is in outer space during our lessons. She is a well-behaved cute little girl, but I wonder if her mother has dropped her in over her head.
* Names have been changed.
Week of June 20, 2009
Tenth Anniversary
I wrote the first entry of this journal during the week of June 22, 1999. Ten years have passed. The only other anniversary I have marked with an entry was the first three years, though I mentioned the five-year milestone in passing. Where does the time go? This age old cry becomes louder the older I get. Ten years is a full quarter of my life. I actually began journaling in my sophomore year of high school, though my handwritten journal was not skating specific and is probably replete with teenage angst. I still keep a handwritten journal, though not as faithfully as I did as a younger person. Parts of my nonskating life have crept into this journal as well. As an adult, major life experiences have affected my skating dramatically, as I am sure they affect other adult athletes. Although the last ten years seem to have blown by in a flash, a lot has happened. When I think of how those years were filled, it feels like a long time. I have faced many traumatic events including my husband’s heart surgery, moving, my own injuries, professional problems that led me to try coaching as a primary pursuit, and finally the death of my father.
I do not skate much for myself anymore. I am not completely sure why. Maybe personal skating has run its course in my life for now. I began taking lessons in 1992 at the age of twenty-five. As a young child (about seven years old) I took group lessons for a couple of months or a few, I cannot recall. After that, I skated recreationally on my own without instruction. Most of my skating was on quad roller skates. Many kids grow up riding a bicycle; I grew up with wheels on my feet. Today it seems kids grow up in a desk chair in front of a computer screen with a cell phone attached to their ears and an electronic game in their hands. Every child in my neighborhood owned a pair of roller skates. We asked for permission to use the telephone. Yeah, and we walked five miles to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways.
Overall, I have been skating for about thirty-five years. That is a long time. For the first few years of my journaling, I worked on multi-rotation jumps. Later, I switched to ice dance. Then I went back to work fulltime and was lucky to skate once a week. In 2004, I started teaching group lessons. Now I am a staff pro at an ice rink. I’ve worked at a total of four rinks and have trained and practiced at many others. I have also flirted with a return to my skating roots with roller dance and compulsory figures lessons. That roller rink closed a couple of years ago. I also have done some outdoor distance skating and have experimented with rockered inline Pic Skates. I am presently interested in inline speed skating, though I have yet to take the plunge into buying equipment.
Other than curiosity about speed skating, I do not have defined skating goals at the present time. I would love to pass all of the freestyle tests for which I am qualified. Lacking an axel, this would take me through adult silver and standard track juvenile moves in the field. I would also like to pass my pre-bronze dances and return to ice dance lessons with no apparent limits in sight. However, I cannot afford coaching. That has been a major obstacle for me. I have been skating for so long that I don’t feel like practicing in a vacuum with no direction. Testing never interested me when I could afford it, and I only took a few tests. It’s easy to say I want to test now because it is not a possibility, but I definitely would like to take lessons and work through the dances. I love to watch solo dance, and I love to skate solo dance, though I don’t intend to compete in anything.
Unfortunately, teaching has gotten dull. Coaching is a job. I really don’t even want to be in the rink if I am not working. Sometimes, I don’t want to be there when I am working. It seems I teach the same crap over and over. Students struggle with the same skills group after group. I have developed methods to get students over their problems, both from my own knowledge and through interaction with other pros. Once in a while, I will come across a talented student or a kid who is willing to work hard, but they are uncommon. True commitment is rare and not limited to skating. I work with a couple of good students now. I am trying to get one involved in private lessons, but the parents are reluctant. Maybe they can’t afford it either.
I still skate well and can impress viewers. My foundation of skills is stable due to years of cultivation and dedication, but I have very little new material to add to the mix. Obviously, I am not done with skating if I am willing to strap on a pair of five-wheel speed skates and take my chances. I also want a pair of Snow White freestyle inlines. Once I complete the career transition I am making via a return to school, I plan to give up coaching and return to skating purely for myself. At that time, I will hire an ice dance coach and see how far I can go.
On the twentieth anniversary of this web journal, I will be over fifty years old. I will probably still be skating.
Week of June 22, 2009 Part Two
Skater Girls
Only two people showed up for the last low freestyle class for the spring season. All of the younger coaches decided to stay on the ice after teaching their classes to skate together. Had no one showed up for my low freestyle, I probably would have skated with them. However, I took the opportunity to teach my two dedicated students new skills. They learned forward outside and forward inside toe turns, waltz threes, half-flip jump, Jenkins (undercut) spiral, hydroblade, and basic upright spin from a backward crossover windup entrance. We made great progress and I enjoyed working with them.
Meanwhile the young coaches, ages about eighteen to twenty-five goofed around on the ice accompanied by a couple of paying customers. I do not know if these girls are simply out of practice or if they are not very accomplished skaters, but they could not do much. Maybe I expect people who are younger to be better skaters by virtue of the fact that they are simply younger and learned as children. I assume they are physically fit. So I am guilty of stereotyping. One does not need highly advanced skills to teach learn-to-skate at a recreational rink, but the quality of one girl’s flip jump left me befuddled. I could easily be her mother, and I can pop off better flips completely out of practice than I saw her execute that evening. Even though I have taken few tests to document my accomplishments, I may have trained at a higher level as an adult than she did as a teen.
The youngest of the group has an attractive spiral. She keeps her torso elevated and can raise her free leg very high. This indicates a flexible back and strong leg muscles. She also performs a nice layback. I expected to see at least one axel from somebody. No axels were forthcoming. Of course, my attention was primarily focused on my students, but I was aware of the activity in the rink, if only to guard my skaters from collisions.
From an insider’s perspective, it seems the world is full of skating coaches. There’s a boatload of them competing for a decreasing pool of students. While this may not be an accurate assessment for highly qualified coaches working at rinks with serious freestyle skating schools, it certainly seems to be the case at recreational arenas that specialize in learn-to-skate with limited freestyle opportunities. Rinks like Ice Castle do not draw the most experienced coaches. Such coaches simply do not have adequate opportunities at recreational rinks. However, it’s a perfect match for me and apparently also for younger retired competitors who never passed the higher tests. However, of the professionals I have known, most can still complete very neat, precise single jumps with the possible exception of the dreaded axel. Older pros give up landing axels for practical reasons including age, injury, and risk of injury. A coach with a broken leg can’t work on the ice and would have to coach from the players’ box to students who can benefit from verbal instruction without demonstration. Such students generally skate at a high level and need critiquing rather than presentation of skills.
In my current state of training, which is limited, I could out-skate all of these younger people. At the risk of patting myself on the back too hard, I dare say my skating would have impressed my juniors had I been able to practice with them. Based on my observations, I can only conclude that these youngsters were never very capable skaters. I don’t know what perceptions they may have of my background, but for all I know, they may think I was a competitive skater in the seventies and eighties. This would make them also guilty of stereotyping. They probably assume I learned compulsory figures. I did not, but former eligible skaters presently in their forties certainly were trained in figures. My bio on the pro board says I have 30+ years of skating experience, which is absolutely true, though not in competitive and test skating. None of these people is nearly thirty years old.
Tuesday June 29, 2009
My Skating Novel
Today I posted the final chapter of my skating novel, “Saving Grace”; although the chapter had been written for about two weeks prior to posting. This is the first story I have actually completed that did not have an academic due date associated with it. When I was a teenager I loved to write stories, all of which I wrote by hand. I even wrote my Master of Science thesis by hand in 1988 and took it to a typist before submitting the document to my research committee for final approval. Computers were somewhat of a novelty in those days and I had never used one. I never finished any of the stories I wrote for pleasure as a young person. Most of them have disappeared over the years. One of them, the longest, is in box in my father’s basement. I began writing it in the fifth grade. During my freshman year of high school, I outgrew the plot and quit cold turkey.
I would actually like to change the title of my skating novel. When I posted the first installments in 1999, I thought “Saving Grace” was a clever title, but it seems almost cliché as it has been used before. However, I do not know what else I would call it. With the plethora of skating biographies and insider books that have been appearing on the market since the Tonya and Nancy debacle in 1994, just about every clever skating pun has been used to title some book or another. I will have to put serious thought into a witty new title.
Hopefully this summer I will write an epilogue. I have even considered a prologue to tie the whole work together. We shall see if this actually happens. Originally, I planned to complete the novel in 2005, when I went on hiatus from writing for various personal and professional reasons that all resulted in lack of time and concentration to devote to an essentially unnecessary and largely thankless project. At the time, the penultimate chapter was already written. The phantom axel plot element seemed somewhat ridiculous, but I did not want to abandon it and considered reworking the entire chapter from scratch. Rereading the piece again this month, it no longer struck me as silly. I liked the way it tied other parts of “Kate’s” odyssey together. Usually, I allow a chapter or journal entry to gel overnight before proofreading it. I need to disconnect myself from my own influence and read it from a fresh outside perspective. After posting chapter ninety-six, “Skating Mount Everest”, I quickly coughed up chapter ninety-seven, “Fields of Gold”.
During the novel’s original conception, I never intended Kate to land an axel and pass her gold test. When I began the first drafts of my ideas, I doubt adult testing even existed, at least not in the form it does now. I added it to the storyline later after it entered the real world. So why did I decide to give Kate an axel, no matter how mediocre? First, the axel had to be imperfect, and she had to be willing to accept her best efforts. She would also have to go through all kinds of hell for it, which is Kate’s modus operandi. I could not and would not give Kate a good axel. That would defeat the purpose of the entire journey of self-discovery and acceptance that drove her since she first developed an interest in skating as a young parentally unsupported child.
I also wanted to send a message about adult skating; in fact, about any endeavor undertaken as an adult or in childhood. Kate undertook many of them, and often had to settle as most of us, who are not born prodigies, do. Kate was willing to brutalize herself for the axel, an education, a career, and a good marriage. Hard work does not always make dreams come true, at least not in the sense a person may originally envision. Dreams are dynamic and change during the course of hard work. The individual eventually realizes his or her limitations and learns about “personal best” and how to be content within the confines of self. Kate finally got it, and she landed her axel and passed her gold test. However, neither was perfect and both were somewhat anticlimactic, as she had already satisfied herself with her performance at the regional competition where she did not win or even place.
In the end, Kate stuffed her achievement in a drawer and symbolically closed it. She did leave the gold certificate on top of her pile of achievements, though I doubt she would open that drawer often to admire it. She was satisfied to have achieved a goal of sorts and walk or skate away.
Visit the skating novel.
Read chapter ninety-six: Skating Mount Everest.
Read chapter ninety-seven: Fields of Gold.
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