March 2007
I caught a cold again. This is the third one this winter, but I must be developing some type of immunity because I did not get as miserably sick as the two previous outbreaks. On Tuesday, I was trapped in a hot room with people sneezing all around me. Before long, I joined in. Maybe I got sick in that room, maybe it was just a coincidence. I could have caught the cold from one of my many runny-nosed students. I worked with a tot whose nostrils were filled with conspicuous green ooze. Why did the parent bring this kid to the rink? At least put a tissue in the child’s pocket.
As a result, I did not skate for myself, but got to the rink for teaching. However, one day I had some spare time after teaching on a freestyle session and worked up a sweat against my better judgement. The die-hard in me just could not abandon that almost empty rink. I payed for it the rest of the day with watery eyes and a headache.
This season, I cannot seem to get consistent practice. One thing after another keeps me off the ice. Hopefully, next week I will feel well enough to get back to training.
Week of March 9, 2008
Right From Left
An impediment to learning for group lesson children is their lack of knowledge of left and right. This is not just one kid every here and there. At least half of them do not know the difference. The younger they are; the more prevalent the problem. Don’t kids do the “Hokey Pokey” in nursery school or kindergarten anymore? Never mind that. Don’t their parents play silly little games with them to teach the crudest fundamentals? Come on, parents. Your children need to put their left foot in and take their left foot out. Kids often ask me which leg is left. I direct the students to place their right toe in the ice, and they mirror me. I have to turn around, my back to the class, so they can copy me. I ask them to raise their right hand. A significant portion of the class raises the left. “Other right,” I tell them with a warm smile. Poor kids.
This is especially problematic when teaching higher level skills such as one-foot swizzles on a circle and crossovers. Children try to push around the circle with the inside leg. Yes, this is a new concept for them. They are beginning skaters and may have never participated in an athletic activity before. Many are blatantly uncoordinated. Skating is good for them. Let’s face it, young or old, everyone needs exercise. I have seen far too many fat children. Back to the point. When circle-skating, as I call beginning exercises that lead to crossovers, I often have to skate alongside the student and physically touch the stationary leg and help the kid pump the employed leg. Otherwise, they cannot comprehend which leg is supposed to be doing what. Telling them “left” or “right” does not work. Maybe they are visual or tactile learners. Regardless, this does not excuse children from raising the left hand when the teacher asks for the right.
During a half-hour lesson, I cover several skating skills with my classes. In addition, I teach kids common knowledge. Hopefully, all of my students leave my class knowing right from left. Now, if I could only get them to bend their knees.
Week of March 9, 2008; Part Two
The Glass Ceiling
I finally feel well enough to practice. I’m even sneaking in extra time before and after teaching. That’s good. I need the practice. I have felt discouraged lately because illness and my toe problem has kept me from training. When I come back, I have lost enough ground to be frustrated by things that should not be an issue anymore. Then I conveniently get sick again and nullify whatever work I have invested. It has been a vicious cycle.
In addition, I believe that I may have hit a glass ceiling; risen to my own level of incompetence. For various reasons, I do not foresee myself working on axels and doubles anymore. A serious injury would take me out of coaching. Not only would I lose my clients, I would forfeit the majority of my income, something I simply cannot afford to do. I have to play it smart. For as long as I rely on coaching financially, I cannot brutalize my body the way I did in the good old days. Sadly, I am not sure how much higher level footwork is in my future. I broke my ankle doing a series of three-turns. Since that accident, I cannot force myself to commit to the rogue element that caused my downfall. I have become cautious. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is right now.
I am unwilling to give up on footwork, as good basic skills are the root of all skating. To overcome my discomfort with opposite direction turns on my formerly damaged right foot, I practice simple exercises including forward power threes. I have also incorporated the Adult Pre-Bronze forward three-turn pattern into my skill set. This is a fundamental pattern that replaced the alternating forward three-turns on the hockey line in the USFSA*** adult testing system. I like this new pattern because it incorporates all of the forward three-turns with backward skating. It can flow smoothly and works well when dealing with injury-based fear. Before I move on to any of the more advanced three-turn patterns, I must become comfortable with this one.
So where is my personal skating going? It doesn’t sound like I have left much room. I have decided to refocus on advanced spinning. The backward layback I am learning from a coaching friend is coming along nicely. I have blown the dust off my flying camel and started to revive my death drop. Yes, it is possible to walk through a death drop. I stepped through the jump into the back sit spin then tried a humble jumped version. This will come back. I have to exhume a few other jumped spins like the butterfly and flying sit. These are real possibilities. I am also working on difficult combinations, skills like a layback into a camel without a change of leg. The Code of Points judging system has put plenty of interesting spin variations out there for us copy-cats, though I doubt I'll do "the pearl" during this incarnation. My vertebrae do impose certain limitations. Since spinning is my strength anyway, potential exists for improvement and growth.
*** View videos and diagrams from the adult moves tests on the USFSA web site.
Weekend of March 15 & 16, 2008
Ice Network
My husband signed up for icenetwork.com. Amazing that I did not insist upon it earlier. I’m really not sure why I did not explore this service before, other than I thought the video quality would probably be bad and there is plenty of skating available for free on youtube. For those who don’t know what the heck I’m blathering about, icenetwork is an online skating “channel”, for lack of a better word. Originally, as I understand, icenetwork was actually proposed as a cable/satellite television network that would show skating 24/7. Sounds mind-blowingly wonderful, doesn’t it? The TV idea didn’t fly for some reason, but it made it to the internet as a subscription service that sells for a nominal yearly fee.
Yes, the video has glitches and mysteriously locks up once in a while, and navigation through a competition event can be frustrating; but, other than that, it is pretty darned cool. In fact, I may never have to get out of this chair again. I literally have hours of entertainment right at my fingertips. I can watch skating until I puke. Always one of my ambitions…
I have never been the type of person to fawn over the most famous skaters and anxiously await their tenth performance of the same old program in a season. Sorry, loyal fans of whomever. Like everyone else, I have my favorites, but I get sick of them too. I want to see the unsung skater, the person who maybe doesn’t have all of the jumps, but skates gorgeous edges and has an interesting signature spin. I like skaters whose names I have already forgotten and no one else knows. I like the also-rans who are never shown on TV and aren’t necessarily ready for primetime. The casual fan thinks these skaters suck. The casual fan wants to watch Big Name skating in a designer costume packaged to perfection with music, choreography, and rehearsed facial expression. Nothing wrong with that. Skating is entertainment as well as athletic competition. But imagine if Lucinda Ruh’s performances were never seen because she missed her jumps. That would be a terrible waste.
I rarely attend competitions myself and certainly never as a participant. I have never witnessed an adult competition, though I have stepped out of the path of many adult skaters practicing their competitive programs. I know what local adults can do, but I am rather clueless about championship adults. Since icenetwork came over my cable line, I have the answers to all of my questions. Opinions about adult competition vary greatly depending on who you ask and their personal investment in adult skating. Parents of competitive children may find it ridiculous, a skater’s coworkers may question that person’s sanity, the athletes themselves may find it challenging, fun or motivational. The politically correct position seems to be: “Good for them. They are an inspiration.” That is just fine until it deteriorates into the well-intended but condescending: “You look great for an adult [for your age].”
That being said, I can readily distinguish those who trained as children from those who learned as adults. These two categories are commonly referred to as “former child skaters” and “adult trained skaters”. Of course, I cannot interview every adult on icenetwork and find out who really took lessons as a kid and who did not, but the difference is usually obvious. Former child skaters tend to project confidence and grace on the ice that their adult-trained counterparts often lack. In general, they skate faster and their jumps are bigger. They can usually do a good quality axel; whereas, the adult-trained axel may be under-rotated, small, or otherwise awkward. In fact, those who look like they skated as children, but really didn’t, have achieved the ultimate goal. I am not saying that others are not meeting their goals or their skating is not worthwhile. Without digging a bigger hole, I will say: skating has many aspects and avenues to personal fulfillment. That is why it is so intriguing to its enthusiasts.
I am impressed with some of the adult skating I have watched. I would probably be even more impressed if I knew the stories behind the skaters. I am glad adult skating and other lesser known segments of the sport are being made available for viewing. Looking forward to Adult Nationals on my computer screen…
Week of March 23, 2008
Demon Child
I subbed for another coach this week on a daytime public session. She had two tots classes. I really don’t enjoy teaching tots, in most cases. However, tots that can move around are just like any other class. Picking up kids who cannot stand on their own is back-breaking work. The moment I get one on his feet, another one goes down; more often than not dragging his neighbor along for the ride. The first class was fine; just two girls who were eager to learn and fairly capable. I enjoyed teaching them.
The next group was more dysfunctional and composed of students with grossly mismatched abilities. A couple of the children could not skate at all. I had to give two kids walkers, those nasty metal contraptions that resemble a hybrid sled/shopping cart. One little boy cried his eyes out and clung to his mother in the doorway to the ice. The manager cooed and coaxed him to try the walker. Meanwhile, I proceeded to teach the students who were not throwing a fit. One girl grabbed a spare walker and pushed the thing haphazardly across the rink. This child did not need the walker, and the manager encouraged her to give it up. That did not last long. I had the group attempting various movements such as marching, swizzles, and backward wiggles. The crybaby finally pushed his walker out into the fray and stumbled along with the group, his previous panic forgotten.
The girl drifted away from the class, as occasionally happens in lower level, nonhomogeneous groups. She wanted to toe-push back and forth rather than participate in whatever activity the rest of the class was doing. I encouraged her to rejoin the fun. The girl turned toward me, eyes narrow and fiery. “I've had enough,” she growled viciously. This child is only about six or seven years old, and her face dripped with raging hatred. I literally recoiled. For a moment, she startled me. I half expected her head to spin around. Projectile vomiting would not have been a surprise either. Where does something like that come from?
And she did it more than once. I eased up on her and let her do her thing. However, the parent was watching from the balcony and I could not just ignore a six-year-old child no matter how possessed she may have seemed. Apparently her mother had bribed her into coming, saying she only had to do a certain number of minutes of the lesson. When the clock struck quitting time, the kid turned on me like a rabid animal. The kid did not want to be in the class and was angry at me for trying to teach her. She just wanted to barrel-ass across the rink with that walker.
So how does a kid become a demon child? I assume she learned it at home. The parents may use similar techniques on each other or their daughter. Who knows what really happens in the home life of any given student? It is rather sad. Of course, the kid could also suffer from a bipolar disorder or other condition producing irrational or highly variable behavior. In any case, I did not want to provoke the child. I try to read the signs and back off whenever necessary. Most likely, the kid is just a spoiled little brat who gets her way by throwing ugly tantrums. If it works on mom and dad, it should also work on the skating coach. I mentioned this girl to the manager who has dealt with her before. “Oh, yeah,” she told me, “that kid’s a pain in the ass.” At the very least.
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