- gloves

Hair pieces, boot polish, tights, skate dress -- a lot goes into a skating costume. When you get fully comfortable, skilled, and graceful, you can don that last flashy accessory: elbow-length gloves.

Opera gloves are a bit of an aesthetically dangerous garment to add to your oeuvre: without doubt they pull attention toward the completion of graceful arm and hand movements. If you don these before your elements are fully competent though, the rest of your program will appear considerably diminished by comparison.

Gloves may only be appropriate at a narrow band of expressiveness. It's like when a guy wears a muscle shirt with arm cutouts: it's unflattering if he has nothing to show. On the other hand if he's already built like Arnold Schwarzenegger then the arm cutouts aren't particularity necessary either.

Wear long gloves when your hands and arms need a bit of assistance expressing what they can already show reasonably well. Only however after you've already figured out how to shine on all of your other elements.

- up

Even with the most thorough practicing it can happen: gliding joyfully through the middle of your program, in an unfortunately relaxed moment your brain goes blank. Empty. Silence on the radio. The program music still plays; only if you had a map you could glance around for a reminder of direction.

The phrase I've heard for this is "going up." I'm unsure why it's called that, but in theater it's long been used to signify that you've forgotten your lines.

So now what? Well, it's time to ad lib, or as Sheri says here, fake it until you make it.

Mentally this requires a shift from the playback learning part of your brain over to the playful imaginative lobe of your brain.

I suppose it makes sense that since you know this occasionally can happen, you should also prepare for it. Practicing to ad lib means allowing your imagination to run free, while still keeping time to the music and additionally keeping some semblance of physical control about yourself.

It may seem a bit odd to your coach or the other skaters at the rink that you would spin a whole program just to improvise, but consider the benefit! It's worth a run through at least once each freestyle, if for no other reason than to build confidence and remove the fear of ad libbing when those brainwaves suddenly evaporate.