- arm calculus

My daughter once pointed out to me that if the athleticism of skating is in the legs, then certainly the grace of skating is in the arms. Indeed regardless of their program, you can pretty much identify who is skating just by watching her arm style.

If you were to break it down into micro-analytic pieces you'd have to say that a skater's arm style (her armamentation?) consists of camber, clock angle, motion control, rhythmics, and dynamics. Getting all of these "right" is quite a challenge.

Start with camber: how straight, uplifted and parallel your arms are with the ice. You develop this from your shoulder strength. Droopy arms? I like the weight machines where you sit facing the pad, grab the handles and then pivot up the cylindrical pads with your elbows (straight shoulder presses seem to me to be too hard on your spine). Train for strong shoulders to keep those arms elevated.

Once your arms are up there it still takes lots of practice to anchor your awareness so that your body movement doesn't destabilize the arm positions.

Clock angle is how the arms extend from your trunk when viewed from above. Naturally the expectation is that they point at 3 and 9 o'clock (straight out sideways). I have occasionally seen a slightly closed arm, say at 2 o'clock instead. Far more common though seems to be arms that are correctly "opposed" and yet twisted to the body, at 4 and 10, for example. Unless you saw yourself on video though I don't know how you'd even become aware of such a thing. It seems common enough that I figure most coaches don't bother to correct it.

Now that you're 3 and 9 and elevated parallel to the ice, we can think about movement. Go watch some ballet and pay attention: arm movements are both meticulously deliberate and tightly controlled. Except for specific reasons of expressive pose they aren't frozen in place: they always have either slow rhythm or directive intent. Except on your spiral I don't want to see you glide with your arms outstretched and fixed like airplane wings. Nor do I want to witness you windmilling or flapping your arms like a bird the entire time either. Your arms should strive for ballet aesthetics.

Finally your arm movements should vary in speed: they should have dynamics. Sometimes your arms move slowly, sometimes they move more quickly. But it's also nice when the change in dynamics is smooth: the transition from slow arms to fast arms should be gradual. For you calculus fans out there, the second derivative of arm movement speed is best when very small.

- non-elite

Although I link to a few "fan blogs" on this site, I certainly recognize how irrelevant they are to what you actually face day in and day out. Only the tiniest, most minuscule percentage of skaters have the financial resources, body type, dedicated time, and fortune of being in a locale that provides the training support to become national-level competitors. Hence watching the elites can be disheartening if you view them with jealousy. Like a twenty-foot pole-vault crossbar, the elites set the highest level goal for the maximum expectations you might achieve. What you can absorb from them most readily though is performance demeanor.

How do they address the audience? What are their entrance, exit, and off-ice routines? How do they spin the audience love? They have honed their presentation dynamics over hundreds of competitions, so pay close attention to their pre-ice routines. What you find, still somewhat typically, is that they are no better nor worse than your local competitors at managing their nerves and their "game face." View this as a relief: it validates that your stage-fright trepidations are entirely normal, even at the highest levels.

Although you won't learn how to jump a triple by watching the elites, you can still pick up many stylistic clues by viewing the international competitors. Jumps are jumps but spins and arm movements throughout the program (along with certain signature moves) vary substantially in style across the continents. I wouldn't suggest you try to directly "copy" a move you have seen at Worlds, but it's perfectly fine to incorporate ideas that you've seen into your own original manifestations of them.

I know that some skaters avoid watching the elites entirely as it makes them feel too frustrated to realize that many things are unattainable. Mainly though, it's better to be comfortable in your self and view those with more fortunate circumstances as sources and inspiration for your own creative ideas.

- amazing

Skating elements change over time: inventive folks create new moves, while other moves fall out of fashion. And then a basic element grows into something more complicated (a double Axel eventually becomes a quad). Yet despite the wide variety of evolving elements, from my humble audience view as a seasoned observer I would only consider a small handful of moves as amazingly elegant (when done properly). So here are my favorites, in no particular order.


Flying Sit

Every time I see this my jaw drops. How does a skater manage the physics to go from upright jump to seated extended leg without breaking a knee?


Graceful Spiral

Hands expressively moving while mostly leading up, back leg perfectly frozen in place, smiling, full speed across the ice, partially open. Beautiful.


Expressive arm Layback

Slowly into the layback, arms holding a beach ball, but than floating or gently transforming into an expression of a colorful flower or a springtime shower.


"Flat" catch-foot Camel

Oh I've only seen this done well but a couple of times. When a skater can catch her bent back foot in a side flat spin without dropping her head below waistline (with a bit of an arm flourish) it's a beautiful thing.


Slow Bielman

The difference between doing a Bielman and a thing of beauty has everything to do with the slow deliberate management of consistent movement. Add a coordinated flowing free-hand flourish for the whip cream and cherry on top.

I don't mind a graceful jump or two, and these are especially nice if you can perform them differently with interesting arms in flight. In my book though this handful of non-jump moves done with graceful athleticism will impress me more than your jumps every time.

- the point

First there is skating skill, the stroke and the jump, the spins and the footwork. Next comes the imagination, the artistic flourishes using the arms, hands, and a projected imagination. Third comes an audience awareness: sensing what they feel and striving to please them.

The final polish though, that keystone that connects all of the pieces together, is the magical ability to "point:" to connect an active imagination with the ability to direct an audience's attention to that which is being imagined.

Pointing takes just as much practice as all of the other pieces, and arcanely you can only practice it with feedback directly in front of an audience.

If you over-point too blatantly, then you come across as fawning. If you under-point then the audience misses half of your presentation.

The best skaters are aware of what they are doing on all four planes: physically, expressively, impressionistically, and metaphysically. This is the point.

(repost)

- truth and lies

In many aspects of life we get by with a good bit of fakery: we pretend to posess a certain set of competencies and then do our best to convince others of this veracity. We put on "airs". After convincing others of the potential of our capabilities we have some breather room to deliver upon the expectations we have set. Some of this will involve apologies for temporary shortcomings, and some of this will stress us to learn and grow to meet our own self-inflicted challenge.

Sports however generally don't work this way: you can't fib your way to the podium. Since sports are physical it's not what you say that matters but rather what you can do.

The physical part of skating works this way as well; you can't deceive others that you can accomplish a certain move. You can wonder, you can give it a try, you can work at it and practice until you get it right. Nobody is going to believe though that you can land a double Axel until you do it. Even though you have your good and bad days, your capabilities this very moment are immediately obvious and demonstrable.

Skating does have a flip side though: showmanship is a lot about a premise. It's about maintaining a front and a promise on what you can deliver. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors -- you move the ether and direct attention, you allow the effects of your costume combined with the music and the rhythm of your moves to create a manufactured effect. You are fibbing what you know about life by imagining what it might be about. To some extent the qualities of your lies need to be more tightly wrapped and precise than the qualities of your physical execution: we will forgive your small hop when you land as the physical realm can be unpredictable. We will be less forgiving of your imaginary faux pas as the theatrical aspect of skating is all of your own creative doing.

Novice viewers can end up with some cross functional psychic confusion here. Performance is a bit of a lie. Yet the athletics in skating is the physical truth of what you can do. When we watch a movie or the theatre we "suspend belief" because we are interested in the play upon the lie, the trajectory and path of the story caused by the false presuppositions. When we watch sports though we are adamant that the athletes stick to the rules: we are ruthlessly opposed to cheaters or those that extravagantly show off beyond their deserved reputation. Skating works for audiences only when the physical authenticity is maintained even while the skater spins an imaginary story. And it works best for audience members who are experienced enough to hold this dichotomy within their consideration.

- manly

Why do so many male figure skaters try to emulate the same style that they see in women's? It seems to me that, after all, a male figure skater has a different palette to choose from than a female skater. I'm not saying that a guy can't be graceful or pretty to watch on the ice, just that he doesn't have to be.

A male skater can be amazing to watch because he is suave, athletic, knightly, classy, or expressive. For example here's a video of Elvis Stojko.

I think a man should take advantage of his wider palette and boldly be expressively inventive on the ice; it's as if men's skating is an entirely different sport than women's.

How does a man achieve an independent style in a sport where eighty percent of the coaches and participants are ladies? Can a female coach understand the palette of a man or should a guy always seek out a male coach?

- gripes

I'm not really in a sour mood or anything, but those couple times in my previous posts where I throw in a sideline of (please don't do this) seem to work better if I roll them all up into one.  Some of these gripes don't find a sentence to slip into another post so you get to see them here instead. Therefore below my gripes about the particulars of how you skate, all rolled up into one. Don't take it personal (but please don't do these).

that third combo weak toe loop
ending your program at the far end of the rink
skating too close to the audience dasher
not starting when your music starts
doing any footwork standing in one place
the leg or head dip before your donut
hair trailing in a ponytail
chatting with your coach after you're announced
showing off during warmup
thinking too much about your routine while skating
telegraphing every jump
blemished skate boots
phoning it in
leaving the ice glum or casually
mouthing the words
acting too literal
paperclip spin
jerking too quickly up to Biellmann
not holding your spiral long enough
popping
choppy music transitions
competing just to get a trophy/medal

Here's the kicker: you can't really keep all of these in your head and think "oh no I better not do that." Rather most of these seem to be a failure to attend carefully to the development of particular /habits/. You can pretty much avoid all of these sins therefore just by developing the appropriate -good- habits to start with, okay? Thanks, and with love, LA SkateDad.

- prunes and prisms

In the comments of a prior post where I was chatting about the larger on-ice sliding props, Maria left me an excellent question:

"At some rinks the judges are sitting on the opposite side from the audience. In that case, how should the prop be positioned, so that the audience sees the front of the prop or the judges?"

This is a bit of a "loaded question" -- it's masqueradingly simple with all sorts of complicated contingency answers. It leads down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, from the crawling ants of convenience past the carrot roots of local custom all the way beyond the deep redwood taproots of philosophy.  Are you ready?

I don't think I've ever visited two rinks with the exact same audience seating / judging arrangements. Some  sport giant bleachers on a single side opposite the hockey dugouts. A few have narrow elevated concrete bleachers all the way around. I visited a couple with glass-wall separated viewing areas rather remote from the ice. Some have family-friendly bleachers conveniently located next to a video-game room, snack room, and vending machines.  And every rink sits their judges differently. Heck some rinks I've been to will even seat judges in varying locations for different competitions! Clearly then a generalized answer takes more thorough analysis.

Before we get too deep though, let's start with the obvious answer: "it depends." Among many things it depends upon:

- are you only skating this in an exhibition once, at a single venue?
- is this an annual competition that your coach has been to before?
- how large will the audience be? How far away do they sit? Elevated or right next to the ice?
- how much of the routine is dependant upon a front/back presentation?
- do you skate better for judges or for an audience?

If this is something like an exhibition light entertainment piece for your local club (while most of the time you are a seriously competitive solo skater) then chances are you will practice it for a couple of months and then have fun with it at this one event. Local showcases are usually pretty well attended so maximize your fun and camaraderie with your clubmates and "present" to the audience -- place the prop where the audience can easily see the front of it, and skate your program directed to them. If the judges are sitting opposite then when you slide your prop toward its position on ice rotate it around slowly so the judges can appreciate the effort you put into assembling it: give them a good glimpse of the thing. You can go too far with this "reveal" though -- I've seen some skaters deliberately bring the prop directly in front of the judges and then feign getting stuck before magically recovering maneuverability to final placement. Please don't do this.

If this is an annual exhibition that your coach has been to before then most likely she will remember how the rink sites the judging.  Even if it is the first time for the competition, likely your coach knows the customary seating if it is a familiar rink, as well as what kind of attendance to expect. Therefore it makes a fair amount of sense to review the audience / judging arrangement with your coach well beforehand, even when you are a month away and still practicing.

Now having said all this there might be times when you want to be more presentable to "judges opposite." Say for example that "light entertainment" is what you do -- where you are primarily trying to make your mark in the skating world. Or if you are skating the same program at several small events with tiny audiences. Then facing the prop towards the judges makes more sense.  I'm not saying the audience should only see the back, but you can have the prop askew somewhat so both the judges and the audience see parts of it. In that case it also makes sense to design your program to be more rounded in its presentation, papering the house without specific front/back bias. Design your prop so that it goes around a corner so each side of the rink sees at least a part of it.

Skating orientation in general is quite a deep subject: some competitors are really out there to advance up the ranks and impress the judges. Others are out there for the showmanship and love of the audience. So even without a large ice-sliding prop you still have this issue in most programs: who are you performing for? Okay now let me wax philosophical... what I *really* like to see in an accomplished skater is someone who plays to the audience 80 per cent of the time and the judges 20 per cent. A good skater also evenly addresses the whole seating arrangement of the audience, with acknowledgements to both sides (if so seated). If you're good enough to perform in an arena you'll consider spending a little more loving attention to the 100 dollar seats at center ice.

Prunes and prisms are ten times more complicated when considered in the context of a production number, such as Theatre on Ice. The props are gigantic constructions and the nuances of the choreography pretty much demand a front-side. I feel quite strongly that judges of a Theatre event should always sit along with the primary audience. In fact, gosh darn it rinks, please seat your judges with the audience, always, for all events. Why would you do it any differently?

- telegraph

I was a rather average basketball guard growing up, practicing about an hour a day or so. One of my problems was that opponents all too frequently stole my passes. Why? Well as my coach explained I needed to stop "telegraphing." It took me a while to comprehend his advice, but basically he was saying that I was thinking too loudly -- I  contemplated my pass a second or two beforehand, and the opponents scanned my thoughts and hence intercepted my pass.

In figure skating nobody is going to jump in and steal your momentum because you are concentrating on your Lutz ahead of time, but something still looks awry. I sometimes wonder if overthinking your jump reflects badly on your professionalism or distracts you from embellishments you could otherwise be performing with your arms, hands, or attitude to infuse more grace.

It seems to me that telegraphing makes the entry into your jump less natural. It's as if you are setting up your muscles to perform ahead of time rather than allowing for your muscle memory to guide you automatically on the exact moment as the time arrives.

Might it be possible to focus more on grace and less on your takeoff, or would doing so adversely affect your jump? How would you know unless you tried?

- dynamics

At a local competition a few months ago I saw a vast variety of musical selections, with the typical flavors of styles and mix of cuts. One number jumped out at me however, for all the wrong reasons. Once she was in pose her music suddenly blared with full speed and intensity and she was off, jump, combo, bing bang boom, chaining one element to the next. All was going along fine technically, but after the initial pop out of our seats the audience dissolved into a quiet funk as the music settled into more standard fare. By the end of her program we had mostly forgotten what had transpired.

You need to be careful when you clip together the musical phrases of your program: what seems to work best is either a crescendo toward the end or something bimodal (like a two hump camel). This gives you the chance to gradually work into your routine and the awareness of the audience to capture their hearts. It also seems to mesh well with the natural nervousness and flow of energy that a skater traverses in her performance. Plan your musical crescendos to match your energy dynamics.

The dynamics of your skate involve quite a bit more though than just the simple up and down mountain profile of your energy. As in dancing you can frame your movements within a flow of expressive parameters. See for example this page, which details most of the currently standard thinking.

- fast and slow

In many sports speed and quickness are assets. In fact they are the entire defining elements of the competitive aspect of some sport. I'm sure you can think of several: running, auto racing, and swimming, just to name a few. In other sports speed plays an underlying dynamic role (in all of the major team sports the fastest players enjoy a competitive advantage).

As figure skating is a hybrid between sport and art, speed figures into the mix within the "sporting" components. Speed on the ice is helpful for establishing momentum for your jumps and angular momentum for your spins. And clean footwork requires quickness. On the other hand both grace and class (elements of the artistic dimension of skating) require demonstratively slower controlled movements.

Skaters who fail to appropriately match the fast and the slow look ridiculous however. It's very difficult to watch an accomplished "fast" skater ruin what might otherwise be a terrific program by the herky jerkiness of her small movements and transitions. It's equally saddening when a beautifully graceful skater can't otherwise keep enough velocity to maintain her spiral the length of the rink.

Be fast of feet and reactivity, but slow with expressive movements. The athletic part of skating is fast, the artistic part is slow. I think ballet (for slow graceful strength) and stroking lessons (for speed) are both helpful here, but it's also about holding the proper "split" mindset. The ideation here is graceful speed.

- choosing

Xan recently posted her thoughts on why you should allow your coach to choose your skating music. After a few weeks of subconscious digestion I recognized that ''music" is only a barometer for a wider issue: how your skater relates to both her coach and the sport.

Naturally the manner that your child uses to make choices gradually changes as she matures. When your kid is little they exhibit definite tastes and won't be shy to express what they *dislike*. At a young age they may not however be fully cognizant of what they actually like -- you can expose them to all sorts of musical styles and most will be "meh" but at any rate all of them will broaden your kid's receptivity to expressiveness. At this point in their education I would follow Xan's advice and let the coach suggest the music, within the bounds that your kid doesn't wrinkle their nose too vehemently upon hearing it.

Once your kid hits around ten or eleven and starts competing regularly they are also going to be exposed to the music from lots of other skaters (and from those skaters' coaches). They will quickly discover that many programs prove more "dynamic" (or fall flat) due to the music. Around the age of twelve you and your skater face a critical juncture with respect to choosing their music. This is not unlike (and perhaps coterminous) with a tad of pre-teen rebellion. Continue along and work with the coach in choosing the music? Or step up to the plate and call your own tune?

At this point I say encourage your kid to select her own music. If it helps at all rest assured you're not risking damage to the relationship with your coach (although she may give you some pushback). If she's seasoned your coach has already seen a wide variety of student personalities; a wizened coach will reserve her doubts.

When your daughter chooses her own music it will have two major impacts. First it will tighten her involvement with actually listening to the music and its feelings. She'll begin to evaluate what she hears outside of the rink against what she thinks might be nice to skate to. More importantly perhaps it will shift her focus slightly away from competing and more toward her artistic expression.

Where can she glean new ideas for music? Have her create a Pandora station with a couple songs that she's already skated and see where the new suggestions lead. Having your teen skater choose her own music will make her a more independently artistic performer.

- dressy

Does your performance dress do anything to help you skate? To say that competing extends to your costume is intuitively correct, but it happens somewhat indirectly from the way that you might think.

Costumes by and of themselves are not a contest. They might be judged as contributive to score in something like ice theater, where extravagant showmanship carries some weight (I am just speculating here; I've never actually seen how they score ice theater).

In competitive figure though your costume may make little direct difference, yet it probably makes a substantial emotional and psychic impact.

Your dress behaves similar to the way a policeman's uniform signifies authority, or a Caltrans-orange jumpsuit says Pay Attention, I'm out here working. Your competitive skate dress says I'm an Artistic Skilled Athlete that knows her stuff: Watch this.

But aside from what it signifies to the outside world your dress is also both a motivator and a reward for your self.

On the one hand you ask your parents to spend the money on something nice because you've worked hard for it and you've earned it. The flip side of this is that since they're paid for it already, you have an obligation to live up to the expectations set by what you're wearing.

Like wearing a nice suit for a job interview, the sequined dress sets up an internal mindset. A nice dress that is appropriate to your program opens up a portal to another dimension. Costume sets mood. Your competitive dress has to be different enough from your practice tights so that when you put it on, you get the feeling of This Means Business, or Showtime!

- ballet

Is ballet training a necessary ingredient to competitive figure skating? Perhaps. In an interesting post (from well over a couple of years ago!) Sheri says:

"For years skating coaches have been encouraging their skaters to take ballet classes to aid in the skater's on-ice performance. Ballet teachers spend hours teaching students correct ballet posture which is the same posture needed for skating. Ballet teaches the skater how to move the pelvis without losing balance or disconnecting the center in footwork sequences, including pirouette turns, jumps and leaps across the floor."

I think ballet augments your skating art in a few important areas. "Core" awareness (center of gravity control and fluidity), spine alignment, graceful movement, and "head attitude" are all valuable lessons that transfer well across the related disciplines. The actual physical application of these skills however when wearing skate boots is rather different than when wearing ballet slippers.

The trick therefore to successfully integrating your ballet lessons with your skating is to mentally grok the intent of the teaching but then to reapply and relearn those same lessons on the ice with your skates on. Ballet translates to the ice in theory, but not exactly in muscle memory. Too much ballet and you won't be able to skate, but if you fail to practice enough ballet you will look uncouth on the ice.

- ice dance aesthetics

Ice dancing always bugged me as an aesthetic, not so much because the dancers aren't aesthetically pleasing (they are), but rather that their interpersonal interactions get in the way of their art. This may therefore seem counterintuitive, but the pairs I like the best skate perfectly synchronously yet with almost no personal interaction outside of what constitutes artistic expression.