It is 18 years since we eliminated figures in skating. I am always working on analyzing what we lost because of that. And how to put back into the grammar of skating to fill the void.
One of the major things is that the skating side is not getting educated anymore and the free-side is taking over to much.
In order to not change edge and have flats in turns you needed to stay properly over your hip. As we concentrated on the print it was a natural development. We always were told “ stand over the hip” Doing it hours a day it was inevitable to get a good amount of that.
Recently I watched a tape of Janet Lynn and it was amazing how controlled she was on the skating side. Which is partly the reason that she had such great run on the blade . As my coach Helmut Seibt always said the run of the blade is supreme to everything else… As Elvis Stojko put it “ The blade rules…”
As we took away the education of the print the blade made it seems the blade has lost its voice.
It is amazing how few skaters now have true blade control. Imagine a concert pianist having very little sense of touch in his or her fingers…
We lost accuracy, sense of symmetry , true flow during transitions and true sense of circle.
In my humble opinion all these things are contributing to all the injuries we are having in skating. When properly aligned over the skating hip, skating is low impact. If not it becomes very high impact and our hip knee and ankle joints are not able to endure the daily abuse…
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Thanks for talking about the skating side of the body - sooooo important, and now my students won't think I'm just being annoying when I talk to them about it AGAIN :-)
ReplyDeleteLook at some tapes of Janet Lynn on you tube you will see how great she is over the skating side and how much flow she has and how easy her take-offs are...
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