My dd is 8 and will be taking her Preliminary MIF test in 2 weeks. She's landed her single jumps and her axel is on it's way, and her coach said she will start introducing double jumps later this year.
She enjoys skating, and has slowly built her time on ice to ~4 hours/ week. At this point, the only way to (easily) increase her on-ice time would be to turn 1 hour on ice into 2. For the last week she has skated 2 hours Saturday, 1 Sunday, 2 hours Tuesday (with off ice) and will skate 1 hour Friday, bringing her total ice time to 6. She has requested to skate 2 hours on each session going forward, putting her weekly total at 7-8 hours per week, which would include ~2 hours of lessons.
I know I've seen other threads on here about *appropriate* skating time, and based on the formulas I've seen 8 hours is ok, but for those who jumped up to this much time, is it too much? I wouldn't do it if she didn't request it, and I was rather surprised when she did. She had a few weeks this fall where she seemed indifferent - when working on her axel was difficult. Her coach said she's now getting into more *fun* things - jump sequences, new spins, her program for the spring is more polished, so that's likely why she's excited about more ice time. I did notice that she particularly loved the 2nd hour of the Saturday session as some of her school mates skate the same hour and were rather impressed at her program.
Any advice? I do have to say from a mom perspective, when she went home yesterday after 30 minutes off-ice and 2 hours skating, she was BEAT. She took a hot bath and did not complain at all about going right to bed. Very exciting for the mom of a child who has always seemed to have inexhaustible energy.