Why figure skating is hard - for adults
One thing that makes skating - and many other performance dance forms - hard, is that you are expected to move in ways that are both unnatural and unintuitive. So it is very hard to figure out what to do. In many sports, what you want to do is obvious - e.g., knock the puck into the goal. In figure skating, it's a lot harder to figure it out.
In fact, since most skaters who win world competitions are students of an extremely small group of elite coaches, perhaps those coaches are the only ones who know exactly how skaters are supposed to move, and how to get them to move that way. If you don't have such a coach, it may be impossible to get it near perfect.
But I think a lot of what we are seeing is that it is very hard for us adults to learn. Especially if we try to apply the standards to ourselves that can only be achieved by extraordinarily athletic children, and by adults who were extraordinarily athletic children. Watch kids in group lessons. The ones who don't do well - the vast majority - simply drop out. Adults are more pig headed.
It is difficult for adults to learn because it is so very difficult from other activities we have done, and it is hard to learn completely new ways to interact with our bodies as adults. The low friction environment means that extremely small motions, pose changes, and muscle tensions make tremendous differences in how we move, and figure skating still places significant emphasis on very small effects on blade tracing and sound.
That high precision requires that we attain a very high degree of repeatability (especially for spins, twizzles and jumps), which in turn requires that we stabilize joint movements, using stabilizing muscles throughout our bodies, which seems extremely unnatural to me, and totally different from everything I have done, or that many adults have done. In addition, the emphasis on doing edge changes and turns with minimal body motion, for dance and for freestyle tests, requires that we be able to continuously balance and use antagonistic muscle pairs at those places we are "allowed" to move enough to transfer angular momentum - e.g., shoulders, hips - and that we be able to alter that balance to make and control that transfer very quickly, then check the motion by rapidly re-establishing that balance. Again, very unnatural and totally different. You must also learn to "feel" your bodies balance, orientation, and joint positions - something which is extremely hard to start to learn as adult.
I had many fine coaches, but only the latest one is helped me begin to understand these requirements, and got me started on working to achieve them. She is not an elite coach, but in some ways she is more analytic than others.
Per example: when we prepare to spin out of skating on an edge, we have to use the ice to create angular momentum, which we gradually store in specific body parts like swinging leg and arms, without letting the skating foot spin enough to make a messy tracing. Then we must abruptly shift that angular momentum into spinning the whole body. Very small changes in the free leg trajectory make huge differences in our motion, both in terms of the ultimate speed, and in terms of creating uncontrolled and inappropriate oscillations. And the checking out of the spin is difficult to.
In many sports, most participants form a lot of friendships, and people help each other. Around here at least, adult skaters tend to be less friendly. What is more, each coach teaches their students to achieve skating movements in incompatible ways, so you might not be able to learn things from the friends you do form.
The very deep, strong knee bends and high flexibility requirements sure don't help.
Sometimes when I've been working very hard on one thing very hard with little success, while all my other skills evaporate, and I see a little teen or tween working on her senior moves in the field, flow through her program with fabulous speed, strength, control, and grace, I get very discouraged. I know I'll never move like that. That's something we have to accept, as adults. (Since figure skating is mostly female, those of us who are males also constantly see girls moving with the kind of grace, flexibility and control that is even more difficult for males to achieve.)
And remember. Not only did that little teen or tween put in a tremendous amount of time to get there, but she is athletically selected out of hundreds or thousands of would be skaters to get there. By the time they are competing for medals in National or World competitions, they are perhaps selected out of thens of thousands of people who's families had the wealth to take them there. The principle female ballet dancers (if that appeals to you) who dance lead roles on TV, are athletically selected out of millions of little girls who take ballet. If you compare yourselves to them, you create for yourself a nearly impossible goal.
We ordinary adults sometimes need to scale back our dreams to that which we might achieve. Say, do a low level ice dance without tripping ourselves or our partner, this time. Maybe even pass it.
Topic: Why figure skating is the hardest sport out there (Read 5835 times)