I'm male, 38, and started skating a year ago. For me figure skating is something I have always wanted to do. Whether it was fear, my childhood religious training, lack of confidence, or just the grind of adult life, or what..maybe all of the above, kept me from pursuing this desire.
Last year I just said "Its now or never" and went out skating on broken down figure skates from the Thrift Shop. All I did was wobble around the rink and fall, but hey! No pain no gain
Late last year skates fell apart and finally found a pair of Jacksons, new, that fit. World of difference!
Anyhow, as a man learning to figure skate, I'm the only one at the rinks I skate at. I just go to mid-week public skating, and all I normally see are people in hockey skates doing laps (is that not boring as h-ll?). Once in a while I'll see a female figure skating, but no other men. Since skating opened up this autumn I've gone from just stroking forward and one foot glides to forward inside/outside 3 turns, brackets, forward changes of edge, choctaw, forward inside and outside 8's, crossovers, T stop l and r, spirals. I skate 3-4 hrs/wk on my days off. I had a coach lined up and we had one lesson, but then she moved away. Still searching...
I purchased the DVD Figure Eights by Karen Courtland Kelly and it has been invaluable as a tool. It helps me to see each element and then I can walk through it on the floor and when I'm on the ice I visualise it and it just comes to me. The intense satisfying rush that comes from executing a turn cleanly is worth a dozen falls. For me the challenge of school figures is something I can really get into. I work on them for an hour every time I skate at a 2 hour public session. I have a scribe I designed and built, aluminum collapsible with a folding handle, but at the public skates there are people skating through your figure all the time and no place to leave it safe, so I don;t use it.
I wish there were some way I could belong to a skating club, and get involved in adult competitions, but I work full time, and I doubt such a system exists here in Ontario. All the little kiddies and teenyboppers have their Skate Canada clubs, but there is no place in their system for someone like myself. The club nearest to me refused to return my enquiry, and the next nearest club only offers ice time and coaching during working hours...when you work a 12 hr day that includes anything before 8pm
For adult men it is an odd sport to take up, but it is intensely physically demanding. I work out and weight train 5 days a week, I eat like an athlete would. I've never been in better shape, and I've always been slender and strong at 6ft tall. I'm addicted to it
Not married, and no girlfriend, but I'm not gay. Just sayin', as that topic has come up in the thread. I'm a loner I guess, last girlfriend was 16 yrs ago