Should skating coaches teach the "right" techniques from the start?

[Query]

Should skating coaches teach the "right" techniques from the start?

This is partly a continuation of the discussion from another thread, that related to a particular skill.

I believe coaches should teach proper techniques from the very start, and that they should be shown the basic skills performed to the highest standard. This is in part due to my own frequent frustration with being taught one thing, spending many hours practicing it, then being told at a higher level that I was doing it wrong, and having to re-learn those basic foundational skills.

From what I have seen the coaches who are the most popular, who students flock to, are the ones who expect more of their students than the standard teaching methods specify. They teach and expect proper technique from the start. Many of their students don't quite achieve those advanced techniques, at first, or perhaps ever, especially if they require more strength or coordination than those students possess, but it is a challenge to look forwards to, and when achieved, gives a feeling of genuine mastery.

It is also possible that both approaches have advantages for different students.

So - what do you think? Should students initially be taught taught basic techniques that they can achieve quickly, even if they are ultimately less efficient, or which don't meet the artistic standards of figure skating at higher levels, or should they be taught the "right" approach from the start, so they can try to model their techniques on the best?

Mod note: reference to other member removed at their request.

[tstop4me]

Consider total newbies.  Typically they learn to move around on two feet first; e.g., two-foot sculls and two-foot glides.  Then they learn to glide on one foot by starting out on a two-foot glide and picking up one foot.  Then they learn to push off on one foot and glide on the other.  Then they learn to refine the push-off (transfer weight from one foot to another; roll the blade; ....).  You need to acquire balance before you learn the nuances of power stroking.

Similarly, consider spins.  Typically you learn a two-foot spin from a standing position.  Then progress to a two-foot spin from a setup entry.  Then progress to a one-foot spin by starting with a two-foot spin and lifting one foot.  Then the arduous evolution to a full-out scratch spin.  Again, there's initial balance and timing that needs to be acquired before you attempt a full-out scratch spin.

[Query]

But you are talkiing about a progression of skills - which is different from doing each skill "right".

Examples:

1. March and glide. Most students initially think the feet should stay parallel. It's so much easier and more efficient, if you point the toes outward, and it simplifies the transition to swizzles and stroking. In fact, to emphasize this, they should be shown that if the feet stay completely parallel, no forward or backwards motion occurs. Instead what many of them misunderstand to do is to walk on their toes. Slow the nominal progress down a little, and do it right, and they will be able to skate better in the end.

2. People are often initially taught to do swizzles by pushing outwards and pulling inwards very hard. To do so, they tighten their muscles to the point their own muscles fight the motion - and become the reason they need to push and pull hard. They may be told that bending your knees helps, but what I think is the "right" way is to drop into a somewhat bent knee position, then tighten your muscles to slow it down and let the momentum effortlessly be transferred through the inside edges to pushing the feet apart. Likewise, you can straighten your knees, and as you finish straightening, as you slow down, the momentum will effortlessly be transferred to pulling the feet back together. Extremely little strength is required, and you can be almost completely relaxed. Sure it takes longer to coordinate these motions and tensions, but in the end, understanding how the body can efficiently use tensions, momentum transfer, and edging, will ultimately make everything better. Slow it down and learn to do it right.

3. People are often taught to do stroking merely by planting the rear foot across the motion, and pushing back. They should be gaught that pushing outwards SIDEWAYS is more efficient, and will ultimately allow greater speed. Granted they may not be able to do so completely at first - but they should be taught it helps, and that that is the ultimate idea. Of course, in Ice Dance, pushing diagonally back IS part of the desired form, though even there, pushing outwards is efficient - but if you watch good freestyle skaters, that mostly isn't what they do. Partly because at higher levels they are expected to come back up to speed after the most recent trick in a single stroke, which a backwards push can't really do. An ISO video makese it clear that pushing back should mostly be avoided in freestyle skating - maybe partly a matter of aesthetics.

4. People are often initially taught to initiate turns (as a simple case, to move back and forth across a line from LFO edge to RFO edge and back) by swinging their arms forward and back (and maybe to add a partial swing-roll at the end). At a later stage they are be taught that swinging the arms that is bad form by figure skating standards - that you should instead press or pull against edges, and/or twist against your shoulders. Not only that, swinging the arms that way isn't a very efficient way to turn.

5. An even better example is forward 3-turns. Same comments as above, but some instructors try to teach it only by rocking forward to the toe pick and back again. First of all, the rock back may take a fair amount of strength to do, because you are fighting centrifugal force (or maybe that is because I do it wrong?). But, also, later students are taught (if my training was typical) that letting the toe pick touch during a turn, or maybe even during a spin, is bad form in figure skating, as well as reducing its speed. A much more effective way to initiate a 3-turn is to turn the foot slightly outwards or inwards, and let the force of the ice complete the turn - perhaps augmented by twists against the shoulders (or is that an ice dance specific form?) and/or pushing/pulling against the edge. (If one of the ISO videos is typical, the freestyle standard is to do it all or almost all by pushing and pulling against the edge. I admit that often can't be taught at first, because it does involve an element of strength. But one could teach exerting some force against the edge at an early stage, and make it clear that is the final goal.)

6. It's hard for me to talk about spins, because I admit I am unable to center them - I think it has something to do with slow or uncoordinated reflexes. (E.g., if I stand on a half-bosu-ball, and bend and straighten my knees, I shake side to side. At first I thought it was strength - but it is true regardless of whether I am on 1 foot or 2.)

But, AFAICT, scratch spins are typically taught by straight demo. I will use a CCW spin as an example. The instructor starts in a pose in which the rear (left) foot points forwards, and the front (right) foot, extended forwards, points inwards across that line. They then appear (to the student's eye) to pull inwards (and if they try to imitate that, they need to pull very hard inwards) to generate the spin - much like the above dubiously taught swizzle. If instead they are taught to make the whole move a modified properly done swizzle (as per above), but in which outwards (right) foot gradually turns inwards as you bring the feet back together, there is virtually no effort required. Or they could turn the inwards (left) foot MORE to the left, to imitate the motion it will need to start the more-or-less 3 turn a single foot typically uses to start a single foot spin.

That said, since my spins are awful, it is possible I don't understand how to do it right, and this example should be dropped.

7. If what I have seen is typical, and to me the most important example of people being taught quickly to do things badly, is that most LTS students are allowed to get away with faking outside edges in initial lessons - there is little or no lean, and they may even be on the inside edge or flats most of the time. Then at a slightly later level they are expected to do crossovers - which are virtually impossible if you can't stay on a good outside edge. (I admit good hockey players do crossovers on inside edges a lot, when they are fighting getting knocked over - but I'm sure that takes a lot of practice, and it mostly isn't good figure skating form.) In fact, based on the LTS program I was involved with, that is where almost all the students drop out - partly because they inevitably fail that level the first few times, because they don't have an outside edge. The "right" approach in my view, is to spend more time balancing and mastering outside edges, until one can easily move the free foot to any position in the air, or even to practice moving it across to what will ultimately become the crossed position and lightly tapping the ice. Perhaps outside edges should be an entire skating class level onto themselves. Part of the problem is that they THINK they are on an outside edge when they are not, because they have been allowed to pass that skill, so they think they have mastered it.

[Clarice]

I think a balance needs to be struck between progression of skills and refinement of skills. My first adult group lesson instructor wanted a skill to be perfected before moving on to the next. By the end of the session, none of us could meet his standards for gliding on two feet, although that was pretty much all we were allowed to do in his class. Most people just quit. I registered for the next level the next session, with a different instructor, and kept progressing. Over the years I've often had to unlearn habits as my skills have been refined. I still have things that aren't quite what they should be. But if I'd stuck with that first guy, it would have been ages before I would have been allowed to do anything.

[Bill_S]

Clarice, I completely agree with this. My second coach (also a guy) did just that - he worked a skill to death - before new skills were introduced. It was DULL!

I can completely understand how some people just quit.

[tstop4me]

* Some maneuvers are not skills intended to be mastered as an end goal per se; but rather are transitionary exercises towards an end goal.  For example, there is no need for a beginner to master perfect double sculls and two-foot glides before moving on.  These maneuvers are designed merely to get beginners comfortable moving about the ice.  Once they are comfortable, they can progress to one-foot glides and stroking. 

* I do agree that often you do need to achieve a certain minimum level of competency in some skills before moving on.  I too have known skaters attempting cross-overs when they don't have sufficient control of single edges:  Instead of crossing over from a single edge on one foot to a single edge on the other foot, they klunk over from two edges on one foot to two edges on the other foot.  But is it necessary, or even desirable, to master perfect single edges (whatever that means) before proceeding to cross-overs?  No.

* Learning figure skating is much like learning many other things, such as languages, science, and math.  Learning is often best done iteratively.  You learn a skill at a certain minimum level of competency, advance to new skills, and then return to previous skills to refine them.  E.g., in stroking and gliding, it's OK to start just pushing off with one foot and gliding on the other to get going.  You really don't want to get interminably hung up right from the get-go with minutiae such as the optimum orientation of the pushing foot; starting the stroke with the body weight primarily centered over the stroking foot and smoothly transitioning the weight over to the gliding foot to maximize the pushing force (and hence the impulse); or rolling the pushing blade from back to front to maximize the contact time (and hence the impulse).  All these refinements can come later once you get moving:  and you'll most likely be motivated to learn these refinements once you're having fun actually skating around the rink.

Similarly, in learning languages, once you achieve a minimum level of competency in basics, you go on to speak, read, and write:  warts and all.  You don't want to get hung up from the get-go on the distinction between formal and informal "you", the distinction between "if" and "whether", the distinction between "that" and "which", the distinction between "present perfect" and "past perfect" tenses ....  All these will come in due time.  But if you drill on these minutiae before putting the language into actual use, most students will nod off and drop out.

[Query]

Maybe the question I should have asked was how the respondent prefers to be taught, not how others should be taught.

Anyway, it does seem many people disagree with me on this.

I suppose one could argue that absolutely perfect form, whatever that means, doesn't need to be taught to beginner level skaters. But you cannot convince me that teaching skaters to try to do figure skating crossovers before they can do a plausible approximation of an outside edge makes any sense at all. Or that you should let some skaters run on their toepicks. (I've watched a skater repeatedly start on his toe picks, rapidly pick up speed, and eventually fall flat on his face, over and over again.) Teaching a person advanced skills, like driving a car or bike fast, before you teach them to do basic skills fairly well, like stopping, makes no sense at all, and is outright dangerous. And, my personal bias, based on my own injury history, is that teaching people to skate, or hike or bike over rugged terrain, before they can fall safely, is likewise crazy.

>tstop4me wrote
>Learning figure skating is much like learning many other things, such as languages, science, and math. 
>Learning is often best done iteratively.

A bit off-topic, but let me respond:

People do learn their initial language use a little wrong as a baby - but I would hate to see a second language taught that way. And, I don't want later grades to teach different mathematical results than early grades.

In terms of science, I admit we are very often taught very different things in introductory texts from what we later learn to be true - and changes often continue on at several levels. (E.g., a crude approximation is initially used to define and apply "half life". Then you might get into quantum mechanics as a non-deterministic model for the statistics of measurement, or the effects of radiation and pressure, or particle movement into and out of the sample.) But my guess is that that is true because intro text writers learned most of the larger field (which is of course much larger than their chosen subfields) from other largely incorrect intro texts, which are typically out of date (often by centuries, such as teaching that ice is slippery solely because of pressure melting), are teaching specialized approximations as universal (e.g. Ohm's law), or are flat out wrong. Also because intro textbooks are often written by large groups of people, using different definitions of terms and assumptions. (E.g., most intro science textbooks teach you to specify numerical accuracy by using the number of significant digits, though they give somewhat inconsistent or incomplete ways of applying that in calculations. A more advanced class might sometimes use different approaches that enhance accuracy by using more precision. Again, an intro math textbook teaches that "mixed fractions" are the "simplest" form, but later textbooks favor improper fractions - e.g., the common formula for the area of a sphere.)

But I suppose that there is a certain logic to teaching science in over-simplified forms at first. Because the higher levels in each specialty are too complicated for anyone else to understand.

Though I still think good textbooks would say that a given formula is only approximately right most of the time under certain assumptions.

These are examples where learning the simple definition of things that occurs in introductory level science and math textbooks can have serious adverse consequences. E.g., people often navigate to incorrect positions by using a GPS set to use one type of latitude/longitude system, with a map that uses another, because they don't know that lat/lon measurement systems differ. E.g., WGS84 and WGS72, which are still both commonly used, are off by about 1/2 kilometer at some points. (There are also smaller variations between different versions of, say, WGS84, and there are many other systems are in use, some even in the U.S.) If you don't know and compensate for this, you can run a ship aground, be arrested and have your ship confiscated for fishing in another nation's waters, be arrested or shot for trespassing, or be tortured to death as a spy for entering another nation's territory. You can start a war. Likewise for variant definitions of "North" and "South". (E.g., British charts use their own "grid north"; U.S. charts use "true north", which BTW, aren't exactly true to the current rotation axis, or sometimes or also "magnetic north".) There are even slightly variant definitions of terms like inch, foot, statutory mile, and nautical mile.

(Within our sport, shoe and boot sizes have different definitions in different countries, or between different shoe and boot makers in a single country. Some boot makers, like Riedell, have changed their definitions over time.)

[tstop4me]

Maybe the question I should have asked was how the respondent prefers to be taught, not how others should be taught.

You would have received the same answers.  Clarice and Bill responded based on their own personal negative experiences with their instructors.  My responses were more general, but they would also apply to my personal preferences for how I would like to be taught.

Anyway, it does seem many people disagree with me on this.

Well, 3/3 disagreed with you.  Too small a sample size to rate as "many".

I suppose one could argue that absolutely perfect form, whatever that means, doesn't need to be taught to beginner level skaters. But you cannot convince me that teaching skaters to try to do figure skating crossovers before they can do a plausible approximation of an outside edge makes any sense at all.

No one is trying to convince you of that.  Clarice phrased it thus:

I think a balance needs to be struck between progression of skills and refinement of skills.

I phrased it thus:

* I do agree that often you do need to achieve a certain minimum level of competency in some skills before moving on.  I too have known skaters attempting cross-overs when they don't have sufficient control of single edges:  Instead of crossing over from a single edge on one foot to a single edge on the other foot, they klunk over from two edges on one foot to two edges on the other foot.  But is it necessary, or even desirable, to master perfect single edges (whatever that means) before proceeding to cross-overs?  No.

If we go by a letter grade system in which a C is considered passing, then I would say that a skater who performs at a C level in single edges should start cross-overs.  Whereas, you want to keep drilling the skater on single edges until he performs at an A level (maybe even at an A+ level) before he moves on to cross-overs.

Again, many skills are often best learned iteratively.  My coach has me drill on consecutive single edges (on a line across the width of a rink), cross-overs around the center hockey circle, and cross-overs in a figure-8 pattern around two end-zone hockey circles.  These drills reinforce each other and help refine each other.  The cross-overs help with speed and depth of edges, which in turn help me do my consecutive edges better.  As I improve in my consecutive edges, she adds more and more refinements:  deeper knee bend, more lean, more control over shoulder and head positions, more elegant passing of the free leg, more elegant toe pointing .... Improvements in consecutive single edges lead to improvements in cross-overs.  As I improve in my cross-overs, she adds refinements to those as well.  Improvements in cross-overs then feedback to improvements in consecutive single edges. 

I would not have appreciated all these nuances at the get-go.  If she had overloaded me with them from the start, I would not have been capable of doing them, and I would have been extremely frustrated:  especially if she had proceeded in a strictly linear mode.

ETA:  With respect to teaching styles, have you seen the movie Dead Poets Society?

[Christy]

Really interesting discussion point. Thanks for posting.

I do agree with Clarice, however I do find that as a result of that approach I have developed several bad habits and it takes a lot of work to fix them, so it really is a case of striking the right balance. Every so often my coach will insist we go back to basics and when it comes to the skills / MIF tests they insist that I use the correct techniques, which can be annoying as I see others being allowed to cut corners and progress.
We currently have an adult who only wants to do the spins yet can barely do crossovers, and has zero awareness of other skaters, dance patterns etc. which means they get in the way of others constantly. Unfortunately for the rest of us the person's coach is just teaching them the fun stuff instead of trying to suggest they get the basics right first 

[Query]

ETA:  With respect to teaching styles, have you seen the movie Dead Poets Society?

No. I'll try to find it online.

The Wikipedia summary of that movie sounds interesting. I certainly was not suggesting people should commit suicide if they can't skate well!

I do think it very important that students have fun learning - in any subject. But for some of us, a structured, disciplined approach is more fun, and more effective.

I wonder how much of this is because I didn't have an athletic childhood. As an adult, I needed to learn how to move efficiently, and how to avoid getting hurt.