My Skating Blog
Happy New Year! I’m so excited and can not wait to start our new adventures in skating together. To my new students, welcome!… and to my wonderful dedicated old students, welcome back!
I thought this would be a good opportunity to review some of the main so you can get the very most out of every lesson. You can obtain more detailed information on each of these tips in my prior blog posts and/or use my quick one-page reference sheet, Essential Skating Tips for Beginners.
A HUGE congratulations to all my Learn to Skate students at Middletown IceWorld who passed their tests this weekend. I’m so proud of you all and the determination and hard work you put into every class. Well done! I look forward to seeing everyone in the next session and hope I will teach you all again.
Saturday class
Evelyn - Basic 5
Gabrielle - Basic 5
Johanna - Basic 5
Helen - Basic 6
Erin - Basic 6
Sunday class
Angelina - Basic 3
Carmella - Basic 3
Isabella - Basic 3
Serenity - Basic 5
Vivian - Basic 5
With the holidays approaching, I can not think of a better time to round up your family and friends and venture outdoors for a magical skating experience. Check out the Forbes’ recently published list of The Country’s Most Magical Ice Rinks. If you’re traveling or expecting family or friends visiting for the holidays and will be near one of these rinks, then you should definitely make plans to enjoy some bonding time with your loved ones while also getting a great workout.
Learning how to use and control your edges is important in helping you become an efficient and confident skater- in fact, proper use of edges is paramount to being a great skater. You all hear me many times tell you to use your edge to push harder or to use your edge to skate a curve or make basic turns, ie. forward/backward, or more advanced turns, i.e.. three turns or mohawks. Let me take the time to explain what a skating edge is and its importance.
I’m glad to see so many of my students getting to class early and not having you or your parents frantically rush to change and improperly lace up your skates. For those of you who are early and just sitting and waiting around, let me advise you to use this extra time wisely and warm up your joints and muscles. Everyone knows that before any vigorous exercise that it’s important to stretch and warm up because it not only helps prevent injury and improve performance but also helps reduce muscle soreness after the workout. You want your heart pumping, blood flowing, and body temperature rising to prepare your body for strenuous activity. The reason for more blood flow and increased body temperature is so that more oxygen is released to help your working muscles which in turn means better performance. Even a five minute warm up is sufficient and better than nothing at all. So try to get to the rink earlier and start warming up.
I’m still so elated and riding high after medaling at the National Solo Dance Finals from a couple of weeks ago. Reflecting on my experience and lessons learned, I wanted to bring attention to a major challenge that I faced at nationals and also faced by many athletes- sports performance anxiety. I know all of my students have experienced it in some degree, whether it’s taking a skating test or performing your program or even just doing a run through in front of everyone at the rink. I wanted to address this because I’m not sure how many of you realize the importance of mental preparation for a competition and how it can greatly impact one’s performance. I want to share my experiences and help you all to learn how to better handle and reduce competitive stress.
