Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Stroking

I spent Monday's practice entirely on stroking.  I subscribe to icoachskating.com which I use as my "coach in between lessons".  There are countless videos there of high level coaches giving tips to skaters and other coaches on how they teach everything from basic stroking to triple jumps.

I love to watch videos of skaters from all levels, especially my level.  The aging adult skater .. getting out there and taking their sport seriously.  I feel their pains, frustrations and great levels of accomplishment when progress is made and things go right.

So today after having a talk with myself about my warm up habits and general quality of my stroking - I decided to look them up for some stroking tips.  My coach had a family member sick and had notified me she couldn't keep my lesson today... so I used this instead.

This video is my attempt at doing what the coach and choreographer: Pasquale Carmerlengo called "Russian Stroking".  I know if I told this to my own coach ... she would laugh and say that it's not Russian Stroking... that the kids from our club do this pattern all the time.  I don't care what it's called or who named it.  I just know it's a far better warm up than the one I presently do and if I could learn to stroke well in this fashion... I would be a better skater.

Here's my first time trying the patterns.


4 comments:

  1. Kudos for going at it as an adult figure skater! It's good to hear feedback on icoachskating as I've been playing with the idea of trying it out myself. Nice job and hope you have even more great progress!

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    1. Thank you. Nothing will ever take the place of "live" professional coaching. I love my coach; Berkley Villard, but when you are obsessed with something you will watch others. Why not watch quality coaches?

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  2. Thank you for your blog! You really inspire me, I am 45, just starting lessons, only skated as a kid on frozen ponds...it is challenging, but I love it! Keep up the great job. :)

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    1. If all you ever did was skate on a frozen pond you will really enjoy skating now ...no bumps or real hazards to speak of with the exception of tripping on your own! Good luck

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