USFSA Adult Camp

[gardana]

Anyone go? 8-)

[LoopLoop]

I was there! Don't have time to write a full report yet, but it was great. I'll write more later (and NoVaSk8r and TerriC will add to it, I'm sure), but to anyone wondering, it was definitely worth the time and money!

[NoVa Sk8r]

Loops got it right. SO MUCH FUN!

And let's just say I'm glad I have the next few days off from work.

But where to start?

Well, the freestyle camp consisted of 4 on-ice and 2 off-ice classes on Saturday and 4 on-ice and 2 off-ice classes on Sunday broken down by level: Field moves, Toe jumps, edge jumps, stretching, a perspective on the Olympic experience/motivation, and power stroking on Saturday; combo jumps, spins, edge quality, body movement, conditioning, and off-ice classes on Sunday. They also provided practice ice throughout, which was very nice. Loops and I definitely took advantage of as much ice as we could stand (literally).

Each class was great, but I particularly liked the edge quality--taught by Artur Dmitriev and his wife--and the spin class--taught by Robin Wagner. I also had great fun when Sylvia Fontana taught us choreography to a Britney Spears song in the body movement class!

So more can fill in details about the experience and the classes and instructors.

But Loops and I had a particularly great time:
We had contacted the skating director, Craig Maurizi, because we wanted to sneak in a few pairs lessons. Well, it took quite some time to schedule this. Actually, it wasn't resolved until we were driving up on Thursday. I had a voicemail messgae on my cell phone and thinking it was Craig I was surprised to hear that the message was from John Zimmerman. Loops and I were, um, a little overexcited. My apologies to the passenger in my back seat who had to deal with our giddiness. Anyway, Loops called back and there we had lessons scheduled with J-Z. The funny part was when he proceeded to tell her what he looked like so that we could find him at the rink. As if!

We met him on Friday morning, and he helped us with off-ice lifts. I don;t think I'll forget when he called me "beefy" (and later, when I complained about my, um, overdeveloped upper body, he said that he wished he had my pecs).
We got our skates on and headed to the rink. This is when the intimidation factor smacked us on the face. On the ice were: Robin Wagner w/Sasha Cohen; Inoue & Baldwin working on choreography w/ Peter Tchernychev; and Vladimir Besedin and Oleksiy Polishchuk, the acrobatic comedy team. So we were a bit intimidated. But a certain incident helped to ease our nerves: A few minutes into the session, Sasha was doing forward strokes and tripped on her toepicks and fell to the ice. Ok, they're just skaters, too. And John helped our nerves, too. He jokingly reminded us that we were only on the ice with a world silver medalists, a 5-time US champion in dance, and the current pairs champs!

He was so nice and genuine and just a great person to work with. Can't say enough about him.

We had a morning lesson, skated a session by ourselves to go over our lesson materials, and then asked John for another lessson in the afternoon. He agreed, and we worked even more on our spotty technique. Loops was able to do a pair camel, tango camel, partial death spiral, and axel lift with J-Z. I haven't seen her lately, so I suppose she's still on cloud nine. :)
To illustrate the proper technique, John and I did a pairs camel and a tango camel. In the afternoon, I did an axel lift with him. Too cool.
Loops and I are so excited; John helped is fix A LOT of things.

During the training camp, John was so great. He actually came up to us and asked how our training was going. We also had a lot of questions, and he gave us great feedback. We wanted to ask him about his "Queer Eye" experience but we had so many other SKATING questions. Off the ice when he was wearing sandals, I did notice that his toes looked nice! :P

I'm sure Loops can fill in the gaps, perhaps including our overambitious use of practice ice; getting lost in Bergen County, NJ, looking for ice cream shops; and trekking through New York City.

[LoopLoop]

Our pair lessons with John were great. When we first got on the ice with John I was so nervous my legs were shaking, but then the Sasha incident NoVa mentioned happened and we both were able to relax. He was so incredibly unassuming and friendly that we were put at ease relatively quickly. We worked on pair spins, death spirals, axel lifts, and throw salchows, and made improvements on all of them.

On to the actual camp...

I am in awe of Artur Dmitriev's crossovers; I was really impressed with the off-ice conditioning and jump classes; the coaches were very supportive; Silvia Fontana is hysterically funny; Robin Wagner emphasized the details of things and reminded everyone that there is always SOMETHING to work on, no matter if you're tired or in a lousy mood or had a bad day at work.

I think we overdid it a little bit; for example, on Sunday we ate lunch in 15 minutes (with our skates still on) and then got back on practice ice for 20 minutes before the first afternoon class started. And this was after skating three sessions on Friday. At the end of camp on Saturday, we all raced back to the hotel from the rink with our fingers crossed, hoping that it the hot tub would still be open. Luckily it was, and it was full of skaters for the half hour before it closed; we were able to skate on Sunday! Otherwise I think walking might have been tough, let alone skating.

My legs are feeling it today, though!

[skaternum]

Thanks for the reports, although I'm just green with envy! :mrgreen:

[Terri C]

To add to the camp reports:
For my group ( the No Test- Pre Bronze peons) the beginning of camp was a little frustrating, as it was more a "Stand on the Ice and Talk Till You Freeze Camp" . By the time we actually got around to doing something :roll: , your toes were numb to the point where it was hard to even do the easiest thing. It really didn't get to being a real training camp until we had Robin Wagner's stroking class that afternoon.
So, because I got a little restless because of all the standing around on Saturday, I ditched stretch class to do one of the freestyle sessions with Loops and NoVa!

John and Sylvia were awesome on Sunday in the jump combo class and Artur was a hoot in the three classes I had with him ( Edge jumps, edge quality and body movement) . During the edge quality doing the backward to forward
transition move with POWER- he almost ran into me!
By the way I had Artur, Peter and Tatiana for body movement- I have never and will never do any of that arm flinging in my program!

There is article in The Record, a local NJ paper about the camp- I'll post the link as soon as I find it!

[Terri C]

The link to the camp article:
www.bergen.com
If you have problems acessing it, PM me with your e-mail address and I will send it to you

[sk8pics]

I'm glad you guys all had fun! I had fun last year, but couldn't make it this year. Artur was my hero last year, though! And John, too. Did John do an off-ice jumping class?

Terri-I can't seem to access that article, so I'll send you a PM.

Pat

[Terri C]

Pat,
I sent you the article!

[LoopLoop]

IDid John do an off-ice jumping class?

Kim Murphy and Wendy Weston did the off-ice jumping classes this year. They were really good; the class focused a lot on distance and height, not just rotation. They also had some good exercises to strengthen our landing positions. And the weather was great on Sunday, so they took us outside to the park for class!

[gardana]

Skating with John Zimmerman-I am so jealous :twisted: thanks for the detailed review, he sounds great and it sounds like you learned somethings to boot! :P

what was the breakdown of the camp like? (Were most of the skaters pre-bronze? Or was there more of a mixture?)

What did you guys work on in Artur's edge quality class? (Besides improving edge quality-obvious :P )

What kind of jump combos did you work on in the jump-combo classes?

That's sweet that both Artur & John got to work with their perspective wives. :D

And for all of us, who couldn't be there.... any anecdotes, stories, quotes about Artur, Tatiana, Sylvia or John?

thanks

[Debbie S]

And for all of us, who couldn't be there.... any anecdotes, stories, quotes about Artur, Tatiana, Sylvia or John?

thanks

To add to that, I'd be curious to know if Sasha was around. I think I saw something on the web page advertising the camp that she was going to be making a "special appearance" or something like that. I was having visions of her demonstrating moves for Robin's classes. (?)

And I'd also be curious to know the breakdown of the levels. After reading about Terri's frustrating experience in the low-level group, I'm glad I didn't go, b/c I'd be :evil: if I spent all that money and ended up standing around half the time. I guess I need to wait until I pass Bronze FS to really get something out of it.

[LoopLoop]

what was the breakdown of the camp like? (Were most of the skaters pre-bronze? Or was there more of a mixture?)

There were five FS groups; I don't know what the official breakdown was, but I'm a silver skater and was in the next-to-highest group.

What did you guys work on in Artur's edge quality class? (Besides improving edge quality-obvious :P )

Crossover exercises with a lot of emphasis on arm and shoulder position, and changing from back crossovers to forward crossovers (in a figure eight) without losing power or control.

What kind of jump combos did you work on in the jump-combo classes?

In class we did toe loop-toe loop and loop-loop (well, as many of each as you could do in a row), but a lot of the class time was spent working on exercises. For example, Silvia had us doing the toe loop takeoff without rotation over and over again all the way down the ice. For loop combinations it was consecutive 3turns (BO-FI-BO-FI, etc., think Irina Slutskaya's triple loop setup) with the arm movements you'd use when jumping.

And for all of us, who couldn't be there.... any anecdotes, stories, quotes about Artur, Tatiana, Sylvia or John?

thanks

Let's see... John told us that he didn't learn his double axel until he was 19 and got his triple toe at 21; Silvia didn't land her first triple until she was 20. The two of them are really funny and sweet together; he basically doesn't take his eyes off her unless he has to.

In Artur's edge quality class he asked a few of us (including me) to do one of the exercises by ourselves. For the other two skaters he made comments and corrections, but didn't say anything about mine. So when everyone started doing the exercise together again, I asked him what I needed to fix and he said (this is an exact quote) "Nothing, is almost nice."

[skaternum]

Let's see... John told us that he didn't learn his double axel until he was 19 and got his triple toe at 21.

Okay, I gotta say it. :twisted: Some might argue he lost it at 21.5. (Ouch, sorry John.)

I asked him what I needed to fix and he said (this is an exact quote) "Nothing, is almost nice."

LOL! That is so Russian! From him that's a huge compliment.

[gardana]

What class did Artur teach w/ Tatiana?
What were they like together?
I think it is so sweet that he got to work with his wife.

John & Sylvia sound cute.

Anybody hear take any of the dance classes?

[NoVa Sk8r]

Artur, contrary to what I had imagined, has a really funny sense of humor. And he is a star at overemphasizing the way one should NOT skate.
In his edge class with his wife, the class was split in 2 groups, so artur worked with one group while his wife worked with the other. They stressed what the judges are looking for, so we did crossovers with a chasse thrown in for a different effect. And by doing the chasse, you have a chance to "recorrect" your hips/upper body alignment. Another key aspect (which I loved!) was making an effective and attractive transition from back crossovers to forward crossovers. Doing a little flair. I never had thought of this, but they proved how great it looks and what a slight difference it makes.

In the combination jumps class, john and silvia were demonstrating how to properly keep your right arm checked on the takeoff by holding the right arm firmly back. So john was trying to accentuate this and silvia took his arm and held his back. In this compromised position, SIlvia exclaimed, "I want a big diamond!"

In the body movement class, silvia demonstrated how to interpret classical, spanish, and um, britney music. She invented some choreography and had the whole class follow along. In this class, Sash appeared and talked about the importance of body awareness and what she thinks about when it comes to interpreting music. She then performed the choreography that Silvia had designed. I liked this class because I was overly interpreting the spanish music--and John Z. saw me and was laughing. He then did the move. (I call it the Michael Weiss Malaguena move.)

I don't know anything about the dance portion but would love to hear how that went.

Oh, tragedy did strike: One woman apparently broke her leg in the field moves class attempting the back outside or back inside 3-turn. And another woman was injured (i don't know what happened there--I thik she fell and hit the boards).

[MQSeries]

Oh, tragedy did strike: One woman apparently broke her leg in the field moves class attempting the back outside or back inside 3-turn.

Wow, never thought one could break a leg from doing 3 turns.

Sounds like a fun camp. How many people were there total?

Can you share some spin tips from Robin, especially about the camel and sit? Thnks.

[Terri C]

After reading about Terri's frustrating experience in the low-level group, I'm glad I didn't go, b/c I'd be :evil: if I spent all that money and ended up standing around half the time. I guess I need to wait until I pass Bronze FS to really get something out of it.

Don't worry- quite a few people on my group, myself included commented on that in filling out the evaluations>
Despite all that frustration, I did get some good things out of it, like Artur's excercise for the salchow and his forward to backward transition move. I also learned a neat stroking drill from Robin Wagner!
After all these posts, no one mentioned the last minute suprise that Craig Maurizi pulled off; Rena Inoue and John Baldwin were in town getting a new program choreographed by Peter T and made a suprise appearance and the Q&A at the end of the camp!
Sasha "snuck" in during all of body movement classes, which were the last on ice session of camp!

[sk8pics]

So when everyone started doing the exercise together again, I asked him what I needed to fix and he said (this is an exact quote) "Nothing, is almost nice."

and

Artur, contrary to what I had imagined, has a really funny sense of humor. And he is a star at overemphasizing the way one should NOT skate.

I loved Artur last year and he became my hero! I really had a hard time in his spinning class and he would smile and wink at me and tell me,"Don' worry, you get it, you get it." :bow: And he really got everyone going encouraging each other when he would pick someone out to try something new. And he did some wild practically staggering spins to show us what not to do, hilarious! I'm glad he was still great this year.


Pat

[gardana]

In his edge class with his wife, the class was split in 2 groups, so artur worked with one group while his wife worked with the other. They stressed what the judges are looking for, so we did crossovers with a chasse thrown in for a different effect. And by doing the chasse, you have a chance to "recorrect" your hips/upper body alignment. Another key aspect (which I loved!) was making an effective and attractive transition from back crossovers to forward crossovers. Doing a little flair. I never had thought of this, but they proved how great it looks and what a slight difference it makes.



Thanks for all of the details NoVa Sk8r,

It sounds like Artur & Tatana were great.
Whose group were you in?
Was Tatiana on skates?
I knew she was a gymnast back in the 1980s, but I didn't know she did any casual skating. Although I guess she really didn't have to look far to find someone to teach her. 8-)
That's really cool that she got a chance to work with her husband. It must have been fun for them. :)

What was taught in the body movement course?

did anyone take any of the ice dance classes?

I feel like a contestant on 20 questions... :P

[NoVa Sk8r]

There were nine groups, (1=no test through 9=gold or master's level). I started off in group 5/6 (i don't have an axel---yet!), but since my spins are so much better, I went group shopping for sunday and ended up in group 7/8.

Tatiana was on skates for the edge class; she's very mellifluous. She also taught the stretching class, but Loops and I played hooky and opted to skate on the practice ice (we were anxious to practice our new and improved pairs moves!). I think Tatiana had many people really thinking about body awareness and just how great the simple crossover can look.

The body movement class was all about music interpretation. Sasha Cohen mentioned that every facet of your body (including your facial expression) should go into the choreography and that everything should appear to move as one--i.e., an arm movement is not complete nor effective if you leave out your torso. She then demonstrated. And John commented that it's helpful to think of skating through molasses in order to get that refined look.

[skatingatty]

Oooh, I am so jealous that you guys got to go to this camp! Thanks for sharing your experience on the forums!

[Sylvia]

USFS article plus 2 pages of photos now up at:
http://www.usfigureskating.org/event_story.asp?id=25771

[NoVa Sk8r]

Article on the camp is posted on USFSA website:
http://usfsa.org/event_story.asp?id=25771

(I believe the first photo shows the woman, Lorraine, who broke her leg in the moves class. At least she was able to work on her axel with Artur before that happened!)

[Terri C]

OK camp goers- fessup!
How many of you have actually gone out and "played" with what you learned over the weekend??
That's all I did on practice yesterday, my first day back on the ice since camp,since my feet were still hurting in skates from camp :?? .
Coach told me on lesson today that I was not going to do the salchow on a curve, despite Artur's suggestion! Relief!

[NoVa Sk8r]

At the gym, I incorporated a lot of what Sean showed us in the conditioning class. A few people even asked me about the scorpion stretch (for working the hip flexors). I am trying to heavily incorporate the hack and sumo squats into my training regime.

I had a singles lesson yesterday afternoon and today--working on moves. My coach commented on how a little different a few things looked. I think she meant I'm actually using my edges! :P

Loops and I were so inspired by some of the classes that (on an empty 2 freestyle sessions last night!!!!), we revamped our entire pair program.

Nothing like coasting on inspiration and motivation....

Back to the gym. :)

[LoopLoop]

Back to the gym. :)

Not too much! Remember your hamstrings last night...

[NoVa Sk8r]

Not too much! Remember your hamstrings last night...

I should have read your post before I'd gone. :??

[Mrs Redboots]

Have you guys seen this (http://www.usfsa.org/event_story.asp?id=25771)?