good / bad technique

[Logan3]

There is talk about coaches that have good technique and of coaches that have *no* tecnique at all. Can you guys talk a little bit about it? How does a coach with good technique teaches? Corrects shoulders, arms etc? "Breaks" hard elements in easy steps? Corrects bad habits? I am talking for a low level skater not double axels.

At the rink a family accused a certain coach of having no tecnique because the child could not master harder elements and was not progressing (I think camel spin). I noticed that other students of the same coach do the elements and progress fine so how can he have no tecnique at all? Maybe he could not communicate his technique to the specific child (not a good match)?

As always thanks for any info!

[Sessy]

Well a coach that doesn't fix mistakes is bad technique, but you see, you'd need to know what good technique is before you'd know bad... Basically, one of our coaches very rarely fixes anything on anybody's jumps or spins, her reply to anything is to jump higher or practice more. Where as the other coaches correct a mistake (like swinging the leg too high up before picking, keeping the chin and back arched on the camel spin) and then suddenly it works. For example, the fact that just about everybody severely pre-rotates their toeloop, making it a toe-waltz, gets overlooked by her. So my creeping suspicion is that she doesn't know the right way to do it, in contrast to our other coaches at the rink. That would be bad technique. It's a good thing she only teaches beginners.

Also, back when I was playing the piano, I'd regularly encounter teachers (and their students) who could do the good technique thing themselves, but weren't conscious of it, or were very careless or something, because they rarely if ever corrected bad technique in their students. And if they did, they didn't do it persistently. Because it's not enough to just say ONE time something like "don't tense your lower arm muscles", you have to keep repeating it until the student doesn't have to think anymore about relaxing them, until tensing them feels unnatural to the student.

[Logan3]

For example, the fact that just about everybody severely pre-rotates their toeloop, making it a toe-waltz, gets overlooked by her.


My dd used to prerotate hers until her coach *persuaded* her that the problem is her left shoulder/arm and not her legs. Her coach is constantly telling her: "you skate with the arms, not the legs". My dd has her objections LOL... She is also a big waltzer. When she first was introduced to the loop her first reaction was: but where is the waltz part of the jump? You could see the shock in her face.....

[Lenny2]

Every element in skating--each jump, spin, stroking, field moves--has a correct "technique" to accomplish the element. There may be slight variations on the technique, but the basic technique to accomplish each element will be generally the same. For example, many Russian coaches teach skaters to hold their arms in a position that differs from the position that many American coaches teach, or one coach may teach skaters to rotate with their arms crossed across their chests while another teaches skaters to hold their arms tightly together in clenched fists. Despite, these variations, the jumping mechanics will be basically the same across the board--jumping to the top, pulling in, exiting the jump. Coaches who allow sloppy technique will permit their skaters to do a jump in any way that gets the jump rotated and landed. The skater may pre-rotate the jump, failing to jump up, then rotate, thus failing to achieve full rotation. Or, the skater may not achieve the correct timing and may "cheat" a jump, again failing to achieve full rotation. Many coaches overlook this problem, leading skaters to believe they are completing double jumps, when in fact they are not. The skaters then get poor results at competitions, and they do not understand why. A skater who does not learn good technique from the beginning has no hope of ever learning a double axel or triple jumps.

[SynchroSk8r114]

Like what many others have said on here, no matter what a coach's technique may be to teaching a certain element, the mechanics of that element will always be the same regardless.

As for variations in technique and coaches - I believe that variations in teaching a move may actually be beneficial to a student. I am a coach and have had to learn from early on that not every skater has the same problems, learning styles, abilities, etc. It would be most unproductive for me to believe that each of my skaters can learn, say, a scratch spin the same way. Yes, the mechanics of the actual spin do not change, but the process I take to get my students to understand differs from skater to skater. In my opinion, a coach with "no technique" is similar to a coach we have at the rink I coach at. She insists that every skater learns the same, picks out her "star students", and bases her other skaters' progress and issues off of what her favorite/best skaters are doing. No adapting whatsoever - and that is what contributes to a lack of technique. A good coach should be able to target specific problems in specific skaters and not put up a defense mechanism of merely jump higher, arms in tighter, free leg out faster, etc., instead correcting each individual skaters' problems on a one-on-one basis.

Oh, and just as a helpful hint for any coaches/skaters dealing with that dreaded toe-waltz: one of the most beneficial things I have found that helps get the feeling of the heel leading through the jump (rather than the toe, which creates the toe-waltz in the first place :frus:) is to have the skater practice tons of back pivots. For some of my students, back pivots (like those taught in ISI Freestyle 3, I believe...) help tremendously. What I have my skaters do is:

1. Practice only back pivots feeling the correct position that will eventually transfer over to the feeling of a correct toeloop...
2. Do a back pivot and walk through the toeloop making certain that the heel leads through by having the skater hold the back pivot as long as they can and then bring up their free leg as if stepping up stairs, over a horse, whatever for their mock toeloop...

I've found that this toe-waltz can not only be caused by the toe leading, not the heel, as well as the left shoulder and arms/upper body not coming through correctly, but by the skater not bringing their hips through as he or she jumps. Keeping the hips behind may be causing the toe-waltz, so work a lot of appropriate hip position by perfecting the back pivot described above.

Happy skating! :D