Pretty stupid!

[teresa]

I was working on a skill with my coach today, a skill I thought I understood, and found with a surprise that I had been thinking wrong. I haven't been able to do what she wanted because I wasn't trying to do what she wanted but what I misunderstood instead. I can't tell you how stupid I felt! The scary thing is I might not have even figured it out today except that I had that, "Oh, no feeling" watching her do the skill side by side with me. Then I knew. . . I went to college and I was a pretty good student and yet I screw up on stupid stuff at skating. Some days I just can't believe my brain damage. ugh Please, tell me someone else has done this before. Seriously, I'm worried I do this more than I care to know. =-0

teresa

[doubletoe]

Lack of eye-brain-body communication is a VERY common learning disability among adult skaters (not to mention beginning kid skaters)! For most of us, trying to simultaneously coordinate our feet, shoulders, edges, hips, knees, etc. to do some supposedly simple move is about as easy as trying to play a series of chords on the piano when you've only just learned where the notes are! Eventually, you figure out some basic concepts that simplify things and make new moves easier to file in your brain, but we all have those blank stare moments from time to time no matter how long we've been doing this! :roll:

P.S. I've found that a lot of times coaches also fail to be specific enough when telling you exactly what to do, and the only solution is to ask the dumb-sounding questions until you force the right answers out of them! ;)

[SynchroSk8r114]

You're not the only one who has had this experience...:roll:

At a recent test session, my one student who is just generally neurotic and a total perfectionist of a skater was warming up her Preliminary MIF test. She was having trouble with one of her elements, primarily when it came to making it back to the long axis. I told her repeatedly that she need to get her arms aligned with her body and explicitly showed her what I wanted her to do. Somehow, in the midst of her teary-eyed, feet-stomping, frantic fit, she got the impression that I wanted her to flat out change her pattern! What?! Why the heck would I spend all that time teaching her a set MIF pattern only to have her change it (and fail!) that day of the test? Wow...:frus:

So, let's just say that because she would hear nothing of what I actually wanted her to do because of her nerves and this misunderstanding, she fell on the back crossovers, had zero speed/flow, missed her axis, and failed. :??

At her next lesson, when she was much calmer, I explained to her what I wanted.

Here's what I said/meant:
"Get that lobe back to the red dots." (With red dots = imaginary long axis that runs down the length of the rink, not every actual red dot...)

She thought I meant for her to physically skate over the red dots that are next to the red line that runs width-wise in the middle of the ice and assumed that because of that, one of the lobes was to be drastically larger than the others, even though I told her they must all be the same size and showed her the pattern in the USFSA rulebook. Agh! How frustrating! :frus:

So, we talked it out, I explained/redemonstrated what I want, and now she's doing fine. A tough way to learn an important lesson for both of us. For me, I learned to be more clear in explaining what I want as a coach and for my skater, she learned to remain calm at a test session and to ask questions if something doesn't seem clear...yes, a learning experience, but a very good lesson...

[Rusty Blades]

I thought you were calling me, though people don't normally use the adjective "pretty" 8O

My biggest problem is hearing the words but not really understanding exactly what is meant by them until AFTER I have figured out the move - "Oh THAT'S what she meant by such-and-such!" But I'm blond - I have an excuse :roll:

[Derek]

Even simple, and apparently minor changes to how we do things can upset everything, and cause it to completely fall apart like a house of cards.
Example, my coach has asked me to do my 3 jump (waltz jump) with a different arm position, to improve the landing. I accept this and have been practicing, but of course, my 3 jumps have now totally disintegrated whilst I am concentrating on my arms. I know it will come good in the end, but have to smile at this apparent backward step.

[Sessy]

Lack of eye-brain-body communication is a VERY common learning disability among adult skaters (not to mention beginning kid skaters)! For most of us, trying to simultaneously coordinate our feet, shoulders, edges, hips, knees, etc. to do some supposedly simple move is about as easy as trying to play a series of chords on the piano when you've only just learned where the notes are! Eventually, you figure out some basic concepts that simplify things and make new moves easier to file in your brain, but we all have those blank stare moments from time to time no matter how long we've been doing this! :roll:

P.S. I've found that a lot of times coaches also fail to be specific enough when telling you exactly what to do, and the only solution is to ask the dumb-sounding questions until you force the right answers out of them! ;)

600% agreed.

[newskaker5]

This is like a daily occurance for me haha - so dont feel bad!

[dbny]

I have experienced this both as a skater and as a coach. As a skater, I think it can be a very good thing to try another coach once in a while. Sometimes the way one person puts something just doesn't work for you, and when you hear the exact same thing simply phrased differently, it suddenly works.

As a coach, I try to pay close attention to whether or not my students seem to understand what I am telling them. If it looks like they don't understand, I re-phrase, re-phrase again, and even sometimes even take arms, legs, shoulders, heads, and gently put them where they should be. When I find that a number of students have trouble with the same thing, I start searching for new ways to teach it. A good example is knee bend. One of the things I've been doing lately that seems to help get the idea across, is teaching maximum knee bend all by itself, and have the students tell me if they can feel the boots pressing against their shins (usually bend down and point - "right here"). The little ones pretty much always have to helped to straighten up at the waist. This is a skill that words are just not enough for!

[southernsk8er]

don't feel bad at all; i'd be really surprised if someone had NONE of those moments (perfect skaters feel free to contradict me). sometimes it's the coach - when i first started i couldn't figure out how to do an inside mohawk because she couldn't explain to us how to do it. she just demonstrated it a few times while we all stood around staring in confusion. when i got a new coach and he explained it really well while showing me again, i said "that's it?"

sometimes it's just failure to communicate. coach says one thing, i hear another thing. i think i'm doing it right until he shows me how to really do it right, and then i feel dumb. but hey, at least i learned something!

[Sonic]

I thought you were calling me, though people don't normally use the adjective "pretty" 8O

My biggest problem is hearing the words but not really understanding exactly what is meant by them until AFTER I have figured out the move - "Oh THAT'S what she meant by such-and-such!" But I'm blond - I have an excuse :roll:

Now why does all of this sound so familar? ROFL!

S xxx

[Team Arthritis]

FWIW - I do this so very very often that I resort to what coach calls "overanalysis paralysis": After she explains anything to me I then make her wait as I explain it back to her using different words to see if I have it right. I also video and audio tape every lesson and write short notes about the lesson when reviewing the tape a few days later. Its pretty scary when reviewing a lesson 5 days later, about 1/2 of it is already forgotten!.
Lyle

[Rob Dean]

Even simple, and apparently minor changes to how we do things can upset everything, and cause it to completely fall apart like a house of cards....my 3 jumps have now totally disintegrated whilst I am concentrating on my arms. I know it will come good in the end, but have to smile at this apparent backward step.

I'm in one of these episodes now. What is upsetting me is that I am supposed to do this in public on Sunday, and time has run out with my coach before then. Otherwise the "two steps forward, one back" thing is the way it usually goes...

Rob

[Award]

I went to college and I was a pretty good student and yet I screw up on stupid stuff at skating. Some days I just can't believe my brain damage.

Many things about skating are not intuitive. Even the brightest of bright people will not necessarily understand how to do various skating moves in the 'recommended' ways if they haven't been shown properly. The skating discipline has evolved over quite a time now, and the skills taught today have been developed and refined over some generations. So if you didn't know how to do something, or didn't pick it up properly at first, then don't be hard on yourself or anything, because when you think of it.......it's difficult for many people to conceive (in the mind) many of the advanced skating moves, let alone do those moves straight after watching somebody do them.

[altamaleskater]

I was working on a skill with my coach today, a skill I thought I understood, and found with a surprise that I had been thinking wrong. I haven't been able to do what she wanted because I wasn't trying to do what she wanted but what I misunderstood instead. I can't tell you how stupid I felt! The scary thing is I might not have even figured it out today except that I had that, "Oh, no feeling" watching her do the skill side by side with me. Then I knew. . . I went to college and I was a pretty good student and yet I screw up on stupid stuff at skating. Some days I just can't believe my brain damage. ugh Please, tell me someone else has done this before. Seriously, I'm worried I do this more than I care to know. =-0

teresa

Been there done that teresa......I am 36 and I think this is a common problem amongst adult skaters. I have driven my coach crazy blowing moves like this because I misunderstood what she was trying to get me to do. Sometimes even after she has shown me an element my body gets stubborn & refuses to do it the way she wanted me to! AAAAK!

So you are not alone here...there will be more moments like that as long as you skate.

[Hannah]

P.S. I've found that a lot of times coaches also fail to be specific enough when telling you exactly what to do, and the only solution is to ask the dumb-sounding questions until you force the right answers out of them! ;)

Yes. My coach teaches an age range of 4 to 76, so she has about ten ways to explain every single move. Sometimes I have to have her cycle through all of them before I find one that makes sense.

She was trying to teach me something the other day and I could. not. get. it. Still don't know what it was, because she gave up and said we'd come back to it later. :frus: