Off-ice exercises for Ice Dancers?

[Query]

People like our own rks8d (http://www.sk8strong.com) have offered exercises for ice skaters in general.

As part of an ice dance clinic at Wheaton, MD, we were given a bunch of exercises that were somewhat specific to ice dance. I think it would be wonderful if someone like rsk8d could put that sort of thing into DVDs and/or books with clear pictures.

For the most part, I'm not going to give you the specific exercises these instructors used, but will focus on the ideas.

For example,

1. The coaches at the ice dance clinic strongly emphasized the idea of joint motion isolation, to create a more still upper body, and to create greater control. For example, a great deal of motion occurs at the hip socket - both leg swings and body rotations - with very little motion in the spine. The hips and pelvis stayed oriented horizontal and pointing in the same direction as the entire torso. This may not be completely universal - another ice dance coach taught me (if I understood right, which I might not have) to counter-rotate the spine against the rotation of the hip, which is another way to control and check motion.

Regardless, most people probably don't develop very strong muscles to rotate the hip joint, nor do they normally do motions that require such rotation be mostly isolated from spinal rotations.

I'm not sure what muscles need to be used and which stabilized - I think it involves isolating specific glut muscles, and maybe lower back, obliques and psoas in some positions. (Someone there showed me that if you lay on your side with knees bent to various degrees, and rotate one knee off the floor, you will use and strengthen various different muscles in this group.)

I'm sure freestyle use these muscles and motions too, but using them alone is a very inefficient way to move, so I don't think the freestyle people need the isolation.

I'm told that when they talked about isolation exercises in general, they didn't mean zero other motion occurs, as that would make dancers look stiff. But very little.

2. Likewise there is a stronger emphasis on isolating arm motion to the shoulder socket and elbow, with essentially no spinal, shoulder or hip twist.

3. They showed a lot of cases where the goal, after pushing (not swinging) a straight free leg forward, you go into a partial sitting position, by pivoting at the knee, leaving the leg swung forward at the hip socket.

4. At almost all times - standing and some sitting positions - there was an emphasis on pushing the hip/pelvis bone forward, underneath the spine. I guess this makes you taller and gives ice dance a distinctive look. (People sometimes refer to this as "proper posture" in pseudo-military contexts, but it is well known to be unhealthy to the lower spine if you do it too much, because the lower spine is designed to curve forwards.) For example, if the knees are strongly bent, the entire upper torso will slant backwards, in line with the feet, neck and head.

I'm not certain whether how much of this is general ice dance style, and how much is specific to these coaches. E.g., other coaches have shown me that the entire body should sometimes be slanted forwards.

Likewise both they and my other coaches have emphasize that when the torso leans into an edge, the entire body line should follow that lean.

This type of alignment implies that most ice dance bends occur only at the ankles and knees, and not higher. Again, a very inefficient way to move, that most freestyle skaters avoid.

Some exercises to emphasize hip/pelvis positions were from standing poses, but they also did stretches while lying the backs with the entire back and both hips in contact with the floor.

5. The coaches emphasized creating deeper, stronger edges by sideways bending of at the ankle, when the foot is initially placed on the ice - i.e., strong pronation and supination. A particularly good example is when placing the new skating foot down in crossed positions.

Freestyle skaters often develop fairly strong muscles to control ankle motion, but a good stiff freestyle boot makes it impossible to have the strong range of sideways ankle motion ice dancers should ideally have, so this is specific to Dance.

6. Ice Dance involves both flexing back and pointing forward the foot, again achieving a range of motion much larger than possible in freestyle boots, and holding those poses for long periods of time. The toe points outwards when the leg is in front, is parallel when next to the skating foot, and flexes outwards when the leg is in back. These poses are held for long periods.

They did swing rolls with strong isolated hip motions - e.g., in an outside back-to-forward swing roll, the free foot passes right next to the skating foot, but the hip socket motion causes the leg to be diagonally out to the side in front and back; in both cases the hip sockets also roates so the toe points somewhat outwards. Similar motions occur for inside swing rolls, but the leg bends in the middle instead of staying straight, so you don't hit the ice. The knee aslo rotates (rotation at the hip socket, not the knee) to point outwards as you swing forwards.

They did a lot of leg raise exercises, on one's stomach and in back, with the foot in appropriate positions, and the leg vertically up or at the side. Some exercises placed one foot pointed and one foot flexed.

There was an emphasis on something I don't understand: Somehow you press the leg forward and back, not swing it forward and back.

7. Ice dance involves a lot of very deep knee positions. (So does freestyle, for sit spins.) For example, one often steps onto a new edge while the current skating leg is bent to place you into a strong sit position. They had us do a lot of exercises where we slowly stepped up and down, or jumped on to steps, with foot flat, pointed or flexed. Strong emphasis on proper knee alignment (knee vertically over foot, not rotated from or to the side of the foot) during weight support.

On ice they did a lot of power pulls, forward and back, with the free leg in various positions. I think they like this method of creating motion. They did the figures thing of doing elaborate figures with short arcs (including motion reversals) on power pulls. They like up and down knee lilts in general, as a way of creating motion.

8. I would add exercises that a PT/APT gave me to avoid sideways kneecap motion as I bend and unbend it while supporting weight, by trying to use and strengthen the entire glut/hip flexor/psoas/obliques/lower back families - e.g., squatting, spiral positions but with toe pointing down, holding out horizontal leg back, side and forward, and at all positions in between, lunges with both feet pointing forwards, .

Note: Sideways kneepcap travel while bending or straightening the knee and supporting one's weight creates knee pain, and wears out cartilage. Not everyone has this problem. Maybe you don't need the exercises if you don't. I think the exercises are meant to create continuous muscle tension in these muscles, to stabilize the knee better. But if you don't use these muscles to help support weight, the PT/APT said one is more likely to have the lower body injuries I've had, like ankle sprains, and a broken leg. In addition, muscles that are not used much before stretching don't get warm enough to stretch. For me, they have therefore become the limiting factor in virtually all stretches, instead of things like quads and hamstrings, which limit most people.

9. There were a lot of flexibility exercises. A lot of exercises to extend how high and long one could hold one's leg, forward, backwards, sideways, and in between, both from standing positions, and from lying down on stomach or back.

Several flexibility exercises focused on forwards and backwards spinal bends, and spinal rotations; I'm not sure why, since they didn't use such positions.

I suspect they were trying to compensate for the damage done by the potentially unhealthy ice dance poses and motions, if that is possible?

10. I'm sure some of you can add more ideas.

[Clarice]

A lot of this sounds to me like what you would do in a ballet barre class.

[icedancer2]

I think a lot of this is true for ice dance. One thing I don't see mentioned here or EVER is something my own coach emphasizes, although I have never heard anyone else talk about it is the need to bend at the top of the leg, where the femur enters the hip socket. it is part of the sitting - if your hips are pushed too far forward your upper body will essentially be leaning back, which is both not good for your body and does not look good. She is always trying to emphasize that "sitting" bend as it pertains to that part of the hip/leg.

So now I think about bending my ankle, my knee and my hip (flexors?), as well as, yes, all of that what she called "rolling of the foot in the boot" (supination and pronation in your examples) - very important but also rarely emphasized.

I really notice it now when skaters, especially dancers, are not rolling their feet or are not bending through the lower body - and yes I do wonder about those freestyle-stiff boots and how much more difficult they make all of those movements...

Interesting food for thought, so to speak.

Oh and by the way, a LOT of this comes from figures training which now people are starting to realize was a good thing and that MITF do NOT take the place (of).

[rsk8d]

To query:

Wow, that was a mouthful.....! I don't know where to start :). First off, compared to freestyle skaters, ice dancers would have to do more upper body strengthening, which is something that was not mentioned. Due to the different holds, positions, lifts, ice dancers require more strength of the upper body, especially from the rotator cuff and scapular stabilizers. The RTC is necessary to stabilize the shoulder joint, and ice dancers are more susceptible to injury here because of the nature of their arm use.

There would be a strong emphasis on core strength, as you mentioned ice dancers have to hold their backs very straight while accomplishing various turns, steps, etc. I would include various exercises using sport cords for resistance while the core is stabilized, as this would simulate the rotational force against the core.

The leg lift exercises you were mentioning are good, yet would become very easy after a while. As with all skaters, I would recommend more functional exercises. Although, in this case, the leg lifts would be appropriate, as ice dance does involve a lot of leg swinging into various hip rotations.

If I were to design a program specifically for ice dance, I would most likely include more ankle stability exercises, core exercises, and upper body exercises. I would think of adding more open-chain exercises for the lower body to mimic various ice dance motions.

As for stretching, psoas (hip flexor) flexibiliity is key to create extension from the hip. In general, all hip muscle stretching is necessary. I wouldn't include extreme back bend stretching, as typically that is not recommended for a healthy back!

Thanks for the thoughts. We are getting ready to work on some new videos, and I was aready thinking of doing one for ice dancers and synchro skaters.

[Query]

One thing I don't see mentioned here or EVER is something my own coach emphasizes, although I have never heard anyone else talk about it is the need to bend at the top of the leg, where the femur enters the hip socket.

I think you are right. In fact, now that I think of it, I'm sure they did that. They emphasized motion at the hip socket most when swinging the legs, but, yes, it must occur when sitting on the leg too, else one would lean so far back one would fall down.

One of the instructors showed us something I now realize I mis-understood. With the hips thrust forward, he whowed how one could lean forward and back by bending different amounts and directions at the hip socket. He was showing us we didn't need to break the line by bending at the waist or in the torso (i.e., in the spine) to create lean.

These particular instructors do lean back a lot - mostly when skating backwards, where it looks right. I've also seen many ice dancer coaches lean forwards a fair bit when skating forwards. I'm not certain how universal is the idea of doing all the lean with the hip socket, and none with the spine and torso.

(But this set differs a fair bit from other coaches I've had. E.g., they do not face their hips and torsos much into the center of the skating arc. Their hips, torsos and head all point in the direction they skate - which is mostly along the arc, but maybe 5-8 degrees towards the center.)

They didn't push us to extreme back bends, and those we did were brief, part of an off-ice dance session. But one of their regular students, a flexible young girl, was encouraged to show off a walkover position. I suspect they have dummied down their Russian and Ukrainian derived training techniques, because most of us were adults, and because we were soft Amercans who might sue.

Overall I like the instructors (http://www.wisa.us/coaches.html) (though Elena, my favorite, didn't teach this year). But between their soft voices, the accents, and the fact I sometimes mistook their demonstrations of what not to do for the reverse, I find them a bit difficult to understand (Elena is easier to understand, but her teacher roster is almost always full), particularly in a group lesson setting. I had the same problem with a long-term coach, another Russian with a strong competitive career, which is why I eventually switched.

It is my impression, based on an admittedly limited selection of former coaches, that American Ice Dance coaches teach a fairly uniform style, in terms of body positions, holds and tracking, but Russian and ex-Eastern Bloc ice dance coaches teach a wide variety of radically different styles.

[Debbie S]

But if you don't use these muscles to help support weight, the PT/APT said one is more likely to have the lower body injuries I've had, like ankle sprains, and a broken leg. I'm guessing you misunderstood your PT. While strengthening muscles gives you more stability and strength, and could theoretically decrease your risk of falls which might result in a sprain or break, the fact is, if you experience a trauma that causes a bone to break, there is nothing your muscles can do, except tear along with soft tissue and inner layers of skin as your bone breaks.

[Query]

I'm guessing you misunderstood your PT. While strengthening muscles gives you more stability and strength, and could theoretically decrease your risk of falls which might result in a sprain or break, the fact is, if you experience a trauma that causes a bone to break, there is nothing your muscles can do, except tear along with soft tissue and inner layers of skin as your bone breaks.

Yuk!

Anyway, what you say makes sense, once the bone breaks. The question is what force causes it to break.

In my broken (well, fractured) fibula case I fell very slowly backwards, fighting it all the way with internal muscle tension, and rolled diagonally. The impact was rather light. So it virtually has to be tension, sheer and/or torsion generated on the bone from muscle tension which fractured it, not the impact.

He wasn't talking just about strengthening my muscles, but about distributing the load among more muscles.

If you do everything with one muscle, instead of the whole applicable group, that increases the tension, sheer and torque load on the parts of the bone affected by tension on it's single attachment point, and sometimes generates tension at the wrong angles for what the bone and other tissue is shaped to take. This is basic physics.

(Of course, no injury would have occurred if I didn't fight the fall at all.)

Tension can also come from muscles which are too short, and that may be part of what he was talking about in the case of my turned ankle injuries. (I never got them diagnosed to determine if they were sprains or strains.) Muscles stay short if they never warm up enough to be stretched, because they aren't used, no matter what stretches one tries. Though my real suspicion is that the injury came from using improper excess muscle tension to fight imbalance.

Finally, muscle tension on the side of the bone that is stretching can reduce the tension in the bone that may create a fracture.

But enough about me. It's been almost 10 years since I had any serious injury (fall practice!), and there are people on this board with more recent reasons to complain. This thread wasn't intended to be about injury prevention, but about exercises to make people better dancers. I look forward to rsk8d's new video, that will transform me from preliminary to gold level in a single day. ;)

[sk8lady]

My current ice dance coach has covered pretty much everything mentioned in the original post, adding that you really need to be able to hold the shoulders and arms pretty still while doing 3's, which was a new concept to me--I was used to using some knee bend and a lot of shoulders against hips to get my 3's. My group dance instructor has us hold a beheaded hockey stick in front of us to get a stable arm and shoulder position while stroking, doing 3's, etc.

Only other comment would be that he's suggested that, if possible, for some of the holds I do a side lean to get a "champagne" position. I'm flexible enough to do it standing still but I can't do it and skate at the same time!