Hey me again. Sorry I have so many questions I must be a real pain lol. I was just wondering what's a good height and/or weight for skating. I'm 5' 9.5" and weigh about 135-140 pounds (roughly cos I measure in kilos so I think this is right.). I am trying to lose a bit more weight though but is this too fat for learning to skate well? What do people who skate usually weigh?

Your 63kgs and you think youre fat?? and youre almost 6 foot??

Are you sure??

Try this calculator....
http://www.manuelsweb.com/kg_lbs.htm

Do you want to do pairs, dance or solo?? Obviously 60kgs is a good weight for doing lifts etc, but you will more than likely put on muscle weight with training etc...

__________________
--------------
-Erinna-
aka cassarilda

My Progress Report!
"Did I mention there is only ONE rink in Melbourne?!"
"If you're not flying, you're obviously not trying!!!" - courtsey of the guy who helped me up off the ice after my last spectacular and sore fall

This is a question only your nutritionist can answer. You sound thin as it is. Elite skaters are obviously thin. You don't need to be thin or skinny for learn to skate. If you ever wanted to do triples, maybe, but you've got a good 7 years before you even would get to that because it takes a long, long time to build up that far. By then you'd be skating so much that you'd lose any extra weight without needing to diet anyway. Focus on being healthy...eating your veggies, lean meats if you are so inclined (fish or chicken) and some whole grains. The rest will take care of itself, and if you feel the need to lose some weight or maybe have a more adequate diet, seek a nutritionist. Bodies and metabolisms are way too different for anyone to be able to answer to your specific needs on the internet.

PS: About the height...you are a little tall. I'd say a good skater height is anywhere between 5'1 and 5'5...5'3 being a pretty average height. But again that's for triples. And there are plenty of very tall skaters who have made it despite their height, so don't let it stop you.

Stardust is correct in that your health/condition is far more important than actual size.

I am your height and almost 50 pounds heavier but that hasn't stopped me from returning to skating at age 56. I have a large frame and my doctor figures 175 pounds would be a healthy weight. I know I am not likely to do any advanced jumps at my age/size so being "big" isn't too much of a disadvantage.

When I skated as a young woman (age 14 to 19), I was also 5' 9" and about 125 pounds - I was actually too skinny when I started and gained weight with mussle development. I was fortunate that there happened to be a man in the club who was looking for a partner and he was 6' 6" and about 200 pounds - he had no problem with lifts!!! LOL! (When he retired from skating, I gave up pairs.)

You need to recognize what goals are realistic for your situation (body type) and then go for those that are reachable. If the situation changes, re-evaluate your goals - but don't let ANYTHING stop you from from learning to skate - you will love it!

__________________
Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

No, you aren't too fat - as a dancer, I expect you're carrying a lot of muscle and are very slim. Get your bodyfat measured, and go by that rather than by what the scales say, it's much more likely to be accurate.

I've seen skaters who are probably classed as morbidly obese, and they can still skate quite beautifully, axels and all. I was obese (I no longer am), but could still skate, although I do skate better now I'm thinner! I was never as good as the skater I'm thinking of, though, and never will be (mind you, they're 20 years younger than I am!).

So you can skate whatever your weight, whatever your age, whatever your fitness level! It's not just a sport for young girls - some mornings, the only people at our rink are middle-aged men!

__________________
Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

You're no where near fat with those numbers and don't let any one tell you otherwise!!!
I'm 5'6" and 118-120lbs, athletic built with no room for weight loss... that's the image I get of you.

I am 5'6.5" and 140 pounds, about 20-22% bodyfat. I am 44 years old. Most of the really good skaters at my rink (the ones pulling doubles) are muscular and lean, not thin (there is a difference).

As an athelete, you have to eat correctly to maintain good health.

__________________
Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

How tall and elegant you must look as a dancer!

Height/weight are *very* individual, even at the elite level. Just look at Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, Shizuka Arakawa and Sasha Cohen. Some teeny tiny, others just lean, others just strong & curvy.

I'm just under 5'5'' and around 57kg/125lb. I'm a beginning skater, but I'm in very good shape. I imagine if I were an elite skater, I'd be 15 pounds lighter, but I'm not going to aim for that now. (Especially since when I *was* a competitive athlete, I was about 10 pounds heavier. Ah, muscle mass.)

Most important is your health, especially as you're just beginning. If you were a beginning runner, you wouldn't try the training diet of the elite marathoners from Kenya; you'd eat well and see how your body develops. And you certainly wouldn't wait until you were 102 pounds before lacing up your running shoes! Same thing here. Health is far more important than weight.

I'm 5'9"and change (close to 5'10") and 165 right now - I'm trying to lose weight to get down to 135. I don't understand why you're trying to lose more weight - 135 is at the bottom of the scale for "ideal weights" for your height. I've been everything from 140 to 200 pounds in my life and it's never stopped me from doing pointe work, skating or anything in between.

As a frame of reference, Shizuka Arakawa is 5'6 (maybe 5'5"?) and 119 pounds and has a gorgeous body.

I actually think a woman looks better if she has a bit more muscle on her than looking like a stick (even if the muscle is under our layer of fat).

And, if you work on gaining muscle, it will speed up your metabolism causing you to burn more calories....

__________________
Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Muscle weighs more than fat, so I think it is a mistake for you to weigh yourself at all. An out-of-shape person with little muscle and high body fat will weigh less than an athelete with no fat and lots of muscle, so weight is completely irrelevant. Look at Joannie Rochette. She was one of the strongest jumpers in the Olympic competition this week and she is not skinny at all. But she is *muscular*, not fat, and her body serves her well. Same goes for Midori Ito, the first woman to ever land a triple axel.

Instead of looking at your weight, focus on how well your body is serving you, and to a lesser extent, focus on how your body looks. Do you have a hard time getting off the ice when you try to jump? I would imagine you have no such problem. And if you are concerned about how your body looks, then measure your hips and your waist, or pinch them and see if you have a roll of fat on them. My guess is that you don't. And by the way, as skinny and tiny as Sasha Cohen is, she told me her waist measurement is about 25 inches (I think that's because she has built up her abdominal muscles; the girl has a serious six-pack!).

^Muscle doesn't weigh more than fat...that's a common misconception. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat - a pound is a pound. Muscle takes up less space than fat

Sorry to nitpick because I agree with everything else you said

I thought it means that the same amount of muscle weighs more thn the same amount of fat. So a cubic foot of muscle is more than a cubic foot of fat, no?

The easiest method to tell if it's muscle or fat is to weigh yourself under water. Fat floats, muscle sinks.

If your a floater, it's fat. If your a sinker, it's muscle!!

A cubic foot of muscle will weigh more, yes - but a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat..a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of marbles. Same principle.

Thanks for all your advice. Lol when I get in water I half-float half-sink. I used to dance more when I was younger and I was actually quite chubby. I've lost weight since but I think I lost whatever muscle I had too, so I probably should build more muscle like you advised. I do actually have a layer of 'flab' all over me and it's been there whether I'm a size 14, 12 or 11/10 (American size 10, 8, or 6/7). So I guess it's bring on the strength work lol!

I'm sure if you are weightless in water (neither float nor sink), than you are the proper weight!!

Well, yea, that's the theory. But if you're converting fat to muscle, and not changing size but losing the flab so you don't get as much bulge, your weight might not go down so much, but you'd look better because you'd look tighter.

I'm not sure how the whole converting fat-muscle thing works, although I probably should. I think it's something like you're not converting the fat, but your body is burning the fat because it's in a mode of plentifullness, and the energy you get by burning fat goes into building muscle? Either way, as long as you're healthy, there's no need to be a toothpick.

Muscle doesn't *convert* into fat or vice versa. They're different molecules. It would be like saying that your eyeball might turn into your ear.

What does happen though is that you build up the muscle, by stressing it (lifting, skating), and then if you do enough fat-burning exercises (cardio), the muscle will be *revealed* as the fat reduces.

Well, I'm 5'10" and weigh about 125, I am toooo thin, even though I have gained about 10-15 lbs over the past 4 years. You should also note that I am an endomorph for body type and very small in bone structure (4.5 inch wrist). I have about 15-18% body fat. I am trying to get to 135 so I would think you are very lucky, being to thin makes it very hard to hit lines with ease you sound just right.

Jumping especially the timing is very difficult for those of us who are taller, it takes me years to get doubles and i'll lose them for months and then get them back for months. Such is the joy of being an adult skater.

__________________
Who me? Couldn't be....
http://www.youtube.com/bouldersk8r

What I think people mean by "muscle weighs more than fat" isn't what you take it as meaning...what it means is that if you take two people of the same height and same clothing size and overall appearance, the one whose body is made up of mostly muscle will weigh significantly more than the one who has no muscle tone, even if they are by all accounts the same size in measurements. So if two girls were 5'4 and wore a size 2 and had the same measurements, the muscular one might weigh 130 lbs, and the non muscular one would weigh 115. So to look at weight only to determine your perfect size is a mistake, cause at 5'4 you'd think maybe 130 lbs is too much, but it's just cause your muscles are developed and if they weren't you'd weigh 115, meaning that if you TRIED to get down to 115 with the muscle weight you've got on you, you'd look very very sickly and you'd appear to be way below the 115 lbs.

Sasha Cohen doesn't look so much as 95 lbs...she looks more like 80 lbs. The rest is muscle mass.

I agree with everyone that weight is not an issue.

I an 5'7 and weigh 145 pounds yet ther is not a scrap of fat on me, I'ver actually had people ask me how I got so skinny. I have a lot of muscle mass


Don't look at just your weight, your fitness level, frame and muscle mass is also very important. My doc told me that i have a large frame and it makes your bones weigh more. So actually your doctor or a nutritionist can usually tell you this stuff. The scale is not realiable to measure fitness for an athlete. It is reliable maybe for people losing weight through diet only.

Perhaps one should more correctly say that muscle is denser than fat - If you put a pound of fat and a pound of lean meat (which is what muscle is, after all) side by side, the lean meat will have a much smaller volume than the fat.

Which is why, for those who are taking strenuous exercise in an effort to maximise fat loss, the scales only tell half the story - the tape-measure and body-fat measurements tell the other half!

__________________
Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Well. I can tell you about my experience.

I started skating when I was anorexic. I was a horrible skater. Yeah, I could maybe do the jumps and spins "technically" correct, but they had no power or speed...simply because eating 800-900 calories a day just wouldn't allow me to have an energy. Now I eat, I have more energy, my spins and jumps have more energy, I'm a better skater.

I think it is so sad that recreational skaters have to worry about their height and weight. Where did all of this rubbish start? Who gives a flip how tall or how much you weigh as long as you eat correctly and exercise appropriately? I suggest you go to a rink and watch some skaters. Most ISI skaters (especially) adults are not petite pencils. They are normal people who have amazing skating skills...and that's why I worship the ground they walk upon. I just hope that I am that confident, beautiful, powerful, and amazing on the ice when I'm in my 40s, 50s, 60s, as they are.

As someone who has struggled with anorexia and wound up in the hospital for it, I just have to point out that eating 800-900 calories a day is a very, very far cry from being anorexic. When I was actively suffering from it (I believe that even when "cured" the mental disease stays in your head forever...and it does peek its ugly head sometimes) I ate maybe 50 calories a day, 100 when I was being "bad" because I'd add some chicken broth...but otherwise I'd just eat fruit to stay alive, and a few saltine crackers when I felt especially dizzy, because I was dizzy all of the time and spent half of my high school years in the school nurse's office passing out.

800-900 is a decent amount of calories for someone trying to lose weight- it's really hard to eat the 2,000 reccommended daily calories unless you eat a lot of rich foods. Maybe 800 calories is not enough for some people to stay healthy but that's personally about the number of calories I eat in a day and I feel great, and a lot of the "famous" skaters you see on TV eat wayyyyyy less- and some of them *are* anorexics, but 800 calories a day isn't a disease. Anorexia is not eating anything, to the point of near death. You won't die on 800 calories a day. I just wanted to get that straight, and please don't take it as an attack, but "ana" has gotten so trendy in the past few years that everybody who doesn't eat 3 square meals a day think they suffer from it when they don't, and they should thank God that they don't. I'm not saying you're that way, but you are still mistaken on understanding the gravity of the issue.