An adult skater I know just told me that her Russian coach now has her doing the FO and FI edge patterns with her arms straight out in front. She was able to do them this way, while she has not been able to with proper rotation. The weird thing is that she also said the Russian coach told her that "shoulder/arm rotation is the old way, and they don't do that anymore". Pure balony to my knowledge. Anyone else heard of this? The closest I've seen to this is having the tots put their arms in front to "steer their car".

__________________

Maybe the coach wanted to focus on the feet only as a drill? If the skater was using her arms and shoulders to do all the work, eliminating that part of the exercise would force the feet and legs to do more work. Later, the arms could be added back in to finish the exercise.

I think the PSA MITF tapes suggest doing arms first, with a two-foot glides. Later, you add the single foot. I guess this could be an opposite approach.

Possible, but the part that bothered me was really the idea that the coach told her that the alternating edge moves aren't being taught that way anymore, that it is an old fashioned method. As I said in the same topic on the On Ice - Skaters forum is that I suspect the coach was humoring the student.

__________________