Wow, I feel so inadequate compared to a lot of you. I take 1 30 minute lesson, and bolt right after to make it to class the same time my professor walks in, and then about 2 hours on Friday, and another 2 hours on Sunday, for a total of 4.5 hours a week. But, it varies depending on when I have class, if i have an exam the day of my lesson, I'll usually cancel because I don't want to make the mistake of getting a concussion and taking an exam, like I had to do last semester. If I have a day off, and the rink is open, I'll go in for another 2 hours. But for two weeks, I'm going to be off the ice because the rink is closed the times I can make it due to some hockey tournament. So my chancces at going really vary.

Wow how do some of you guys squeeze in so many hours of practice??? I wish I had more time to skate and rinks with longer hours, but for now I skate 2-3 times a week for 4-6 hours. With one private 30 minute lesson and one group 30 minute lesson.

I'm an adult beginner skater and loving it! And aussiskater don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure you are doing great, pace yourself to your own ability!

happy skating

I'm so jealous. The ice in our rink went out last Thursday. I am officially 'done' until September.

Looks like I'm on the low side of average; I'm in a routine of about 6 hrs a week including one lesson. I could afford a little more time as far as money goes, but I'm trying (for some reason) to maintain one or two other things in my life and time is tight except on days when I'm already skating 2 hours. That's about the maximum my knees seem able to handle this month. If I had free choice I'd skate daily, 60-90 minutes.

Rob

6-7 days a week.
Mon 1 hour
Tues 4 hours
Wed 2 hours
Thur 1 hour
Fri off ice
Sat 8 hrs teaching and on ice practice
Sun 4 hrs on ice

total 20 per week. I guess I am on the ice more than anyone in the list.
It is easier to stay in shape when you don't get out of shape.
Of cousre some days are better than others and I don't always get to run through my programs, but I skate in 4 different rinks and that makes it easier to adjust to new suuroundings when competitions roll around. Ever been to a competition and not be able to find your bearings on the rink? Scarey!

Lives to Skate

I get that every time I go on the ice!!! I guess I'm used to not having my bearings in the first place!!!

Good Lord!!! 20 hours a week!?!?!? If I ever hit the 10 hours a week, I'll probably be half dead by end of week!!!

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

Wow guys, I am stunned and seriously impressed (in a good way) . I can see that to improve I'll need to skate more - but finances and "real life" (family, work etc) seem to get in the way...not to mention finances!

Apart from the time issue, how do you all afford it (answer not required - I'm not trying to be nosy!) If I skated 5 days a week with 2 private lessons, it'd cost...let me see... *digs out calculator* ...nearly $150 per week. The budget can't afford that, unfortunately - it's hard enough to manage the amount I do skate. Hence the comment in my earlier post about my footwork competing with Christmas 2025 as to which one will arrive first.

I spend about $110.90 per week on skating alone! I managed to work out my schedule so taht I take one of my lessons during a quieter public session in the early afternoons and by limiting my freestyle session to the requirement once an week. But I wonder whether for exchange of one of my busier public session that I would be better off skating wise to do another freestyle in place of one of the public sessions.

We'll see, I guess!!! As for "can I afford it?" Hubby would say "We probably can't afford you skating but would I rather have the money spent on the ice or at a shrink's office, I could see why economically that we have to keep you on the ice. (And since HE ran up a large debt, we really can't afford ANYTHING -- not even food now!!!)

__________________
Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

The early morning FS/Dance sessions at my rink are 2 for 1, for 40 minutes. Normal price with the rink's discount/debit card is $8 for 40 minutes. So my ice costs for the week are about $24. My coach costs are the biggie... one of my coaches charges $40/half hour, the other charges $32/half hour. So in any given week, I spend about $150 on coaching time.

After the June competition I'll go back to 2 lessons/week from primary coach and 1 lesson/week from secondary coach.

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American Waltz... Once, Twice, ???? ...

Q: How many coaches does it take to fix Jen's Dance Intro-3 Problems
A: 5 and counting...

Our rink has a scheme whereby you can pay a fixed sum per week and then skate as many patches (teaching ice sessions) as you want. But you have to pay for every week, even if you are on holiday. Some skaters pay their coach a fixed fee per week which covers ice, plus as many lessons as the coach has time for - we don't, we still pay for our lessons per lesson (husband has 15 minutes' private, and I have 30, plus we have 30 minutes' couples lesson).

We skate:
Sundays: Up to 2 hours, including 30 minutes' couples lesson & husband's 15-minute private lesson
Tuesdays: Husband skates up to 2 hours, me up to 2.5 (depending on the time of day and how tired we are - Tuesdays is an either/or day. This week, as our daughter was here, we're skating tonight; some weeks we skate in the mornings)
Wednesdays: Husband skates up to one hour, me up to 2.5 including 30-minute private lesson
Thursdays: 1-2 hours each, including one hour's social dancing
Fridays: Husband may skate up to one hour, me up to 2.5

In addition, we *sometimes* skate Saturday mornings, occasionally Mondays for up to 2 hours at another rink, and once a month 2 hours at still another rink (including 1.5 hours' social dancing!) on a Wednesday evening.

Husband commented that Sunday was his 13th day of skating without a rest-day! I said he was quite, quite mad..... but there you are, I'm not much better!

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

When I go up to 2 lessons a week, I'll be spending $113.50 a week on skating (including ice). Also not including gas, since the rink is an hour away.

I also coach & teach group classes, & my income from skating pretty much covers my costs for skating (not including tests/dresses)---so in that way it's kind of a wash.

I don't do much else--don't buy new clothes much, rarely take a trip or go out to a show, etc. I just skate--but the thing is, that's what I want to do, so I'm happy!

I'm lucky 2 ways: one, I skate mostly on near-empty morning public sessions and two, my husband pays for one of my two lessons each week. My weekly skating expenses are roughly $75:
2 half-hour lessons @ $30 each = $60
1 freestyle session (one of my lessons is on a freestyle): $9 (contract rate)
Public skating: $5 per week, approximately--I have an annual pass which is $250 for the year. That was a big chunk of change but worth it for me since I have a flexible schedule and the pass is good at 5 different rinks. Normally, admission to a public session is $6. I got the pass in October. It "paid for itself" a long time ago!

Now to go to the rink and work on depreciating these Klingbeils!

hmmm how much do I spend well about $75 which includes 1 private and 1 group lesson. This does not include gas in which case the rinks I go to are each about 15 miles away from home. Now how do I afford it, well I think of it as the one splurge I have weekly and as necessary to upkeep my health and sanity ). I'm a therapist so actually I just take on extra cases when I need the money, luckily it's a field thats needed and I could be quite flexible with my schedule.

My regular schedule is something like: MWF -- usually 90 minute sessions. I usually do about 30 minutes of figures and an hour of dance/moves/basics/stroking/gossipping.

Saturday OR Sunday -- one hour dance session

Sunday morning -- 1 hour patch.

1 half-hour lesson/week with my coach who teaches all of the above -- I pay her $30 and she teaches me for however long she wants (we tend to talk a lot!). I've told her a million times I can only afford a half-hour, and I guess it's okay with her that she gives me extra time. (Am I lucky or what?)

So I spend about $55-60/week for lessons and ice-time. I would like to add a another lesson with a male dance coach for partnering/tests/ but so far that ain't happening around here!

It's nice to live in an area where people are pretty casual about ice-time, lessons, etc., and where the morning public sessions are usually the same 5-6 adults.

On the other hand, it would be fun, I think, to live in an area where there is a good training center.... -- oh well, can't have both, I guess.

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Is Portland the only city with it's own ice-dance website? http://www.pdxicedance.net/

Our one local rink has a similar system, but the fixed price is not "per week" but "per quarter (ie: 3 months)", and is, I think, now well over $500 per quarter (I'm not sure of the price - it's a while since I looked, did the maths and gasped ). It runs only from the 1st day of Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct, and only until the last day of the third month following (Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec). If you want to start a quarterly part-way through, they charge heaps more pro-rata.

Therefore it's not economic unless you are able to average more than 4 sessions a week for the whole of the quarter, even allowing for holidays and weeks you might otherwise not skate.

What's more, the quarterly only allows entry to public ice, not "private" sessions, which are sessions where only skaters who are being coached can skate (there are no general public skaters on private sessions) I'm guessing that you might call these "freestyle" sessions. So unless you are able to skate 5 day a week at the quieter public sessions (generally the lunchtime ones when everyone is at work - maybe earning money to skate!! ), it's not economic.

I haven't heard here of any coaches accepting a "flat fee" except maybe at the seriously elite level, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen - just that I don't know about it, and can say that my coach doesn't do it!

I have heard of a weekly ticket system for the coaches here, where they pay a certain sum per week (maybe $130-150?), and then can skate for themselves or teach for pay during whatever sessions they want, but that doesn't apply to us general skaters.

Wow, only $250 for the whole year?? That's amazing - like I said in my post above, our pass (good for only certain sessions at only one rink) costs almost 10 times that much! Yes, I can imagine the pass would have paid for itself a long time ago - if ours were only that much, I think I'd have paid for mine in about 2 weeks!

Recently, I've been making it on the weekends and here and there during the week because I've been helping a friend work on his house during the weekdays...I'm a bit ashamed of how little practice I've been getting in in the last 2-3 weeks.

When I was working full time, I would go to all of the evening and weekend public sessions, which totalled up to 14.5 hours a week.

My record is 31 hours, I don't think I could skate any more than that.

My average these days, when I'm not otherwise occupied, is about 20 hours.

I currently have one 30-minute lesson per week. I have seriously thought about adding in a second lesson, but I simply cannot afford it. Of course, I really can't afford to be skating/lessoning as much as I am anyways, but I somehow find a way. ;-)

Not a clue as far as level - I can jump the waltz, toe loop, salchow, and half flip, and occasionally manage a 3-4 rotation spin (my spins are crap though, and it's rare that I get a good one). I can do all the forward and backward 3-turns, mohawks, and crappy spread eagles, but I can't do brackets or pivots very well. My backward edges are also a catastrophe, but the forward ones have gotten pretty good. I'm not happy with my skills yet, but I think I'm progressing at a pretty good rate.

Yes it is!!! Last time I paid money at the rink, it was $268 for both a 20 public session card and 20 freestyle session card...and that's a significant amount cheaper than buying the sessions individually...

My ice for the 'year' (late September to last week) was about $450 (Cdn) for 5 hours each week. My lessons came to about $14/week. I didn't test or anything this year, but I did partner a couple times at another club. That cost me $16 each time, which included the partner's mileage, his time (roughly 10 min or so), and the ice time (1.5 hours).

Canadian clubs either have their own rinks (like the Royal Glenora, etc), or buy their ice in blocks from municipalities and then divvie it up for their various programs. Skaters buy the ice from the clubs. Trying to figure skate on public sessions up here is usually not allowed.

When I first started skating about 4 1/2 years ago I bought a pass for the rink at CU Boulder, it was 165 for the year and all the public sessions, which were about 4-8 hours a day. That was such a deal, I really miss it but the rink is small 185 x80 so I can't even fit my moves in the rink. Now it's just scary expensive 18 x 5.50 per week, ouch!

la

I aim for about 4 hours a week (more right before a test). I can't regularly do more than that without getting overuse injuries. I try to work out on Pilates apparatus once a week, but lately I've been so busy I've just been doing mat workouts at home. I run for cardio but my mileage is way down since I started skating (before skating, it was never that high--about 8 miles a week, max, but now it's like 2 or 3!)

and I always try to take one day a week completely off, and chocolate is a food group for me!

__________________
Ask me about becoming a bone marrow donor.
http://www.marrow.org
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Do you have the same coach that I have? She worked with me one day for at least an hour, probably closer to an hour and a half, and only charged me for 30 minutes ($22)

Ice time is 20 punches for $135 ($6.75/punch) For the most part, they are a full hour. When I'm skating, I do two FS sessions, sometimes a moves session (30 min) and a group lesson--which is usually like a private because I'm usually the only one in FS levels) That runs about $80 every two months, and I get a 10-punch card with it.

Hmmmm.....Seems I'm not spending nearly as much. Then again, I only get 3-4 hours per week.

I kind of doubt it because I think you on the opposite coast from me -- but it looks like our prices for ice-time are somewhat similar, too!

I LOVE that my coach doesn't really watch the clock, at least most of the time. Of course, she doesn't have anyone after me either, so I guess I'm lucky that way. But she seems to give time to all of her students -- she will watch you while you are practicing and comment on it, or use me as an example for another student -- sometimes it turns into a "group lesson" -- most people appreciate it and don't mind being part of a group for small parts of their lesson because they know that she'll do the same thing for them while they are there just practicing.

I worry that she wants to retire...

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Is Portland the only city with it's own ice-dance website? http://www.pdxicedance.net/

Wow 22 dollars for a 30 min session that goes over a lot that is a great deal. It seems like the going rate in my area is $40-54 dollars /30 minutes.

She does this too. Nothing like working on something before my lesson and hearing her tell me to pull in while she's working with E. My secondary coach is usually on ice during the same session and does the same thing. I wind up telling her this isn't her time, so I don't have to listen to her. I usually pay for it on my next "group" lesson.