Is it pure aesthetics, or is there a good reason? Do we need elevated heels at all? Why do ice dance boots have especially high heels?

Hockey and speed skates, presumably designed to be practical, have lower heels, or none.

My coach gave a half-hearted explanation, but made it clear she had her doubts.

A lot of walking shoes don't have significant heels, or have none. Some people claim we would be healthier if shoes imitated barefoot walking and running, pointing to altered heel strike and weight shift patterns (perhaps in skating it accentuates the rockover from outside to inside edge, making forward strokes stronger?), shortened achiles, arch support issues, the success of some people who trained barefoot in long distance running events, etc. I honestly don't know, but it seems pretty wierd, especially for those of us who are guys.

I have no idea of the real reason but would guess that it actually helps with knee bend and some positions

e.g try this.

In bare feet squat down as low as you can go keeping feet flat on the floor - see how your back comes forward to keep balanced. Now try moving forward on to balls of feet letting heels come off the ground (as they would if you had heels on). Notice how you can now get your thighs parellel to the floor and back straight quite easily.

Think of a sit spin and you'll see why it's easier in skates with a heel!

I don't know, but dancing shoes have heels as well - even for men they are about 1 inch in height, but sometimes as much as 2! Ladies' heels tend to be around 3-3,5 inch there, although you can get them as low as 2 inch (usually for ladies dancing with a short partner)
Frankly, I've tried dancing on flat-heeled shoes once and it didn't go well. I wasn't able to get a proper pushoff with the heel on certain moments where with heels I could, and somehow it was much harder to get the proper position on the tango - I would guess this is because the tango has more kneebend than the other dances. The only thing that was made easier without heels was the heelturn in the slowfox, LOL! Also, latin dancers do practice on socks sometimes, but then they don't put their heels down. They dance purely on the ball of the foot.

Much of the same movement types as in ballroom, happen in figure skating as well. For example, a lot of the strength on the back crossovers is coming from the last bit of the push, at almost maximum extension of the leg, I think the heel helps the pushing there (because in dancing you can still step "over your heel" but you can't do that with blades). So I think the reason is probably practical. I can also imagine that it helps to actually jump off the toe instead of off the heel and that it indeed helps with the kneebend.

Another thing is that I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with tendons and jumpyness. In certain jumpy steps in the quickstep you're entirely on your toes. You'd never be able to dance it that quickly, and lightfooted, if your heel came down on the ground, if you needed to jump up from the heel. I think the tendons are shorter if you're on heels or something like that. Correct me if I'm wrong!

I went to ask.com and found this link. If you scroll down to figure skate section, it explains that back in the day, the heel was necessary to afix the blade so it wouldn't go through the boot.

http://www.iceskatesmuseum.com/museu...disc-kunst.htm

ITA. Thought about this independently and came to same conclusion. Helps with knee bend, as you need less ankle flex to achieve the same amount of knee bend. Also, most spins are done on ball of foot and this makes heel of skate less likely to catch.

A friend of mine (an engineer) researched the history of figure skates (and skates in general) and apparently the early skates were simply blades mounted on a walking boot - mid-1800's I believe - and the fashion of boots at that time was the high heel so the skates got high heels. Fashions changed and walking boots changed but by then the high heel skating boot had become tradition.

Look at the footware in most every other sport that involves running, walking, jumping, etc. and there is little if any heel but figure skating is all about tradition and has never moved toward high-performance footware - otherwise we would be wearing molded fiberglass boots with bindings like ski boots! They would weigh a faction as much and provide mobility and support in the appropriate directions.

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

In figure skating, you almost always want your weight on the ball of the foot for balance and control, and having the heel raised helps keep you on the ball of the foot. I'm not sure if that was the original reason why the heel was raised, but I would imagine that is why they continue to make them that way now.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

I went to a skate tech presentation about skate recommendations and there was a big discussion among the coaches about heel height. Most coaches like the higher heel of Jackson vs. Riedell because of the impact on spins.

I never thought about it - maybe that's part of the figure-skating reluctance for men. They don't want to wear high heels.

I'm not buying into the 'ski technology' in skating just yet. I've seen too many bad skates made out of plastic that restricted movement. I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude with the high-end hinged plastic boots.

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I agree with that. I once had a look at history of ice skates too, and there were some parts that mentioned that it's a traditional thing in the way that the skates have maintained more or less a similar look throughout time. They could have gone down a different path in terms of looks etc, but it seems that preserving the general appearance of the traditional figure skate is important in figure skating.

I think it was mainly an aesthetic thing. Think about how high heels accentuate the women's body by making the legs look longer and the back straighter, figure skates have the same effect on the skater. The techniques came later and developed around the heels.

The axel was named after a speedskater! No heels there..

But that assumes that figure skating was always a women's sport. Not so.

When skating first really came into vogue, it was more for men...or at least equal.

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I agree that the figure skating world has not embraced new footwear as quickly as other sports, but I don't think that is the reason for the heel height. The other footwear you are referring to is for sports where there is not nearly the same requirement for ankle support. As a result, the ankle bend is not restricted in these sports shoes and the athlete can get the knee over the toes and the weight onto the ball of the foot without having the heel raised. If figure skates didn't need to be so stiff to support the ankles, it would be easier to get a deep knee bend in them and maybe the heels could be lower. Hinged boots can change that, of course, but I'm guessing they will continue to have a heel on them because the higher heel also keeps skaters from getting their weight so far back that the skate slips out from under them and they fall backwards on their heads.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Cool. You folks have really thought this through.

Most of the other sports are judged aesthetically, and don't place a priority on keeping the back upright, so it makes sense they go for safer and more efficient footwear.

Ballet has also kept traditional footwear, and does favor upright backs, yet doesn't have high heels. But ankles aren't constrained by ballet slippers. I doubt ballerinas and whatever you call male ballet dancers would claim ballet slippers were designed to be practical or safe either.

So I guess it makes sense. Sort of.

>...The other footwear you are referring to is for
>sports where there is not nearly the same
>requirement for ankle support. As a result, the
>ankle bend is not restricted in these sports shoes...
>Hinged boots can change that, of course, but I'm
>guessing they will continue to have a heel on
>them because the higher heel also keeps skaters
>from getting their weight so far back that the
>skate slips out from under them and they fall
>backwards on their heads.

I proposed in another thread

http://skatingforums.com/showthread.php?t=24913

that we get boots with adjustable ranges of motion and resistance, covered with a thin outer leather boot for appearances. That should solve all such problems, and let us get rid of the silly high heels. The outer layer could make it look like we still have high heels.

Traditional ballet footwear is being challenged by a company that makes a more "plastic" shoe rather than a "paper machie" type pointe shoe. They LOOK different on the feet- so lots of people don't like them. They also sound different on the stage. The benefit- they seem to last about 5x as long as a traditional pointe shoe. (Look up Gaynor Minden if you are interested)

As for a heel on the skate- I figured it had something to do with the blade. When I stand in my skates it FEELS like my foot is flat. When I stand in regular high heels it feels like my foot is at an angle. Why does the heel in the boot not distort the angle of the foot like every other pair of heeled boots or shoes I own?

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Not sure why that is so. Kind of hard to explain there. I think that most people feel the slope due to the heel.

I have been in Jackson ProFlex since May and I LOVE them - there are many things I can do in ProFlex that I could not do in stiff boots (like a sit spin) that I can now do because I can get as much knee-bend as I want. The hinge allows mobility while providing ankle support. (My sprained ankle did not heal properly for 6 months because I continued skating. As soon as I switched to hinged boots, it had a chance to heal.)

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

It's very difficult to spin in a boot with no heel. Just because Axel Paulsen invented the eponymous jump does not mean he was able to execute it in anything like the way figure skates with heels and figure blades make possible.

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No no no....it's not very difficult at all to spin with boots with no heel. That's not much of an issue with spinning with no heel. I even saw one guy a few years ago doing a camel in a recreational skate .....it wasn't a hockey skate, but was along the same lines as that style. It didn't have heels.

I just went from a higher heel (risport) to lower (reidell) and my spins surprisingly don't seem to have changed very much. It would be interesting to try it on a almost no heel as well.

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Were you tying up your Risports all the way up? Because Risport ties up very high, inhibiting ankle flex more than other skates. So it needs that higher heel to compensate.

And I saw an elite level skater turned coach do a huge Axel in plastic rental skates. The fact that we saw someone do something in bad equipment, does not mean it's not more difficult than in good equipment.

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My very modest spins aren't well centered even on figure skates, but I've spun a little in rental hockey skates. So do some hockey kids whose parents make them come to a local rink's LTS figure program.

I don't think the smaller hockey heel is a big issue spinning - it means I don't have to stretch to move towards the toe. Because I'm not used to hockey skates, the sweet spots are nearer the ends, and there is no toe pick to limit motion, and the rental skates had very wide heels, balance was the dominant problem for me while spinning.

Looked up the Gaynor Minden web page. OK. I didn't know enough about ballet to realize some pointe shoes have heels, and pretty extreme ones at that. Even those Gaynor Minden shoes don't look like they provide much ankle support. I guess ballet dancers must work pretty hard at conditioning their feet.

As a guy with limited muscle flexibility, I do not feel flat in figure skates, and the heel makes it a dificult stretch to get fully onto the toe pick for those moves that require it. But I guess the point about making it easier to lift the skate off the ice at the rear without touching the toe pick makes some sense.

I'm just not made for this sport. Where can I order a more flexible body?

Pointe shoes do not have heels, the bend you are seeing is due to the arch of the dancers foot. If you are not "en pointe" your foot will be flat on the ground. Dancers do work extremely hard on conditioning their feet and ankles. To some extent the ribbons provide a small amount of support to the ankle, while also holding the shoe on. Most dancers now use elastics to old the shoe on, and the ribbons are just there for the extra support and for looks. (It is totally possible to eschew the ribbons if you have the foot/ankle strength to dance without them).

Before the french revolution, however, ballet shoes did have a heel.


If you find out where to order a more flexible body- I'd like to know. I'd love one too! (Though, thankfully, my ankles are in fine shape for figure skating. They are what made me leave ballet though )

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Come to think of it, on spins, you're going to lift up your heel and balance completely on the ball of the blade anyway, so it might not matter how high the heel is. However, if you are doing back cross rolls (crossing behind and pushing back with the front foot, like on the Adult Silver MIF test), I would imagine a low heel would make it awfully dangerous. Heck, years ago I managed to fall back and hit the back of my head on those even with the high heel!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Much of ice skating is done on the center/front of the blade. Spins are the obvious, but edge jumps are rolled up off the rocker to the toe, turns are done center-to-front and back again. To strike an edge you have to use the curved part of the blade, even crossovers rely on the center/front of the blade.

Other than flats, I can't think of anything that uses the heel of the blade. Maybe back one-foot turns, like 3's and brackets? I do know that, if you glide too far back on the heel -- you're on your tush! Now, Michael Weiss has discovered a creative use for the blade tails. How about dance moves?

Let's ask the question a different way - for what do we use the heel part of our blades? Why would we need a flat skate with no heel?

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