Say,I'm not sure if this should be here for help from skaters. Or in genual Skating talk. But I have a question about when skaters learn to fall correctly so they don't get hurt as much. I was wondering....we all know that is taught in Freestyle for if you should fall on the ice off your balance,etc. But does anyone know if your taught how to fall corectly when doing......Pairs? A lot of Pairs Skaters fall,and I was just wondering what was taught about falling....if anything. Or would there be any real answer? Does anyone know? Thanks.

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FSWer

Oh! I would hope, especially with lifts and such that coaches would go over this, but I guess it would depend on the coach.

Since there isn't a figure skating curriculum, it all depends on your coach.

I've never been taught to fall.

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-Jessi
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Falling correctly is the first lesson in Basic Skills. I would imagine that any skater learning pairs would have learned to fall long, long before they began pair skating!

In pairs, and dance too, the guy is taught to save/protect the girl at almost all costs.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I attended an on-ice seminar on pairs at one of the PSA conferences, and the first thing we were told was that the boys first job is to protect the girl. Nevertheless, there have been some awful falls and injuries in Pairs. It is the most dangerous figure skating discipline.

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But is the girl taught to fall correctly in such cases like what happened with Jessica. Or more likely from let's say.....an overhead lift or throw? So that she can land safely? Or is there really no real answer?

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FSWer

Literally, we are taught that the guy does EVERYTHING to keep the girl from falling, even if that means falling and breaking her fall. But there's no real way to "teach" someone how to fall out of a lift. Once you've been skating for long enough, you just naturally fall in a way where you likely won't hurt yourself too badly. With lifts, you add the problem of the guy moving differently and causing the girl to fall awkwardly. It's just something you deal with if you're doing it. So no, you aren't taught to fall specifically for pairs or dance lifts. But like someone said, you've usually fallen for so long before you get there, you just do it. In freak cases (for example, Totmianina and Marinin) there's just not too much you can do -- it happens to quickly. There are going to be some of those, it's the nature of the sport -- and nothing either partner does is going to change that.

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Well I've seem some kids practice lifts and they were starting out with the guy lying flat on his back on the floor, his hands up (so in front of him) and doing the lift that way, progressing from there to trying to get the girl over his head.

ex. Paul Binnebose & Laura Handy.... remember their freak accident fall during a training session?? She didn't get hurt, but he ended up w a stroke & permanent damage... That's taking the whole "protect the girl" to its farthest limits, since if you watch the fall, she *never* touches the ice, til he's already down... amazing actually...

GULP, yeh, its instinctual. You'll do what you'll do without reguard to self because you don't have time to think.

Lyle

We are taught things like when to stay holding together or break apart for a fall and how to minimize some injuries in certain falls or crashes. In most cases it's pretty instinctive.

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Oh, it happens so quickly that there's not much you can do about it in terms of falling out of a lift "correctly." The man is taught to cusion the blow for the girl...other than that, we've never received "falling" instruction, but we've received tons of instruction about how to keep a lift safe; so, we always try to error on the side of safety. In other words, we don't do any elements that we haven't slowly and safely worked up to. For instance, we learned the platter lift off ice first and practiced it there for about a year before taking it on the ice. Then when we took it on the ice we would just glide with the lift before rotating it...then 1/2 rotation, then one rotation, then two rotations, and this would all happen over the course of several months.

It's the same for dance lifts - you learn them off-ice first, then practice them very slowly/standing still on ice, then gradually add in your rotation (or flow, if it's a straight-line lift). The first year we had a lift in our free dance it was right at the end and we did it standing still; last year and this year it's (allegedly) a proper rotational lift, although the rotation doesn't always happen.

I've been dropped several times, but only once have I landed on top of him.... that was in our "infamous fall" at Bracknell last year when a combination of adrenaline and fast ice meant he lifted me higher than he meant and overbalanced. That fall seems to have gone down in UK adult skating legend - people who weren't even there know about it!!!!

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