YOU! hahaha

I'm starting to get called old now by 18/19 year olds

hahaha!!! just for fun I tell the little kids I am an "old lady" ... one day a girl said to me " you aren't THAT old my dad is older than you, he is 38!!!" I did NOT tell her I was 46!!!!

I said "wow, I guess he is!!!"

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

oh you women and your ages

one day I will find out my parter is actually 40, she looks 19, and SUPPOSEDLY is 27

Fortunately I don't look (or ACT) anywhere near my age, so I get away with a lot more than I should!

~~taijiya

Ok, now THAT's a whole nuther story

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

Count this 50 year who can do lovely outside 3 turns and just barely do an inside 3.

j

ME! ME! ME!!! this is the FIRST year in which I can really do recognizable and lovely 3-turns inside AND outside....and especially holding that BACK EDGE yay! (ok, so it's mostly on one side-sheesh!) thanks to my forced moves work (lemonade out of lemons).

i don't act my age either-I figure I'm old enough to get away with embarrassing my kids now!

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

Actually, klinging on to boards and coaches sometimes has a very real, physical cause.
I never was much of a chicken but learning the back inside edges, I could do them fine (well, fine for somebody skating 3 months) holding my coaches' hands or even fingers for a long time, but not at all without. The reason for this was that as soon as I released her fingers/arms, I dropped the tension in my shoulders and arms, making what she referred to as "boiled spaghetti arms". Doing this makes it very hard to do turns and edges, and since all figure skating, including jumps and spins, is based on turns and edges, you're going to have a very hard time skating with shoulders and arms gone all weak.

My coach has a solution for her kids that want to hang on...they have to take their gloves off and grip them in their hands! She does NOT permit hanger-oners...for good reason. It's dangerous! I am MUCH larger than her and a pileup would probably break something-her more than me.

Plus, it gives them something to focus on besides falling-they have to hold these gloves UP!

My husband used to get the death-grip on my hand when we danced together...until we spilled and he almost fell on top of me! So, I refused to hold him correctly after that, we did the glove trick. Once he lost his footing and I bailed!!!! He got really mad but, hey, like i was all of 135 lbs and he was 275!!! No way was I gonna be able to "save him" from smacking the ice like he thought!

So I did the safe & right thing-I bailed!

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

It appears I will have no choice but to face my "wall issues" next week, right before Nationals, when I skate at a rink with NO BOARDS! This ought to be FUN!

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

You will do fine!!! It's like being on the highway with no other cars!!!!

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

Last night an 8 yr old student did not want to do a side toe hop because she had fallen on it with her previous coach (who was 18). I did it (for the first time ever), and told her if an old lady like me could do it, so could she! Then I held her hands while she did the first 2 of many.

I can be a big chicken too. It took me years to be able to do FI threes with any kind of confidence. My former coach was trying to wean me of hand holding with an empty glove - guess that's a common ploy. It didn't work.

__________________

Aw, well keep hanging in there (not literally!!!!) you will eventually get to the point where you don't need to hang on! And if you don't, then there is always synchro!!! (that's the joke at my rink )

Yeah, I use the "if an old lady like me can do it..." ploy as well.

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

Oh, I'm there already, just not with that coach!

__________________

I'm 22 and getting told to "grow up!"
Go for the pig tails on both sides of the head. Nobody will guess you're a day over 16

I've never had a coach hold my hand except VERY occasionally. I don't think it's a good idea to build that kind of dependence.

__________________
Gordon Zaft
http://sk8rboi.blogspot.com
School figures are skating's equivalent of the Latin Mass.

I'm a stocky bloke with a shaved head, I don't see that plan going anywhere I'm afraid

Rotflol okay I can see how that might not work equally well for you as it does for me. Maybe if you let it grow?

Interesting about the arms and shoulders. My problem is just the opposite: my arms and shoulders are Frankenstein-stiff, which I think causes all sorts of problems, not the least of which is the issue of keeping my cener of gravity from being as low as it should be. (Thus my earlier post about relaxing while skating--and again I thank everyone for their suggestions.) There must be a happy medium, where one's arms and shoulders are perfectly poised, neither too loose (boiled spaghetti) nor too tense (what I call "Frankenstein").

Why is skating so hard? And why is it so addictive?

If I let it grow I'll just be tempted to dye it lurid colours again and bang goes the young persona again

I have an answer for everything

I don't care, 27 is young in my books so sod 'em

Sk8dreamer, I had that problem on my edges too until our main group coach took a hike and we got a different one (who then had to re-teach the whole group a number of things).
What really helped was to learn to push off properly at the beginning of the edge. The push is coming entirely from the free leg which feels *almost* like doing a power pull), which then snaps into position right after the push. All you're doing with the standing leg is keeping the edge. Trying to push off in any way with the standing leg at this point causes problems like toepicks, stiff neck and shoulders, edge fighting you etc. Also what really helped was like... the new coach has us keep the arms bit bent at the elbows, but tension there nonetheless, and then keep them in front of you until the moment you push off, only then do the arms (and shoulders) go into the correct position (to sort of your side, rotating the upper body, you know what I mean) not before the push-off happens. The best I can describe this motion is like trying to punch somebody in the stomach with your elbow while holding a stick with your hands by both ends.

Solved my stiff shoulders in, oh about a minute. Can't demonstrate it though (public ice is over for this season here and club ice is till april but my concussion will probably keep me off ice till then, so I think the season's over for me).

Ohhh I had mine dyed "Cosmic blue" a while ago. When it washed out, it left my hair looking a perfect grey color.

Maintaining posture with respect to the wall-holding is likely to be an issue. My ocaches have never encouraged extended wall work, and I get only limited hand-holding--usually only when talking through some new move. At that point my brain has more that it can manage and balance always seems to be the agenda item deleted to free up processing space.

As for age (or acting it), at 47 I feel younger after four years of skating than I did when I started. (Of course, a lot of that is due to the very real positive effects of all the exercise...I went in for my annual physical this week and was told the improvement in most of my numbers from a few years ago was amazing.)

Rob

Thanks, Sessy. My coach has actually been stressing the push-off, and I have so much trouble with it that I think I need to just practice pushing off from a standstill over and over until I figure out how to get some power in it. Needless to say, the first edge is the worse--subsequent ones, where I have some momentum built, are much, much better. I'm having trouble picturing what you're describing with the arms, though. I'll try to keep your description in mind when I skate today, and see if I can experiment a bit.

Attempt to illustrate, A being what the previous coach taught me and B being what the new coach taught, fat arrow being direction in which you push off, dotted arrow planned edge to travel.

It's like at the time of the push-off you THEN twist the upper body with the elbows-arms-wrists forming a sort of rigid construction before you, which it's then as if you're trying to smack your right elbow into the stomach of somebody standing behind you to the right of your right shoulder (for the right inside back edge)