Say,I was thinking of the movie Ice Castles,and this question came to me. But in the scene were Lexy crashes against the Boards and ends up getting blind. I was wondering if anyone knows if there is any known correct way coaches teach skaters to land to slow an inpact so that doesn't happen to them? As we all know that really can happen in real life if skaters aren't careful. Does anyone know an answer? Thanks.

__________________
FSWer

Of all the injuries I have heard of happening to a figure skater or had happen myself, I have *never* heard of blindness except for in the movie Ice Castles.

Yes, any coach worth his or her salt will teach a new skater how to fall, but not with the goal of preventing blindness - rather, to lesson a fall. However, ice is slippery, falls happen.

Anyone really worried about head/brain injuries (which is what could conceivably cause blindness, though it's a stretch and a host of other things would happen first IMO) should wear a helmet on the ice.

Deleted by user....

__________________
Great forum quotes:
On Falling: '...it doesn't matter, it's what you do AFTER you fall that's more important' ISK8NYC

Most skaters will tell you their worst skating injuries came from the stupid, unexpected falls. Standing still talking to your coach, leaning back too far (this mainly applies to dance blades) and crashing down hard on your tailbone, tripping over your toepicks at the end of a session when you're tired and going straight down on your kneecaps, catching a blade in the leg of your pants, catching a rut in the ice, etc.

Falls with momentum (mainly jumps) aren't going to injure you as much, even tough sometimes they may look worse, because the momentum kind of softens the impact on the ice. Granted sometimes it still hurts, just not as much.

If you fall with enough momentum and go sliding toward the boards, it's pretty much instinct to do whatever is in your power to turn yourself so you don't crash head-first, or to use your hands/arms to strike first.

__________________
2010-2011 goals:
Pass Junior MIF test
Don't break anything

Try to avoid knees-first into the boards. That wrecked my knees for 15 years.

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

Agreed!! Can't tell you how many times I wiped out on the Intermediate power circles and had to twist myself as my head raced to the boards!!

__________________
Skating Dreams

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES." --Nike

OK I guess I'm showing my age here...

In the movie she doesn't run into the boards. She's on an outside rink (Rockefellar center?) does a triple jump and trips on some sort of divider and then crashes into some cast iron looking patio furniture.

LW

I always thought it was next to impossible to teach somebody how to fall. It happens so fast you don't have time to think.

Yep, you're right, it's the furniture she crashes into.

OOOWWWWWWW!!!

ITA. The falls taught in first level of skate school don't really prepare you for the whoppers.

I had a glorious fall the other day, doing dance with coach. I went down, made sure I didn't hit my knees. I slid parallel to the boards the width of our rink trying to make sure I didn't hit the barrier. It would've been easier if coach hadn't misguidedly tried to prevent my fall, only to fall herself.

__________________
Katz

Saved by Synchro!
I was over it, now I'm into it again !

You can't prepare for every eventuality. But you can train yourself to relax into a fall so you go down softly, if you know the fall is happening. You can also train yourself not to try to break a fall with your hands. If you're not afraid to fall, that's half the battle. My worst falls have been on bunny hops and brackets, where I didn't anticipate going down and, as you say, it happens too fast to think. Even then, I've never actually hurt myself falling. Falls on jumps are generally pretty easy to control, since you usually know you're going down. When I work with little kids, the first goal is to take away the fear of falling as much as possible, by playing games that require "falling" and getting up again.

Yeah I've never seen the movie

__________________
2010-2011 goals:
Pass Junior MIF test
Don't break anything

What I want to know is, HOW did she do figures after going blind???

__________________
"Go wash an elephant if you wanna do something big." -Baby Gramps

I know there's a guy who does ice dance and is blind, but I agree that checking your tracing doing a figure might be a little difficult without being able to see it...

The movie totally glosses over figures. As I recall, in the movie competition is all based only on the big freeskate program. Nobody said it was realistic....

I've never heard it either, but it isn't that far-fetched. I knew a woman who permanently lost her sense of smell after a head injury.

__________________
It's all about the dress!

After showing my age, now I'll demonstrate how I watched the movie a million times:

That's one of the quotes from the movie where she decides to compete again "figures only count for 15% now". Then they decide she can do so well that she'll make it to do her freestyle program. Still unrealistic but at least she wasn't tracing figures blind...

LW

And in the remake they are using IJS, so figures are a non-issue

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

I have a site on falling, which mentions collisions

http://mgrunes.com/falling.html

but basically, you hit should the boards much the same way you should fall - spread out the impact energy and momentum to as much of the body as possible. Try to roll against the surface, rather than hitting hard and stopping dead on one body part. As with any impact, it becomes gentle only if you practice making it so. The proper response must reach instinctive speeds, and overide the incorrect instinctive responses most adults and many kids produce without practice. It works best if you can make it a fluid extension of the instinctive motion.

Watch hockey players or speed skaters practice hitting the boards. Most of them do it pretty well.

It's easy to imagine blindness and other head injuries if you fall and another skater runs their blade into your face. I think that would be pretty common in hockey and speed if people didn't where helmets. I haven't watched Ice Castles, so don't know what is supposed to have happened.

__________________
Mitch Grunes ModifyingBoots FallingGently HomePage

My understanding is that you weren't really meant to look down when doing figures, well not right down at your feet anyway. I am told you could feel the tracing, if you were good at figures

That's a common injury for surfers. Apparently getting hit on the head can sheer off some nerve connections and they don't always grow back. My husband had this happen, bit of a worry for a chef!

They're doing a remake? Tell me more....

__________________
Katz

Saved by Synchro!
I was over it, now I'm into it again !

Yes, in theory the tracing is the inevitable result of correct lean and body position. If you set the edge and set the lean and hold that position steady, you'll trace a perfect circle. So I suppose you could learn to do figures by feel alone, although I think it would be really hard. I don't exactly look at the tracing while I'm doing them, but I do look for the center of the figure.

There's a thread about Ice Castles in Skating News - apparently they're doing a remake with Taylor Firth cast in the role of Lexie.

I'll sho wmy age, my dorkiness for watching this movie hundreds of times (I have DVD and VHS), and reading the book (I still have the paperback from the late 70s, another from a used bookstore, and a photonovel).

In the book, her coach, Beulah, tells her to feel the figure w her entire body. The original movie, pretty much glossed over it except for the 15% someone else mentioned. And that was in the context of her famous coach taking her on before the accident. Now its a non-issue.

Wonder if the novel will be modernized too. Personally, I loved the tackiness of Beulah's Ice Castle.

Kay

__________________
Visit my figure skating journal
http://www.skatejournal.com/

My daughter and I actually detoured through Waverly, IA once on the way home from a competition. We knew there wouldn't really be a Beulah's Ice Castle, but we were still sad that there wasn't.

Another reminder about how completely unrealistic that movie was. . . Did anyone else notice they completely left out any scenes showing the official 6-minute warmup before the competition? I always giggle imagining 5 other skaters trying to warm up all of their elements without colliding with this blind girl!

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

And didn't the new coach say something to the effect of, "But the figures ... she's too old to ..." -- basically saying she was too old for figures, which is stupid, but whatever. Then Beulah made the 15% remark ... except they weren't worth 15% back then, they were worth 30%! (SP was 20% and LP was 50% ... and if you weren't doing an SP, at Novice and below, figures were still 50%!)

That movie was so unrealistic but of course I watched it 70 million times because I was 12. I also skated to Ice Castles for ISIA (now known as ISI) Freestyle 4!

(At least the movie didn't have them skating in spotlight at competition, like in "The Cutting Edge"!)

daisies... don't forget about the flowers!

__________________
Champagne in 2005, 2008, 2009 - who's next out of the pre-bronze club...?

Wang chung!