The Second Block: THE POSITIONS

These are the theories of balance in action; the strict body placement in relationship to the circle. In other words, what you are doing and where you are doing it.  There are tow elements to teaching positions. One of them is the establishment of you as a coach, devising exercises off the circle to help the students when they get into a circular situation. I do a lot of work off the circle in which students can find what it is like to skate with their body. You teach them the straight line theory of symmetry or evenness of the arms and free leg.

In general, I teach a low free leg, approximately 4 inches extended in front and back, and 2 inches off the floor. To give you an example of this, ltes say youre working on a backward push off and hold a straight line with the arms parallel to the surface and the line that they are skating on

Then, we establish the movement of the free leg from the thigh down. This si something that I haven’t discussed, but when a free leg is moved, should not be moved from the hip. It should be moved from the thigh down because you’ve established your balance in the hip, and when you move the free leg from the hip, you lose your line of balance again. Rely on moving (or passing) the free leg so as not to affect the rest of the body and the hip remains motionless.

Then I teach the arms to move second, as the most natural motion. You’re turning arms and you do not what a rotational effort; do NOT turn them around you. You “scissor” then by your body; that’s not rotation. If you’re skating a straight line and you turn your arms around, you’re going to be turning in a circle. You cannot skate a straight line and turn your arms around you without your skate doing something. That’s what we are after; that perfect balance to the floor where there is no wiggle and no pressure on the floor disturbing the flow.

Now that we have established a foot movement and tow arms that have moved, very relaxed, the next and most critical movement is the head turn.  Remember, your head is attached to your spine and your hips. If you decide that you’re going to turn your head and your hips at the same time, you’re going to swing off that straight line and create a frictional movement; the skate will go to the inside. In other words, on the circle, you’re going to get a wiggle. So when students turn their head, I have them look down at the line in front of them or the straight line. While turning their heads, they press the free hip opposite the rotation of the head. I use the hips as the checking point. Now, many teachers use the shoulders as the checking point, leaving the arms fixed and turning the head second. Bur you see, that creates a distorted spine. You’ve tipped your body over and there is no reason to do that. The order would be leg, arms, head. the order here could be different, since the order is not the most important but a system to do it by is extremely important.

I use the example: If you are standing in a dark hallway and suddenly you hear someone say something behind you  and they tap you on the shoulder, I am sure you are not going to turn your shoulder AFTER your head. You are going to whip your  shoulder over first; that’s a natural motion, shoulder BEFORE head. But the big effort here was to establish that it is a straight line movement and you can get rid of all rotational inaccuracies by working on a straight line. Now, exact circle establishment on a back outside eight:

• first variation: students are taught to pass their foot at the first third, then turn their arms at the top, and their head at the second third. 
• second variation: foot at the first third, turn the arms at the top, and their ehad at the second third.
• third variation: foot at the third, arms at the second third, and head right before take-off.

Now, when you do 8A, you use the same system; you rotate your arms at the third before the turn, then rotate your arms at the second third, and your head before the take-off. One thing you should do as a teacher is develop a system. In other words, don’t do your figure 3 rotation different than the same type  rotation on figure 9A. Then your student can use the same system of rotation when they get to figure 11. It’s so much simpler when you have a system, and each student follows the system. Now you will have exceptions, but these should be held to a minimum. Try to be true to your theories and your system.

The second dimension about teaching positions is that I believe it has to be a rote memory system.  I think it has to be so memorized that it becomes an innate motion in the student. I have used a very special tool to do this, for I am sure we’ve all been in the same situation. “But you never told me that before” – here is a good way to stop that. Each student has their own book and they have a figure per page. At the bottom of the page, they learn to write the figure like it is written in the book. I write down the date each figure is taught so that, number one, as an instructor, I can see the last time I gave them a lesson on each figure (perhaps I thought it was yesterday and it was really two months ago). In this way, I have established being confident in teaching each figure. This diagram uses the entire gamut of the figures represented in the figure book. You can use one sheet for all the figures in the book. It also helps students establish where they’re supposed to be doing something and how thy have been told to do it.