Warm up vs muscle memory: Physical, Mental or Neurological?

The title of this post brings to mind the old question: Animal, Mineral or Vegetable?  As I circulated around the perimeter of the rink during the first half of last night's Free Style session I experienced the usual frustration of trying to find a patch of ice that didn't have a coach and/or their skater parked smack dab in the middle of it.  Coach A. generally rigs my lesson so that I have thirty minutes to "warm up" while she coaches another skater.  Most of the time I wind up blowing that time advantage just perimeter stroking and taking evasive action to avoid other skaters. There's very little opportunity to attempt working on elements which I know are going to be part of my upcoming lesson.  Out of the corner of my eye I watch the digital hockey clock count away my precious warm up minutes without really finding an opportunity to explore any of my weak side elements.  If I do get a gap I usually attempt something in my strong direction, at least for the first few times.

After my lesson, which focused unsuccessfully on my list of usual suspect elements, I started to wonder what part of a warm up is physical vs mental?  It occurred to me that things like 3-turns and Mohawks in my strong direction require very little in the way of "warm up" before attempting them. Further, they require very little thinking on my part.  The same elements taken from my weak side don't happen at all during the first ten or fifteen minutes on ice.  After that if they do happen, a lot of thinking has to occur before and during their execution.

Even though I've been doing the weak side stuff for the same length of time as the ones from the strong side (actually more so, since I double up the practice on the weak side) they just refuse to enter into muscle memory. Why is that?   I have to think the whole process through: remember to bend the knee, pre-rotate, don't wide step, lean either into or out of the circle, etc. etc.  The amount of "admin" required is soul destroying.  And even with all this mindfulness going on in the background, sometimes (most times) the best laid Mohawks o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.

Over and over, I come back to the same realization:  I don't have to think much about the strong side.  Those just happen.

Now before I go much further, I have tried different types of physical warm ups, (brisk walks, jumping jacks, etc.) followed by stretching regimes recommended by various skating gurus, and have come to the conclusion that the best warm up for a specific activity is probably the activity itself.  I've also come to the conclusion that muscles are at least "blood-heat" warm 24/7, so little if any further "warm up" is required.  Think about it:  if you suddenly had to jump up and run away from danger would you want a system that required a long and careful warm up plus stretching before making your escape?   Short answer: not unless you're bucking for a Darwin award.  You'd want a system that puts the pedal to the metal and gets the hell outta Dodge tout suite.

Then again, maybe what's not happening is precise muscle function, which is in turn controlled by the nervous system--ya know, maybe what I need is to have an acupuncturist chase me around on the ice and stick needles into various meridians until the correct muscles fire on my weak side.  Instead of Ice Capades I could have a debut role in "Acupuncture on Ice". One of those "spotlight" kinda things I suppose.

Or maybe since I have to think so much about the weak side elements, a therapist is in order; one who speaks with a heavy Viennese accent:  "Vie do you hate so much this forvard right inside Mohawk?" 

I don't know; I just don't know.

Meanwhile, those who have Face Book can watch this short video of a young fellow doing a wonderfully graceful double axel on in-line roller skates--something I'll never do regardless of which side I might try it from.

Laszlo Gombos

Adult skater buddy, S. sent me the video link below.  I have a new hero: Laszlo Gombos,  a guy roughly my age who ice dances on hockey blades.  He lives in Hungary and started ice dancing 17 years ago to take his mind off of cancer treatments.  He learns a new dance each winter.  Maybe some day I'll be half as smooth as he is---rock on, Laszlo!  Maybe my renegade RFI Mohawk would be less wonky if I went over to the dark side and tried hockey blades.  Na, I think I'll try free style blades but ones with a 7 foot rocker rather than the 8 foot rocker blades on which I'm currently skating.


https://www.facebook.com/laszlo.gombos.14/videos/958947184205522/

He has many more short videos on Face Book.


You can read more about Laszlo here:

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/skating-frosty-love-affair-elderly-hungarians-155934125--spt.html

Figaro! Figaro! Fi-gaaa-row!

Diaristwoman and I haven't been to the opera in 20 years, funny--back before children we had season tickets to the orchestra, but that was then.  A month or so ago I saw that the National Opera Company was going to stage a short run of Rossini's well known opera, The Barber of Seville at the Kennedy Center

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/event/OSOSE  

We discussed going for, oh maybe an microsecond and went on-line and pulled the trigger for tickets.  Our showing is tomorrow evening. Personally, I prefer Italian Opera over German Opera.  Italian Opera is filled with sex and shenanigans and laughter.  German Opera is filled with angst, dark brooding, anger and regret.    

Besides warming up by listening to great baritones , of course I looked for great skating programs using the same music.  Hop aboard the Way-Back Machine and go back all the way to 2015 and enjoy Javi Fernandez as he skates to first place in that year's World Championship in Shanghai.  Buckle up, Javi gives us a wild ride, falling out of a triple Salchow and doubling another jump which should have been a triple but never the less our hero pulled off the win.  Coach Brian Orser gets caught up in the spirit of things on the side lines.  Enjoy!

"It's not a gang, man--it's a cluuuub!"

My home club, as is the case of many clubs, is experiencing something of a low point with dwindling membership and a lack of visibility.  Other than the occasional test session there's not a lot of promotion of the BFSC.  At our rink's free-style sessions I routinely see skaters wearing club jackets from other surrounding rinks but never one from our home club.  I mentioned this to S., another adult skater, and before I knew quite what was happening, we managed to egg each other into getting fleece jackets with our club's logo on the back.  Mine arrived first and so I wore to the final free style session before the rink closed for annual maintenance.  In a vague kinda way wearing the jacket makes me feel like I'm wearing motorcycle gang "colors" (hopefully I won't get beaten up by teen-age girls wearing jackets from  rival teams the next time I skate at different rinks during our down time).   I told S. that she'd better follow through--I'm not about to be a club of one!  Hopefully as younger club skaters see these club jackets they will also get them and it will instill a bit of pride, group cohesion, and confidence that they can carry with them to tests and competitions next season.  

Smooth Skating!

Over the years, the New Yorker magazine has used skating as a theme for its cover.  I'll post a few from time to time.  Enjoy this one which evokes the rink-side glamour of pre-war St. Moritz.  (Note the bent knee free-legs.  Was that a style thing for the era?  I'm sure Coach A. would tell me I need to extend more if I did this!)

Not today

Just me and my shadow.  A sunny blue sky, air temps in the low 60s and not another skater in sight.  But, sadly, the puddles of standing water said "not today bucko".  We went to the open air rink at Quiet Waters park this afternoon full of hope and the promise of "California" skating conditions only to discover that while skating had been in full swing that morning, the warmng temps caused a mid-day suspension of activities.  We went for a walk on the park's woodland paths instead.  I think the rink did reopen around 5 pm but we had other promises to keep. The season is young.  Next time.

Kids!

Has anyone experienced this?

I skated the mid-afternoon public yesterday.  The ice was just crowded enough that you could only sneak in a complete dance pattern every now and then--which by it's self is not that unusual.  So anyway I retreated to a corner to work on stuff that one does in the corner (Mohawks, 3-turns, a few back swing rolls,  alternating back chasses down the red line, etc.).  After a while I noticed that I had two kids shadowing me: I'd do a Mohawk and they'd attempt to do one,  I'd do a 3-turn, they'd attempt to mimic it in an untutored kid kinda way.  It was a little humorous but at the same time a little frustrating because they were right. on. my. heel! Often only about a blade length or two away.  The ice was heavily rutted from the hockey match that preceded the public and I was a little concerned that if I caught an edge I'd flatten a kid!  I skated away from them to the opposite end of the rink and set up camp in one of those corners.  Quick as a flash, my two little disciples were right there!  I decided to skate laps doing alternating forward progressives in the hopes that I could wear 'em out or at least make them bored, but nope, they trailed along hot on my tail like sea gulls following a fishing boat.  My strategy didn't work--well actually it did--they wore me out!  I got off the ice a half hour early.  They were too funny but I hope I never see 'em again!

A hot & steamy day at the rink

Today featured big T-storms, more so in the afternoon as the temps shot up to the 80s and made the air unstable.  But it was Friday and I decided to burn a couple hours of leave and go skate the late afternoon public.  The clock is ticking.  Our rink closes for two months at the end of April.  Gotta skate while there's ice...

When I walked into the lobby it seemed a little warmer than usual.  Then I looked out at the rink.

I could barely see the stick and puck guys through the condensation on the dasher board plexi and fog swirling around their legs.

57 degrees and 91 %.  Any higher humidity and I would've needed foul weather gear and an umbrella.

The rink manager said that the condenser was down and the system was so old that the company was having to have the required part made.  They should be able to supply it by Tuesday--ironically it will probably get installed just in time for the rink's annual shut down.  Over the weekend the outside temps are supposed to bounce back to those more normal for spring in this neck of the woods, so hopefully that will take some of the stress off the system.  She went on to say that they did have little stalagmites on the ice this morning from the drips coming down from the rafters and hockey banners.  Glad the Zamboni was able to shave those down.

I'd bought my ice pass so there was nothing to do but get on with it.  The ice was predictably slow--especially noticeable if you were doing spins, but very forgiving for jump landings--yes, yes, Madame skating director, no jumps above Free Style 3 during a public!

I caught a toe pick while practicing dance tuck behinds and landed flat on my butt.  Didn't hurt a bit.  This leads me to Adult skater observation Nr 1;  How to tell if you're old:

If you fall in front of a bunch of people and they laugh and make derisive comments, then you're still young.  If they get panicky looks on their faces and start rapidly skating towards you, then you're old.

Could've been worse.  At least I didn't flop down in a puddle.

Dusting off the Cha-Cha

It's been two weeks since I passed my last two Prelim dances.  During that time my old computer died and took all my bookmarks to the grave, but regenerating all that will no doubt be a good workout for my aging brain--kinda like Sudoku or a crossword puzzle--but with a useful purpose.

Coach A. and I have been working on getting me reacquainted with the Cha-Cha and also working on my wonky right forward inside Mohawk in anticipation of those steps in the other two pre-bronze dances, the Fiesta Tango and Swing Dance.  Those in need of a refreshing peek at the Cha-Cha pattern can find it here.

After a brief struggle with the inside RFO chasse and following wide step she decided to have me work on the end pattern of the dance (steps 10 through 14)--but without worrying, at least for the time being, about the tuck forward or tuck behind bits.  Little by little I'm stitching the beginning, middle and end parts of this dance back together in my mind.  Transferring all that mindfulness to the ice is of course a different kettle of fish.  It's both comforting and daunting to realize that the Cha-Cha is the last of the "easy" pattern dances to master: familiar Killian dance hold, only fourteen steps to think about, no turns or backwards skating.  Both the Fiesta Tango and the Swing will be much more challenging.  The Swing Dance in particular will be twice the work because each partner has to learn the other's steps.  Unlike dances up to and including the Cha-Cha which have around 14 or 15 steps, the Swing has 30.  Also, unlike the earlier dances, both the Fiesta Tango and the Swing Dance bring transition steps and backwards skating to the party.  Dear Constant Reader:  prepare yourself for lots of reports of "retry" test results!

This weekend marks my rink's annual Valentine's Invitational Competition.  I'm sitting this one out but will be at the rink as a registrar and to watch friends on the ice.  Also this afternoon one of my nieces is visiting from Georgia and we'll no doubt get over to the rink for today's afternoon public.  This is one of the two nieces responsible for re-interesting me in the sport (after a 30+ year lay off) seven or so years ago.  So far her fascination with ice skating has cost me two busted arms and a brain hemorrhage (!) but also countless hours of satisfaction and good exercise, which in turn, has led to this blogspot.   She loves to skate but lives in an area of her state far removed from ice rinks.  We try to bake in some ice time whenever she visits. 

So that's about it.  Nothing too exciting, nothing to prove here at On Thin Ice.  Just chipping away at the next dance, doing my duty with the ISI annual comp, and going skating with the niece.  Slow and steady wins the race.  Until next time, ~Ta.

All in good time.

People keep telling me that I need a cute little clock like this:

I tell them the only time of day device I need looks more like this:

Cousin Agnes comes for a skate

My wife and daughter sing in a Swedish song group.  Every year, the first half of the month of December is given over to performing St. Lucia processions at various churches, the Swedish Embassy in DC, local schools, etc.  Saint Lucia's day is the 13th of December but like most things in the USA, poor old Lucia gets stretched into an almost two week long phenomenon.  It seems like every group that has any sort of Scandinavian connection wants one.

This year a group of my wife's female relatives came over to take part.  I occasionally get pressed into service as a chauffeur when more than one car is required to haul the number of people involved.  But it's not all work.  Each time we get visiting relatives from the old country I usually have at least one visitor interested in joining me at the rink for a public session.  This year it was one of my wife's cousin's daughters that bit on the hook.  I think that makes Agnes my wife's second cousin but I easily become confused by the nomenclature of extended family relationships.

Cousin Agnes--she did fine!

Now Agnes, as one might expect of a girl from the north land, has skated many times before but has never taken any formal lessons.  Her main interest is horseback riding.  With that in mind, I figured she would have a reasonable sense of balance and generally good muscle tone.  A day or so before we went to the rink I asked her what she was interested in learning.  She immediately replied "backwards skating".

 I have yet to figure out what it is about skating backwards that seems to be a touchstone for almost every novice skater I've talked to.  I guess skating backwards is some sort of major divider between those who can and those who can not.  If you can skate backwards then you're "in with the in crowd".  No one every mentions acquiring the ability to stop safely.  To me that would be up towards the top of my list!  I guess, excluding the somewhat showy hockey stop, there's nothing flashy about the ability to slow down...

Anyway, before we went, I wrote down a short list of skills to review.  Simple things like explaining that skate blades have an inside and outside edge, the use of the proper part of the blade when stroking forward,  good posture while skating, how to do forward swizzles and slaloms, how to snow plow stop and yes, finally, how to do back wiggles and C-pushes to go backwards.

I would introduce a skill, watch her do it, make a comment or two and then tell her to practice while I worked on my back tuck behinds.  After a while I'd return and introduce another skill.  She turned out to be a quick learner!  By mid-way through the session she had absorbed all the topics I had introduced and indeed was skating backwards.  She did fall a time or two but nothing serious.  I'm hopeful that now that she's back home she'll look into lessons.  She didn't know if lessons for adults were offered at the various rinks near her home town.  It would surprise me if the Swedish rink system only has lessons for small kids, but having never skated over there I can't say.  I'm hoping that the next time we meet she'll be breezing around the rink like a pro--hopefully I've planted a little seed!

Yep, I'm still alive (and skating!)

I haven't posted in a while.  Mary, over at the Fit and Fed blog, got so bored she started reading the posts on my sailing blog spot--how bad is that?  Babbette over at the Ice Doesn't Care wondered if I was still skating.  Now this is better than when Jaston Williams, in the role of church lady Vera Carp, gives a long absent parishioner a startled glance and blurts out "I was told you were dead!"  "Now I don't know who told me that but I'm sooo glad they're wrong!"

 The short answer is yes I'm still kickin'--but with my dodgy history of busted arms and cracked heads the question is justified--and thanks for asking!

The longer answer is that I've been in the trenches all summer.  You know the drill:  take a coached lesson, go practice, repeat.  Glacial progress with nothing particularly juicy and delicious to blog about.  My goal is to finally test the two remaining pre-bronze dances before year's end, but those judges are sooo picky.

Coach A. tells me, week after week, to bend my knees more, and to pay attention to extension of the free leg.  Who hasn't heard that a few million times?  Aside:  Coach A. is a lovely young woman, about the age of my daughter.  I give her full marks for working overtime to make the same comments such as "bend your knees and ankles more" seem like new revelations heard for the very first time.  I'm sure internally she's thinking "for the love of God, man, just bend your knees."  Or, "Please, just once show me that your joints are actually capable of articulation ."

So this past Friday at the late afternoon public session I worked on just those two items.  I won't bore you with my attempts to remember to extend my free leg and point the toe of the boot (esp, the left leg), but I will weigh in on the subject of knee/ankle bend.

Without mirrors it's hard to see whether or not you're actually bending your knees and ankles while keeping your back straight.  The plexi above the boards can reveal only so much as you sneak a peek.  So, I decided to bend grotesquely, as in more than usual, while doing swing rolls and progressives.  Down, down, down.  Finally I could feel my ankles against the tongues of the boots.  The first thing I noticed was that progressives became smoother.  After a few more laps I realized that if I got down deep enough in my knees and ankles to feel the tongue of my boots this posture forced me back on my blades, away from the toe picks.

No doubt most of you reading that last sentence are thinking "well Dumbo, what took so long?"

Sometimes the big Ah-Ha moments in skating as well as life come from self experimentation.  But before I get too comfortable with this nugget of serendipity I'll run it by Coach A.  She'll probably nod in agreement but then tell me that I additionally need to keep my back straight(er) or some such.  Or worse, she'll tell me while the basic concept is OK I'll need to unlearn it so that I can do it in a more contorted but correct fashion.  Axel Paulsen may have gotten away with teaching himself to jump on speed skates in the 1870s but in this day and age, self taught "keepers", at least in my experience, are few and far between.

Oh, one other thing she's been working on with me is that groups of moves which fall under the category of "presentation moves".  You know, those fancy little flourishes at the beginnings and ends of dances.  She tells me that just because the music ends abruptly I shouldn't quit the dance abruptly.  Instead she wants us to glide, hand in hand on one foot towards the judges.   Additionally, I'm supposed to smile at the judges.  "No, that's not a smile, that's a grimance." All this grooming and good manners stuff reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon which featured an after hours janitor answering a telephone with the punchline "Mrs. Farthingale's Charm School--what the hell you want?"

Anyway, that's what I've been doing on my summer vacation.  To rehash, goals for the remainder of the year include getting the Dutch Waltz and the Rhythm Blues successfully in my rear view mirror.  Since my coach is starting to nit pick over relatively small items like presentation moves, these goals might actually happen!

I'll leave you with this short youtube clip which introduces the topic of posture, knee bend, etc.  One thing that I found interesting in this clip is a dance called the Novice Foxtrot (about at the 3 min mark of the video).  Although the progressives are being done on a  4 beat count they seem short changed a couple beats by the immediacy of the following swing roll.  I've tried this and while it's a "feel good" kinda thing, it doesn't directly feed into any of the dances I'm working on.  If nothing else you can enjoy (or not) the plumy Brit accent of the moderator!  And mind that posture!

  

The season of the ice tourist

Dear constant reader, as you know from previous posts, Bowie Ice Arena shuts down each spring during the months of May and June for maintenance and general cleaning.  This is a good thing from the standpoint of having good ice during the ten month season when the rink is up and running but less good for me getting ice time in late spring.  So for the past  few weeks I've been skating at Piney Orchard and when I was at the beach, the Flyers' Skate Zone in Atlantic City.  Last Sunday dawned with rain (for the umpteenth day in a row) and with Piney's ice tied up with hockey all weekend (the Skipjacks) it was time to look a bit further afield.  My choices were Wheaton, Colombia, or Cabin John.  All three rinks require a bit of a drive, with the Cabin John rink the furthest from my house at roughly 30 miles each way.  I've skated at Wheaton which has excellent ice and has an ice dance subculture but Cabin John is also known locally for ice dance, and so it being a dull day I decided to do a bit driving and see something new.

Like the rink at Wheaton, Maryland, Cabin John is owned and operated by the Montgomery County Parks and Recreation Department.

I kept my iPod shuffle and ear buds in my pocket.  So much for having ice dance music.

My initial impression of the rink was that it was clean and seemed to be well run.  The facility has two sheets of ice, one is Olympic sized and the other in NHL sized.  When I first arrived there was a game in progress on the NHL sheet and a Free Style session on the Olympic sheet.  I saw lots of kids who were obviously advanced skaters head off to interior parts of the building with gym bags and since none of those kids appeared on the ice I assume the rink has off-ice training rooms as well. The ice was reasonable and was resurfaced half way through the session.  The session in question was billed as a "family public" and so it was heaving with kids.  While there were a few adults in the mix it looked more to me like "Sunday afternoon baby sitting" might be a better billing!  It seemed like every time I set up to string  some progressives or swing rolls together a kid would show up in my path, usually skating against the grain.  But, ice time is ice time--even if it is a bit unproductive.  I'll be back at Piney for a lesson this afternoon and who knows where I'll turn up over the three day Memorial holiday?

How do they do it?

Last week I was blessed by a cancellation which resulted in me having a coached lesson; a rare thing since I lost my regular time slot with a popular coach.  The timing of the lesson was set to begin after the first thirty minutes of a public session which was an hour and a half long.  Perfect.  Thirty minutes to warm up my legs and warm up my dances.

Now I don't know about all coaches, but this particular one, plus a few others at our rink which I've not taken from, have the remarkable ability of showing up at almost the last minute for a scheduled lesson.  They're never late but never are they overly early.  They show up in the lobby with just enough time to lace up their skates and hit the ice.  It's as if, like migrating birds, they have very precise internal clocks and GPS systems which infallibly get them to which ever rink and lesson bang on the dot every time.  Traffic snarls don't seem to impact their equation.  The efficiency of this is to me impressive.  Whenever I cut a trip to the rink close it costs me at the minimum ten minutes of ice time.

The other noteworthy thing about this "just in time" delivery philosophy is that coaches don't seem to
need warm up time.  There's none of that six minute warm up hocus-pocus that competitors get.  Nope, a coach steps out on the ice ready to go.  By way of comparison, your old diarist likes to arrive at the rink with enough time in hand to briskly walk around the rink perimeter for 15 minutes while the Zamboni operator does his thing prior to the beginning of the session.  Following that bit of brisk walking I lace up but then need at least a couple laps around the rink with forward stroking, some power pulls and my latest warm up trick, doing forward cross rolls down the long axis of the rink, before even thinking about turns, backwards skating or the like.  I realize that coaches are younger than me.  That's hardly news:  practically every skater out on the ice is younger than me.  Having said that I still see many thirty-somethings putting in their warm up time prior to attempting any demanding elements.  How do coaches perform without warming up?  Do they have electric socks which send jolts of stimulating energy up their legs as they drive in for the lesson?  Are the individuals who gravitate to coaching those genetically endowed with perpetually warmed up legs?

We could eat up a lot of time pondering these things.  But for now I'll just have to accept my observation without any meaningful experimental test to demonstrate the validity of one explanation over another.

Withdrawal symtoms

Way back on the 12th of January I finally got back to having a coached lesson with Coach A.  That was also the last time I was able to get on the ice.  The following weekend was the three day MLK weekend and I was out of town.  This week has been eaten up with snow storm preparations.  I was looking forward to a spot of practice during the Friday 3:30-5:30pm public when the city posted this:

CHANGE IN FACILITY STATUS: The Bowie Ice Arena will be closing at 2 pm today and will remain closed through the weekend.

For updates you can call 301-262-6200 or visit us online at www.cityofbowie.org

What a kick in the head! Yesterday they indicated that they'd trim off the last 30 minutes of that session and close at 5pm so that rink employees could safely get home.  Fair enough.  But that was then and this is now and the storm's predicted to arrive a tad earlier than previously thought.  Pesky storms!  The earliest possibility for me to stagger out onto the ice, assuming they re-open Monday, would be the 9:00am public, which is a lovely session but if the rink is open, so too will my lab.  Sigh.

The good news is that coach A. seemed pleased that I hadn't lost as much ground as I'd thought and so we worked on back edges (never one of my strong suits) and then ran through the three low end dances that I've been working on since, since, I don't know, probably since Moses was a mess cook.  Progress seems so glacial. Since we're talking ice maybe that's appropriate.  I'll think that over on my way to the liquor store.  It appears the only ice I'm destined to see this weekend is that in my glass and whatever plops on the ground outside my house. 

As we're now deep into competition season, coach's schedule is chock-a-block full and I'm living for the rare cancellation by one of her other students.  My next shot at a lesson isn't until the 16th of February.  This is what happens when you're clumsy and do a big face plant--you lose your slot in the coach's calendar.  Double Sigh.

So, that's all I have to report other than the ice halos which I ordered weeks ago for myself and diaristdaughter have finally cleared Canada Post and crossed the border and have been handed off to USPS, and may actually beat the impending snow storm and arrive today. If so, I'll wear mine while going up and down the stairs!  It's the best I can do under the circumstances.  Stay warm.

Crowd psychology and the Sunday Winter Holiday Public Session

 

In order to maximize my ice time I, like many adult skaters, rely heavily on weekend public sessions.  I don't have to tell most of my readers that weekend publics are mobbed during the holiday season.  The mob "ramp-up" starts during the Thanksgiving holiday and achieves it's maximum density during Christmas break.  Mercifully for the dedicated skaters the tide generally starts going back out around mid-January and by February weekend publics tend to return to a manageable population level.

As an observer with more than a casual interest in weekend publics I've noticed that some crowded sessions just flow better than others.  Typically, Saturday is calmer than Sunday.  But why is this so?  There are just as many people on the ice but the dynamic or personality of the crowd at the Saturday session is usually more conducive to higher level practice.  In my mind I picture it as the difference between a closely packed but orderly school of fish and a similar school of fish which suddenly becomes chaotic.

Case in point: I skated the early afternoon publics at Bowie on both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend.  The Saturday session was crowded but I was able to skate several patterns of each of the two dances I'm working on plus get in a fair amount of practice on back skating elements and foot work sequences.  The crowd was "mellow" for lack of a better word.  Sunday the vibe was completely different.  The crowd was chaotic with kids all over the map, adult ice tourists camping out in the rink ends or coming to dead stops in the mid of traffic to take photos with their cell phones and very few breaks in traffic when one could take a flyer.  It was total bedlam and I got close to zip accomplished.  By the end of the session I told myself that this would be the last Sunday public I'd skate until mid-January.  My time on earth is a non-renewable resource and I have a long laundry list of other things I could be doing.

But the question remains: what is different in terms of crowd psychology between a "good" and "bad" collection of ice tourists at a public session?  What is the trigger that moves a crowd on an ice rink from orderly to agitated?  Does the introduction of a few good skaters cause tension like the introduction of predators in a chicken coop, or does the presence of good skaters impose a certain discipline which the crowd follows?  There were more good skaters Saturday than Sunday.  Coincidence or not?

There are also different degrees of anonymity in a given crowd.  Some crowds are composed of unconnected individuals while other crowds are clusters of family members or friends.  Are unconnected individuals more orderly than people who know one another?  I'm beginning to suspect so. 

Are people grumpier on Sunday vs Saturday, knowing that the following day is a workday?  Do they bring that aggravation to the ice?  Perhaps.

Fortunately I have this next week off and so will skate as many early morning public sessions as possible.  That will get me another week closer to "low tide".

Yin and Yang: автоФигурное Катание. Танец машин и фигуристов на льду

This is a cute little video that's making the rounds in ice dance circles.  I'll post it for those who might not have seen it yet.  Too bad the skaters don't do a lift...  Enjoy!

Painting Ice: How do they do that???

Ever wonder how an ice rink surface is painted?  All those lines, circles, face-off dots, team logos, advertisements, rink names, etc., etc.  Most people think the paint is applied to dry concrete and then the rink is flooded and ice is built up.  Not quite.  Watch this video first (for some reason it won't download from youtube properly, so click the underlined link).  It best explains the process.  Then watch the time lapse videos of crews painting the ice below.  They will give you an appreciation of the work that goes on before your blades touch the ice.  I hope to get over to my rink in June when they start the painting process to see it first hand.

Figure Skaters and motion sickness--is Dramamine a good idea or not?

Skaters who are determined to climb the free style skill ladder sooner or later encounter two foot and single foot spins.  Most beginning spinners, myself included, can only practice spins for a limited number of episodes before becoming slightly or in some cases violently motion sick.  The commonly accepted notion is that one becomes habituated to these cycles of unusual vestibular stimulation and over time adapts to the point of being able to do a rapid spin and immediately after finishing, carry on with another element requiring good balance and timing, for example a jump, without requiring time to "clear" one's head.  Below are a couple of abstracts from research articles which indeed strongly suggest that free stylers in fact do adapt.  So if you're currently suffering, hang in there! 

As an aside, can anyone comment on the efficacy of taking over the counter motion sickness drugs such as Dramamine prior to practicing spins?  It and other OTC remedies have a long history in dealing with the off vertical axis rotational stimulation produced during episodes of other types of motion sickness such as car sickness or sea sickness.  Would they work for figure skaters doing spins?

Eur J Appl Physiol. 2008 Dec;104(6):1031-7. doi: 10.1007/s00421-008-0859-7. Epub 2008 Aug 30.

Vestibulo-ocular reflex and motion sickness in figure skaters.

Tanguy S, Quarck G, Etard O, Gauthier A, Denise P.

Source

UPRES-EA 3917 Mobilités: Cognition et Temporalité, Faculté de médecine, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, 14032 Caen Cedex, France.

Abstract

In order to determine the effect of figure skating on the functional plasticity of the vestibular system, we quantified vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) and motion sickness (MS) intensity in 11 female figure skaters and 11 matched control subjects. Vestibular stimulation consisted of three cycles of sinusoidal rotation (0.025 Hz, +/-60 degrees /s) and two velocity steps of 60 degrees /s (acceleration 60 degrees /s(2)). Nauseogenic stimulation consisted of a constant velocity (60 degrees /s) off vertical axis rotation (OVAR) using a 15 degrees tilt angle. Subjective sickness symptoms were rated immediately after OVAR with the Pensacola diagnostic index. During sinusoidal stimulations, the skaters' VOR, as compared with that of the controls, demonstrates a gain that is 27% lower (0.44 +/- 0.12 vs. 0.58 +/- 0.10; P < 0.01) and a phase advance (10 +/- 12 degrees vs. -0.3 +/- 6.4 degrees ; P < 0.05). During velocity steps, the VOR gain is 32% lower among the skaters (0.52 +/- 0.14 vs. 0.71 +/- 0.12; P < 0.01), but there is no difference in time constant (10.8 +/- 1.8 s vs. 10.5 +/- 2.7 s; P = 0.78). Nauseogenic stimulation evokes significantly less MS in figure skaters than in control subjects (2.8 +/- 2.8 vs. 16.2 +/- 13.7; P < 0.01). Quantitative alterations in VOR parameters observed in figure skaters probably result from vestibular habituation induced by repeated unusual stimulations when practicing figure skating.

Neuroreport. 2008 Mar 26;19(5):565-8. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282f9427e.

Are otolithic inputs interpreted better in figure skaters?

Tanguy SG, Quarck GM, Etard OM, Gauthier AF, Denise P.

Source

EA 3917 Attention, Orientation et Fonctions Exécutives, Universite of Caen, 14032 Caen Cedex, France.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate whether figure skaters, as individuals who experience intense vestibular stimulation, presented modification of the otolith-ocular reflex. The reflexes of 12 figure skaters were assessed using off vertical axis rotation (OVAR). Horizontal otolith-ocular reflex during OVAR is characterized by two parameters: the eye velocity horizontal modulation, assumed to compensate for perceived lateral linear translation, and the bias, assumed to compensate for the perceived rotation. We observed that skaters presented smaller amplitude of modulation and truly compensatory bias compared with control participants. Thus, the otolithic signal during OVAR seems to be interpreted more as rotation and less as translation or inclination in figure skaters.

Hey Nonny Nonny and a Hot Cha-Cha!

There was a young skater named Hannah
Who slipped and fell on her fannah
     As she lay on her side
     More stars she espied
Than there are on the Star Spangled Bannah.

The above doggerel is apropos of nothing--just had to get it out of my system...

Today's Power Stroking session was an instructive one for your old Diarist. The first 10 minutes leaves one gasping for air but somehow life goes on.  I learned today that once I grasped the basic pattern of the drills that I wasn't the slowest skater on the ice--at least during the forward skating portion of the programme--I actually passed some of the youngsters, much to their chagrin.  The back skating drills were better than last time but there's still much room for improvement.  But unlike the afore mentioned Hannah, I didn't land on my fannah and in fact lived to fight another day...

At the end of the session Madam Director handed out entry forms for a Holiday Contest--the "Ugly Holday Sweater Day".  The skater that is deemed to have the ugliest holiday sweater will win a "great" prize.  This takes place on the 22nd of December (which just happens to be my BD).  Diaristwoman swears she doesn't have an appropriate sweater for this contest but I'll bet she knows peeps that do--I told her I don't want merely ugly.  I want truly hideous--extra points if the sweater has flashing mini lites.  I mean, it's my BD--I gotta win this!