The Importance of Off-Ice Training:
Off ice training is just as important as being on the ice! Normal fitness programs are good for over all fitness, but it has shown that by doing both classical /contemporary dance, and pilates, as well as fundamental fitness programs, skaters were greatly strengthened and refined. To move in a beautiful way, you must learn about your own body. One must strive to have total awareness of self being. To combine all those intricate skillful jumps, with pure art is sensational! By structuring your movement you are making it more visible. In addition, it is not always necessarily the degree of difficulty that determines the success of an artistic element but rather something extremely simple that is immensely effective. Sometimes you can come up with something new and exciting quite by accident. Creative ideas usually happen incidentally rather than intentionally. "Improvisation" is always good to encourage feeling for music, self expression and confidence. If the skater learns to improvise early on, it will last throughout their entire life. Creativity gives us pleasure and acts as an antidote to the monotony of every day life and let's the vivid and risky ideas that flow from your creative nature, join up with your logic, to give a new slant to your thinking.
John Curry developed a series of formal and informal exercises, designed to develop the skater's overall artistic and potential in relation to technical expertise, During these kind of exercises, done in a class situation, there can be an emphasis on the more artistic, aesthetic and emotionally expressive aspects of skating. Skaters are encouraged to develop their own creative abilities through the invention of new movements, based on the taught exercises which is the way it is done in the world of dance.
About Visual Imagery:
We must never underestimate the power of visual imagery. Einstein is a great example of this. He was able to use his mind creatively and instinctively, allowing his subconscious to produce the potential of his dreams. He didn't work it out, sitting at a desk with pen in hand. This opening of himself enabled him to evolve and to discover the theory of relativity. To be truly great at anything, we have to develop both sides of our brains. You often hear comments on television, "They have great technique but need more choreography". It is only because this side of them has not been encouraged and developed, not because it is not there! We should therefore not think that a person who is artistic is therefore not able to be technical or vice-versa. We have to develop analytical and aesthetic thinking. Leonardo da Vinci was another example. He was not only a painter and a sculptor but an engineer and an architect as well.
As ice skating is and always will be quite subjective, it would be better for the sport if one could be assured that we were all being effectively trained and qualified to grow as coaches, choregraphers and judges, to be able to assess the more subjective aspects of skating today. We need more workshops and seminars to develop our critical understanding of our artistic sport. It takes a very experienced trained eye to appreciate really great creativity and skill in skating today either to teach or judge it.
On Skating Skills:
The skating skills which were taught in figure skating were those that demanded a high level of ice contact and control of the body over the skate. They demanded hours of practice and were not an entertainment for television viewers. These techniques are fundamental to the activity of figure skating today. Moves in the Field have replaced compulsory figures. It would be tragic to see these qualities lost altogether, just as drawing has been in the fine arts. I am sure we won't let that happen. Skating is a beautiful artistic sport. As we change the requirements and regulations that enable us to separate one skater from another more accurately in competition, we must not suffocate the skater with too many rules, or we will loose the very essence of the spirit of skating itself!
I think that it will be easier for younger skaters to adapt to the new rules because the developed skater is going to have to train more and differently to be able to adjust to new things. I could foresee that more injuries were going to happen and now it seems to be a more serious problem as everyone is cramming as much difficulty in every possible way to get points. It is a great pity to see so many wonderful skaters so badly injured after so much sacrifice to get right to the top. Couldn't they at least have started the change after the Olympics!
