----------------------
Another eccentricity in the “new judging” system are the requirements for foot work. To replace the non-existent school figures, requirements have been established to cram as many edge changes, turns, body and arm movements into foot work which either circles the ice or crosses it on the long part of the rink. The end result of this is there is no artistry in the step and the skater appears to be a flailing windmill in a tornado.
The upshot of these “new fangled” difficulties is that all programs tend to resemble each other in order to gain judging points and the artistry has completely vanished. Today, the general public is the television public and this is what has given skating the popularity it has enjoyed but with the loss of artistry and individuality skating is losing its best support, that of the public.
Multiple rotation jumps
With the elimination of school figures as a rating element, multiple rotation jumps became preeminent and have so remained making them the almost sole criteria for winning a competition. The height of the jump, the delayed rotation in a jump, its distance, the effortless take off and the smooth running landing have been totally discarded as a possible factor in judging criteria. All that counts is the number of rotations in the air even if the jump just skims the surface of the ice and lands with a tremendous jerk on a wrenched back inner edge before switching to the proper back outer edge. The insistence on triple jumps for women is most dubious and eliminates 90% of the young girls after puberty when the pelvis widens.Regarding men, the factor of body change does not come into play but the issue which no one in authority dares raise is how much brutality can the human skeleton endure before it will break? This is what is happening today. What is the wear and tear on the human body to achieve the triple and quadruple jumps in a top competition? This is the crux of the crisis for men. Now without going into a detailed description of anatomy let us look at the power thrust needed in double, triple and quadruple jumps.
Taking 90% of the skaters who turn to the left (counter clockwise) the following jumps use the right leg, especially the inner thigh muscles to propel them upward and to close in the rotation. The left foot which should push from the ice can no longer do so fully because the boots have become so rigid that the foot can no longer extend to help the right leg thrust upwards so the thrusting leg, right must do double work. The axel, salchow and toe loop use the adductor thigh muscles enormously. The same adductor muscles come into play with the lutz and the flip since they pull the body back and help close in for the rotation. The loop jump uses this same set of muscles as the right leg pushes upward (and again less than it should with the foot encased in over stiff boots) leaving the right quadriceps and to lift the body up and the adductors to close in for the rotation.
The aim of this article is not to give a dissertation on jumping technique but to draw attention and clarify to the non-initiated the muscular demands of jumps. I shall not dwell on the muscular demands for the landings which with the skater turning counter-clockwise descend on the right leg and must be stabilized through the back muscles assisted by the unfolding of the left leg from front to back. It should be noted however that the more there is rotation the stronger must be the counter force to stop it and the more it becomes necessary to use an almost “brutal” force to arrest the turn upon reaching the ice. In general the height of the jump does not increase from a single to a quadruple turn. It is the centrifugal force which increases to make four turns in the same time span as one turn. Thus the muscular force of the right side in this case is tripled and quadrupled to achieve this rotation before gravity draws the body to the ice. Any layman can thus understand the increased muscular demands of the back and thrusting muscles followed by the counter force of muscles for the landings. This explains the innumerable strains even in young skaters of the adductor muscles which were hardly ever prevalent in an earlier period.
Now let us simulate the development of a present day skater:
This young skater has never done school figures and has only the vaguest notion of what makes an edge. For him the fact that people turn at the end of the rink in a public session is probably due to the barrier. The art of the circle which is the secret to ice technique remains an obscure notion. The young skater only knows, as seems also to be the frequent case of his coach, that to jump and turn in the air will make him/her, a champion. The coach even if he/she knows better has no help from international or national regulations to prevent this point of view and to the delight of the young skater and his parents, starts immediately teaching jumps before the skater can hold an edge correctly. Now commence years of physical exercise engaging body movement which is strained due to lack of ice technique using the same muscles in a repetitive way. Calculating modestly the skater trains jumps one hour every day. In this hour let us estimate he does 2 jumps every five minutes with 24 jumps per hour 6 days a week making 144 jumps per week, 576 jumps per month and 6336 jumps per average in an 11 month training year. This in itself is not a single criterion since skaters of the school figure era probably spent one hour on rotation jumps but before reaching this stage they had done 1 to 3 hours of school figures which demand muscular movement equally to the right and to the left.
Copyright © Cécile Däniker Rüsch
Directeur Artistique
Danse en Ile de France
info@danse-en-ile-de-france.com
