How To Ice Skate! Best Tutorial For Beautiful Forward Stroking!

Hey skaters, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. I am coach Julia and today I am doing a video by special request. I just saw this comment requesting a video on forward stroking. Now my very first video on this channel did include forward stroking as well as forward swizzles, but they wanted one that was really just focused on that forward stroking technique. So we are going to fulfill that request today. If you haven't done much skating before, you're going to want to make sure you can do decent one foot glides and some forward swizzles. If you haven't done those yet, I will link tutorials down below to your one foot glides and your forward swizzles so you can brush up on those skills and then come back to this one. But if you've been skating for very long at all, you should be able to pick up with this forward stroking tutorial. Let me show you what this is going to look like. So forward stroking is the primary way that we go forward. It's going to use alternating pushes and a change in your weight from one side to the other. So we're really working here on learning about lining our body up over an axis. We're working on turning our feet out with each push. We're working on having nice extensions with pretty toes. Let's break this down a little bit at a time. So we're going to start with our weight right in the middle of our feet, right through the center where the arch of our foot would be. So we're not back on our heels and we're definitely not up on our toes. We want to imagine a line going straight through our body down to the center of your foot. And we want to do the same thing here. So we don't want to be tipped from side to side. We want a nice line through the center of our body. We're going to put those hands in front of us in a low V. If your hands come up, you're going to go on those heels and you can fall backwards. You want to imagine they're kind of in your rib cage area towards your waist. So somewhere in your ribs, pushing slightly down. We keep those hands in front to start with, but as you get more competent, you can move them a little bit to the side. So somewhere in the, let's see, one o'clock to three o'clock range is what we're going for, okay? So in here. All right, so that's going to be our body position. You want to think about taking your belly button and pulling it back towards your spine so that your core is engaged. That's going to help you keep from wobbling around very much. We want this to be really stable, shoulders towards the ceiling rather than shoulders forwards, okay? So you have a seam on your t-shirt. Imagine it facing right up towards the ceiling. Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to imagine our feet are like a closed book. We're going to open up one cover of that book. I'm going to open up my right foot so that our foot is now at an angle or even completely sideways depending on how flexible you are. But we're going to just say it's going to be at a little bit of an angle pointing towards the corner. We're going to bend our knees. We're going to push off that inside of our skate. So we're pushing off of the arch, the inside edge, and that foot's going to extend behind us, okay? So we can practice that motion all by itself. Bend, open, push, extend. We could try that again. Bend, open, push, extend. When you extend, you're going to engage the outside of your glutes. So we have a really nice line with our leg. We want our toe to point sideways. So from the side, I'm going to bend, open, push, and extend. And you can see I'm not straight behind where I'm going to get twisted up. My leg is not directly to the side. It is at an angle. So if you imagine you're standing in a cardboard box, you're going to kick out the corner of that box with your toe facing sideways. Bend, open, push, extend. Bend, open, push, extend. And then we're going to practice that on the other side. I'm going to use my left foot. Bend, open, push, extend. Bend, open, push. You're going to squeeze with the outside of your glutes, straighten that leg, point your toe to the side, bring it back together. Bend, open, push, extend. Now the reason we're trying to be so careful about opening our foot up and pushing with our arch is to avoid pushing with our toe picks. If you push with your foot facing forward and you don't open it up, you're going to push with that toe pick. That is not a very strong push. There's not very much to push with. You also are going to end up making it much easier to trip on that toe pick and then fall forward, which obviously you want to avoid. No unnecessary falls. You're going to have a not as attractive of a leg line if you push that way. This does not look as nice as that turned out extension. So if you push with that toe, your toe ends up pointing down and that just does not look very nice. And again, it's weak. So we're trying to avoid any toe pushes. So every time work on opening, bending, and pushing with the arch, the inside of our foot. So now that you've practiced each leg individually and worked on getting those toes turned out, let's talk about alternating our feet because that is ultimately what we want for our forward stroking. So we're going to start with our feet parallel. We're going to bend those knees, open our right foot up, push off that arch. And now my weight is lined up over my left side. All right. So I imagine a line from your nose right through to your toe pick. No weird hips going on here. Okay. So you want to get everything lined up nose through your knee, through your toe. It's a really good balance. So we're going to push and find that alignment over on your left side axis. You're going to bring your right foot in, place it down, and then shift your alignment before your feet even change. While you have both your feet on the ice, you're shifting your alignment over to your right side. That way you can open your left, push, and your alignment is already set up. Okay. If you don't make that change, then you're going to push and you're inside edge. You're going to curve off to the side. You're going to fall down or maybe not fall, but have to step out of your stroking early. So while your feet are together and you bend your knees, move your alignment to the side that you want to do your one foot glide on push. Feet come together. You bend your knees. You shift your alignment to the other side and push that way. Each time your axis is nice and strong over your skating leg. When you do this, you want both your inside and outside edges engaged in the ice. So you're on a flat. When you're on a flat, you can go nice and straight. Now, eventually as you get better, you're going to be able to do this on proper edges. Okay. And so you're going to work towards that. But for today, as you're learning your stroking and you're trying to go straight forward, don't worry so much about those edges. We're just going to a flat. Okay. We'll build to that. So for now bend, go to a nice flat on your left side, bend, shift your weight, go to a nice flat on your right side. Now, once you can do these on a flat and you're able to hold that one foot glide, we can add some edges in to our forward stroking. So to do this, I want you to think about this happening on a zigzag. So we're on this line here. You can see the line that goes through our curling circle. And I'm going to use this to help you see the zigzag pattern that I'm making. We're going to do this on our outside edges. So now instead of starting parallel, I'm going to start in a T. All right. That's going to help me get to my outside edge on my left foot. And instead of going straight towards you, I'm going to face you, but my foot's actually going to go to the left. So we're going to bend. I'm going to push off my arch and I'm going to skate on my outside edge to the left. Then I'm going to bring my foot forward, bend and skate on my outside edge to the right. In order to do this, you need a little bit of skill with your edges and you need some strong one foot glides because your one foot glides are not going forward. You're facing forward, but you're skating towards your hip. Okay. So you're going to push, skate towards your hip, push, skate towards your hip. Okay. So that's kind of level two of using your edges in your forward stroking. Once you have that parallel motion down. So whether you're doing the parallel version or the edge version, you're going to have the same process with your knees. When your feet are together, you're going to bend your knees. You're going to push and stay bent. As you bring your feet together, you're going to rise, bring your feet together and then bend again, push, rise together, bend, push, rise together, bend. Now I'm actually bending when my feet are together, but I haven't put my second foot down that way. When my second foot is placed on the ice, I'm already in a bent position. Let's look at that as carefully as possible. So your start by bending your knees, give yourself a push, rise up in your skating leg, bring your feet together. Now this foot isn't on the ice yet. I'm bending and then placing and pushing rise, bend, place, push, rise, bend, place, push. All right, skaters. I hope you enjoyed that forward stroking tutorial. It is one of the first fundamental skills that you need to get down. And if you do it really well, it makes all of your skating across the board. Just look at that much better, that much more professional. So practice that skill and make it as nice and strong and bendy as you can. If you enjoyed this video, please do give us that thumbs up. And as always, I'm looking forward to reading all your comments in that section down below. 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