Adult 1 Learn to Skate (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Hello, my name is Ava and I'm a competitive adult figure skater here in the U.S. I didn't start skating until I was 18 and I wanted to make a Learn to Skate series from the perspective of someone who started skating as an adult. So let's get started. First, a really quick disclaimer, I am not a certified coach. I do have experience teaching Learn to Skate, but I am just another skater sharing some tips for the adult 1 through 6 levels. This is not meant to replace lessons or coaching of any kind. I highly encourage you to go sign up for a Learn to Skate class, The first very important thing to learn is how to fall and how to get back up. So the first thing we're going to do is just fall onto the ground and it doesn't have to be anything dramatic. You can basically just sit onto the ice like I am. Then we're going to want to take our hands off the ice just to make sure they're out of anyone's way. And we're going to roll onto our side so we can get up onto our knees in the puppy dog position, then up to our bunny rabbit, hands on our knees, big push, and we'll stand up. And I'll go over it one more time, a little bit more in detail. So we're going to go onto our knees like this. Then we're going to put one leg up on the ice and we're going to push with both of our hands onto that kneecap. The most important and probably most difficult part of this process is the push to stand up. So here are a few things to know before you push to stand up. You want to make sure that you're not sliding around on the ice. You don't feel like you're going to fall. You want to make sure that you're engaging your core. So I always used to tell my skaters, feel like you're a superhero and you're reaching for the sky. And you also want to make sure that your weight is on both feet. So I'll show here I'm putting a little bit of pressure on this back foot to help push up and stabilize myself. If you find yourself struggling with this, I highly recommend just practicing a few times off the ice in your skate so you can get used to the feeling of staying balanced before you push up. I know the ice is slippery and a little bit scary, so that might take some of the fear factor away and it's a really great way to practice. Next, we have forward marching, which basically lays all the groundwork for our forward skating and gets us comfortable with skating around on the ice. Before we try this moving, we're going to try this in place. You're just going to practice lifting and stomping both feet to get comfortable with that weight transfer going from side to side. Make sure that you're picking it up and putting it down. Once you feel comfortable with that, you're going to add a little bit of speed. Still make sure that you're picking your feet straight up and down and not stomping motion. As you see, I'm not putting my toe pick in the ice. I'm making sure I'm on my blade. Finally, we're going to add a little bit more speed to that and a little bit more power to our push. Still doing the up and down stomping motion. What we're not going to do is flail our legs around like this or try to kick our toe picks into the ice. Now let's talk about our body position while we're doing marches. You should be upright in this T position. You should not be like this, this, this, or this. You will have a hard time trying to maintain balance in these positions. Now we have our forward two-foot glide. This one actually isn't too complicated, but a lot of skaters end up over-complicating it for a few reasons. You're going to take those forward marches we just learned to grab a little bit of momentum and then put both of your feet together on the ice like so and just glide on your blades. A few common mistakes a lot of skaters make is digging their toe picks into the ice, locking their knees, or being too far forward. You want to make sure that your knees are slightly bent and that you're not gliding on your toe pick. Another common mistake is having your feet too far apart when you glide. To maintain your glide, you want to make sure your feet are as close together as possible. Next, we have something called a rocking horse and this is going to lay the foundation for our forward and backward swizzles. For this, we're going to start in something I like to call the penguin or princess position, however you want to think about it, which is basically putting our feet into a V. Then we're going to go into a position I like to call pizza feet. To get comfortable with this motion, just practice going from your penguin princess feet to your pizza feet. Keep practicing this motion until you feel comfortable to add a little bit of a push and a glide. Make sure that you bend your knees when you are going into the push. The most important part for your rocking horse is making sure that you bend your knees into the push and also bend your knees into the back push part. That is what a lot of skaters struggle with. Here is my rocking horse from the side. You can see my knee bend. You can also see that I am not digging into the ice with my toe picks. I am staying on my blades. Now we're going to take that first part of the rocking horse we learned and just continually do it in a straight line down the ice. For your forward swizzles, you also want to make sure that you have that nice knee bend and you also want to make sure that you're standing in a T position so that you're completely balanced. When you're doing your forward swizzles, think about making something that resembles a DNA chain structure on the ice. I used to tell my adult students this all the time and it seemed to click really well with them. Also think of this rhythmic pattern of keeping your legs straight and then bending into that push and then straightening them when your feet come together again. This up-down bending motion is what is going to help you gain momentum and speed into your forward swizzles. This next one is super fun and it's always everyone's favorite. This is the forward two-foot dip. All you have to do is take a couple forward marches, do a two-foot glide, bring our hands in front of us like this and bend into a 90 degree position. I don't remember if adults are required to get to the 90 degree position to pass this level, but it's always great to practice getting as low as you can. And for a little bit of added difficulty and some fun, you can always try this shoot the duck position. When you do your two-foot dip, you want to make sure that you keep your weight slightly over your knees and stay on the ball of your foot so you don't fall forwards or rock backwards. Finally, the last item we have in this level is snowplow stops. To break this down into a few smaller steps, first we're going to start scraping our blades across the ice like this, making two separate piles of snow next to our skates. For this, you're going to want to use your knees to push your skates away from each other. Make sure that you're not digging your toe picks into the ice when you do this. You're going to start with a little bit of speed, and then we're going to bring our feet in like that. And as you can see, my knees bend when I bring my feet together almost into a pizza shape. When you do your snowplow stop, you want to make sure that you have that nice knee bend. Your weight isn't too far forward. You're not leaning backwards. You're kind of keeping it right over your knees. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you again next Saturday for adult two.