Adult 2 Learn to Skate (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Last week I went over everything in Adult 1, so if you haven't seen that video make sure you go check it out. I'll leave a link in the description box below, but let's get started with Adult 2. 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, so I'll leave that information in the description box below. Now we can get into the video. The first thing on this level is forward skating across the width of the rink, and for this it's very similar to the forward marches that we learned last weekend, except instead of the up and down stomping motion that we learned, this time you're going to add a bit more of a push and a glide in between steps. So just like I'm doing here on the blue line, I'm adding more of a side to side push instead of stomping straight up and down. You don't have to do anything fancy for this, just add a little bit more power into those steps to get a little bit more speed. And your goal for this one should be to make it from one side of the blue line to the other side of the blue line without stopping. Next we have our one foot glide, and for this you are just lifting up one foot and gliding on the other. This one can definitely be a bit tricky, but I will break it down into smaller steps to hopefully make it a little bit easier. First, let's talk about the position of our free leg. So our free leg should be lifted up. Our toes should be pointed at our ankle, so it's almost touching our ankle. Shouldn't be too high, shouldn't be out to the side. It should be touching your ankle like this. A really easy way to break this down, how I love to teach it, is just lifting your leg up like those stomps, but holding it for a little bit longer every time you lift up and stomp your leg down. This is a great exercise to get comfortable with standing on one foot, especially in skates because I know the ice is slippery and sometimes that can be scary. It's also great for finding where to put your weight when you're balancing on your blade. I mentioned this before, but this exercise is not about how high you can lift your leg, how far you can kick it, how flexible you are, or any other positions. This is all about putting it right next to your ankle. Once you've mastered that, we're gonna take that exercise and we're gonna move across the rink. Similar to the forward marches, we're gonna take that stomping motion, except instead of trading off feet, we're only gonna do one foot across the rink. You're gonna pick it up and stomp it back down, and as you go across the rink, progressively make that hold a lot longer. When you're doing this exercise, make sure that you are leaning over the leg that is on the ice and not over the leg that is up. Once we have all that, we're gonna take it across the ice, so we're gonna take a few pushes of that forward skating, a two-foot glide to stabilize ourselves in the T position, and then gently lift up one foot. For this level, you have to do both your right and your left foot for the one-foot glides. The requirement is to also hold it the length of the skater's body, which sometimes can be confusing, so just as a good rule of thumb, I always tell my skaters 10 to 15 seconds. Next, we have our forward two-foot slaloms. These definitely look a lot more complicated than they are. They're basically a two-foot glide, but we're just twisting our hip and bending our knees so we can go from side to side. I like to use the blue line as a guide. The blue line is great because it helps visualize that side-to-side motion. I usually like to have my adult students start with a half swizzle pump on one side and a half swizzle pump on the other side before we get into the full two-foot slalom. I do this because a lot of adult skaters struggle with getting the two-foot slalom from a standstill, so doing the half swizzle pump and another half swizzle pump into a two-foot glide is going to help you get that speed and momentum so you can really focus on the knee bend. The two main parts of our slalom are going to be the knee bend and the hip twist. You're going to bend your knees every time you're off the blue line, and every time you come back to the blue line, you're going to stand up and slightly straighten them. And as you can see, I'm also twisting my hips and leaning towards the blue line every time I do this. You can see in this clip the half circle curve that I'm making off the blue line. And you're going to want to continue this half circle pattern all the way down the line. The more you work on these, the stronger they'll get and the more confident you'll get with them, and eventually you can start adding a deeper knee bend and a stronger push so you can get a little bit more speed and momentum. I think the running joke at this point in my series is that I'm going to say speed momentum quite a bit, but that's basically skating in a nutshell. If you find that you're having problems, don't be afraid to add that half swizzle pump because it might make things a little bit easier. Next we have backward skating, and trust me, it's not as scary as it looks, although I definitely remember being really scared of this when I first started learning how to skate. I'll try my best to break this down to make it a little less intimidating. Backward skating is very similar to forward skating, there's just a few things that we change. We're going to start this just like our forward marches, except this time we're going to face our backs to the direction we want to go, and we're going to put our weight on the ball of our foot. There is a spot just underneath our toe pick called the rocker, and that is where you want to apply most of the pressure when you are skating backwards. A common mistake I see a lot of skaters make is skating backwards using their toe picks, and this is actually quite natural because it's more comforting to have a toe pick holding us up and stopping us, but this will actually end up slowing you down and in some cases be a little bit more dangerous. Like I mentioned earlier, backward skating is going to follow the same structure as our forward marches, so we're just going to pick our feet straight up and down like this, but notice how I'm keeping my weight a little bit more on that front part of my blade. Here is a good example where you can see that when I put my foot back down, I am pressing into the ball of my foot, I am not pushing down on the back of my blade, and I'm not pushing down on the middle part. And when you are skating backwards, you still want your posture to be in that T position, you want your knees slightly bent, you don't want to be hunched all the way forward, and you definitely don't want to be leaning backwards. Another thing a lot of skaters struggle with is just being able to move backwards. To help with this, you really want to practice that weight transfer going from side to side. Once you're comfortable with that, you're going to actually add a full push into each side-to-side motion, and that is going to help you gain more momentum and speed to get further across the ice. Now we have backward swizzles. These are basically the same thing as our forward swizzles, except we are going backwards. For this, you're going to want to know how to do the rocking horse that I talked about in the adult one video, so if you don't know how to do that, make sure you go back and watch the video first. We're going to start with our toes touching in our pizza position, we're going to bend our knees, and we're going to push, making a bubble on the ice. Make sure that your feet come all the way back together to that V position. It's important for your backward swizzles that you're applying pressure to the ball of your foot when you make the initial push. You also want to make sure that you are bending your knees and standing up when they come back together, and we want to make sure that we're staying in that T position. A common mistake a lot of skaters make is using their toe pick to push instead of pushing from the ball of their foot. This is going to make your backward swizzles very challenging, and you won't be able to move anywhere. Another common mistake skaters make is not bending their knees and locking them instead. The knee bend is going to help you get that bubble shape on the ice, and it's also going to help you get more speed and momentum as you continually go down the rink. Backward swizzles might be a little bit difficult at first, but the more you practice it, the better you'll get at it. Just keep practicing the knee bend going down and coming back up when your feet come together, and it'll be easier. The last item on this level is a two foot turn in place. For this, you're going to want to have your feet together, you're going to bend your knees, and you're going to twist to turn the direction you want to go. For our body position, you're going to have one arm in front and one arm out to the side or behind, whatever feels more comfortable. It is important to have the correct arm in front and the correct arm behind or out to the side, otherwise you will find it a little bit difficult to turn. Your arms are going to hug the direction you want to turn. For example, if you want to turn to the left, you're going to want to have your right arm in front and your left arm out to the side or behind. The most important part of your two foot turn is bending your knees and snapping when you turn. The snap in the two foot turn is going to come from your hips. Something that's really helpful to think about is bend, snap, bend. You can also think about this as bend, twist, bend, if that works easier for you. Now that we have our body position covered, we're going to talk about where you should be putting the weight on your blades so that you'll be able to turn. You are going to be turning on the ball of your foot or, as I mentioned, backwards skating on your rocker. Notice how when I'm turning, I'm not digging my toe picks in the ice and I'm not leaning on the back part of my blade. When I'm bending my knees, I am applying pressure to the ball of my foot and when I turn to twist, I'm slightly standing up, taking that pressure off of the ball of my foot and allowing my skate to turn. Well, that's it for Adult 2. I'll leave the link for the entire series in the description box below. Just a reminder, I post new videos every week and every Saturday I will be posting a video for the Adult Learn to Skate series and I'll see you next Saturday for Adult 3.