SKATING 101: How to deal with unsolicited advice

Hello everyone, today we are going to talk about skating rink etiquette, when you are skating around other people and you want to provide advice or help. Before we get into today's topic, I want to let you know that if you would like to learn or improve your skating, you can do so online or in person with me. I have memberships available on my website, thatnicolefiori.com or right here on YouTube. I also have the foundations course, which I highly recommend checking out and we have workshops. We have private lessons online, in person, so there are a ton of options for you to learn from and I hope that we get to skate together. This is a weird topic to talk about because as a professional roller skater and as an instructor, I honestly do want to help whenever I can. I do see things all the time where I want to help and I want to step in and provide some advice or some knowledge, but that is not always the right thing to do. There are a lot of skaters at a skating rink, at a practice session, at a public session, at the park, at the beach, wherever you may be. It doesn't matter where the location is, but there are a lot of skaters that are possibly just there for exercise or just to have some fun. They're not necessarily working on technical skills and I think that that is really, really important to remember. The reason that this even got brought up to me this week was because one of my students that I was teaching at the skating rink, they are a recreational skater. They skate for fun. Yes, of course, they are learning new things, they're trying new things, but ultimately they're not competing. They sure want to improve, but they're there for fun. They're there to push themselves, they're there to learn new things and exercise and have fun. They made a very good point. They said that one of the children that I teach, that also skates at the rink, came up to them and said, can I give you some advice? Instead of just pushing her advice on them without even asking first, she said, can I or may I give you some advice on that? And this adult, it was an 11 year old to a, let's say 35 year old, 11 to 35, and the child asked permission to help the adult. And the adult was like, oh my goodness, yes, I would love to hear what you have to tell me. Please share your advice. Typically, from adult to adult, that gets looked over and if you've been in a skating rink, you've probably experienced this, that an older skater will come up to you and just unsolicited give you advice. And while I love that, it's a good note, these students that we're talking, it's a good note that possibly it may be better to ask if the person would like some advice first instead of just helping them out. This gets a little tricky because sometimes you see someone do something and you're like, oh, they're going to hurt themselves if I don't say something. So typically you can politely offer the advice and then say, if you want to take it a step further, ask if you can provide some extra help to them. It's a beautiful thing because skaters oftentimes want to help other skaters and it is really an act of kindness when you want to help someone, but sometimes it can come off like a little too much. So if you are new to the skating world and you want advice from maybe a more experienced skater as well, if we flip the script and you actually want the advice from someone who is near you, go ahead and ask them. They probably do want to help you out. They just don't want to be rude and don't want to come up to you and bother you. So if you ask someone for advice, they can choose whether they want to help you or not. Maybe they're not feeling it that day and they say, you know, but you know what, next week when I see you, we can work on it. Something like that. That's always a good response. So don't be afraid to ask for advice. I say it all the time, even in messages. Like if you send me messages and ask for advice or send me videos and ask for advice, I often say please let me know if you are sharing this with me or if you want a critique or advice on it, because there's a very blurry line there. Me as an instructor, even people who I teach, who I assume when they send me a video, they want me to respond with advice. I have to ask, are you sharing this just to share this or do you want some advice? Because I want to give you that round of applause if you need it. I fully support that. I know that feeling when I'm proud of something and I want to share it with someone, I want them to reciprocate with like, yeah, good job, pat on the back, not, oh, you could do this better. Because then that kind of deflates my whole thing. And I'm like, ah, ding, I thought I was doing a really good job, now I have to work on this thing. There's always something more. Like as an instructor, me saying this to you, as an instructor, I am a roller skating instructor. That is quite literally how I identify myself. I don't even say I'm a professional roller skater anymore when people ask what I do. I say I'm a roller skating instructor. And I have a hard time not providing advice. But I know that it is overwhelming and I know that there are so many different things. I had a student tell me, we were working on, I want to say crazy legs, no, it was the strut walk. We were working on the strut walk and I started from the bottom and worked my way up. So we were working on our feet, then we were working on our core, then we were working on our shoulders. And then at one lesson I got to the head and I said, okay, now you need to like look where you're going every step. And she literally turns around and goes, Nicole, last week you told me this, this week you're adding this. Is there anything else? And I could only laugh because she was absolutely correct. And I was like, yeah, probably. Like once you get one thing, it usually evolves into something else. That's why when people ask me like, oh, are you ever going to run out of things to teach in skating? And I'm like, absolutely not. Because I've been skating for 32 years and I still learn things every day. So there's never, I've never had a loss of things to teach and things to talk about because there's always something. And you learning how to skate or you skating, working and improving your skating, you probably know that as well. Like you are never done. If you're done, then you're done. Like there's always stuff to learn. And when someone else says something to you, like I've run through this all the time with me coaching, I'll say something and then I'll have another coach or another skater say, can you explain this in your words to them? And they'll explain it. And something might click when that other person says it in a slightly different way or a slightly different tone even. It can actually come across. So I really do encourage skaters to learn from multiple sources, ask for help, ask for advice, but always take it like, is that saying grain of salt? That's not it. Always pick and choose what you want to take from that advice. My parents told me from a very young age, because I basically grew up in a skating rink and they told me that you will get a lot of advice from a lot of people just by being in the same location. You just will. That's just, that's what happens. And like I said, whether you're at competitive skating, like practice, or if you're at public session, it doesn't matter where you are. People will give you unsolicited advice. It's just how it is. So prepare yourself for that, but pick and choose what you want to take from that. If you want to just say, you know what, thank you so much. The person may be making you feel uncomfortable or you don't want to hear the advice right now. Thank you so much. I'll think about what you just said. I'm going to continue practicing and go off on your own. My parents always said to do that. And I have listened to that throughout my entire life with what I want to take from certain people's advice. Sometimes they're telling you something and you might be thinking, well, that is completely wrong. Like that's, I know that that's wrong. Just okay. Thank you so much and roll along because you're not always going to be given good advice. I wish that was the case. I hope that you always receive wonderful advice. I hope that I always provide you with wonderful advice. But sometimes you just have to be like, okay, thank you so much. Moving on with my life. But also again, on the flip side of it, if you are providing advice, ask them, ask them if they want your advice because I hate to break it to you. Some people just don't want advice. Okay. Be safe out there. Say thank you. And yeah, it really is a beautiful thing when you think about it. If you take out all the like bad stuff from it, people willing to help other people, that's always a wonderful thing. So yeah, let's just think about the bright side of it. That's beautiful.