Home Entertainment How To Ice Skate: An Introduction to Basic Figure Skating

How To Ice Skate: An Introduction to Basic Figure Skating

by Frank
Published: Last Updated on

Introduction

You’ve probably seen those gorgeous photographs or paintings of the rustic iced covered trees? Or the sparkly lights that outline a path in a frozen wonderland? Maybe you’ve viewed those fun videos of people ice skating around the rink on their blades flashing in the light? Or maybe you are just curious and want more information! Either way, this guide is for you if you’d like to learn “the basics” of how to ice skate.

Tips To Keep Balance

When you start on the ice, put your hands in front of you. Your belly button level and out in front. Bring them back a bit, so they are not too far forward. You do not want to have your hands come up high because if they come up high, then it pitches your weight back. And when you pitch your weight back, you fall down. Not a good idea. So the place to put your hands is belly button level and out in front of you, with the slightly bent in towards each other. Press down slightly with them because it keeps your weight more centered over your skates and slightly forward which makes it easier to keep your balance.

How to Fall and Get Up Safely After a Fall

Follow these steps if you start losing your balance: bend your knees, put your hands down on your knee caps and get into a stable position. Falling is a normal part of skating, so you’ll have to get used to it. If you can control your fall while skating, try to fall sideways–it’s the most stable position.

How to get up safely after a fall when skating Want to keep your fingers pointed up and off the ice so that nobody comes and skates on your fingers, all right, and don’t touch your skates. If you’re wearing rentals, you don’t know how sharp they are. So. The first thing you’re going to do is get up onto your knees. See. You’re going to, you can either put your fingers down on the ice right by your knees, or it’s better if you can keep them off, so practice with them off. I’m going to put one foot up. Plant my hands on my knee and push back up to my magic table, so you fall to the side. So you’re going to fall to the side, go up onto your knees. Plant one foot up, put my hand on that neat pole pretzel position push back up to my magic table. And go back to that magic table. So you made it out here on the ice, you figured out how to fall down and get back up, and you’ve got your magic table arm position.

Practice Walking

Practice walking with your toe steps turned out, like this. Now you need to move forward. I want you to take those toes and turn them open, like a ballerina or Mary Poppins or a penguin. You just don’t want your toes facing forward. The biggest number, one reason for falls is tripping on those two picks. So turn those toes open, you’re going to actually just try to walk with those toes turned open, if that’s all you can do today, it’s still a big success, OK? Turn your nose toes up and keep your body slightly forward, your hands in front, and practice walking, your skates will glide a little bit, that’s the nature of skates so if you can at least pick your feet up and march, I’m not even really pushing right now but picking those feet up you will move forward a little bit. If this is something you feel like you can do it’s gone really well.

If you want to push off, start at the front and look where you’re pushing. Start with your arches then give a little tiny bit of a push to move backward. Just make sure you’re pushing off your inside foot, that’s where your arch is. Never use your toes when you’re pushing.

Trying to Learn Gliding on Two Feet

Next, you will try to glide on two feet. In order to achieve this, you will first march for a few steps in order to increase speed and then plant your feet directly under your hips. You will engage our quads and lift up with your core. Your core is very important in skating; if your upper body is loose, it is much easier to fall down, so make sure you keep your core engaged as you march and then try to glide on two feet. Don’t lean back; keep your core engaged.

How to dip down

Once you can skate on two feet, you can learn to do a dip. In a dip, you bend your knees and squat down over your toes. You’re going to keep your feet directly below your shoulders so that you don’t get stuck. Then, you’ll put your hands out in front of you as you pick up some speed. Then you’ll dip down as low as you can. Start that again with a little momentum—skate, skate, keep those hands in front, glide and get your balance, then dip down as low as you can.

Learn to glide on one foot

It’s important that you learn how to come up tall while skating on one foot. You’re going to go back to the wall over here just so that you have some balance. Don’t lean against the wall too hard.  Just using it for support. When you’re skating on two feet, your weight is divided evenly between those two feet. So if you follow my head through my zipper, Standing very even on both legs when skating on two feet. When skating on one foot, you need to shift your weight so that the hat that’s coming through your hips is making a nice line with your hip and your knee.

Balancing on one foot is tricky. I want you to shift your weight over right now, on my right foot, and draw that left foot straight up. Forward like a lower case letter P, so my foot is making contact with my leg. It’s going to be so much harder to balance if it’s hanging out here at all. A nice lighthouse on the wall, draw that foot straight up, and think about balancing. Shift your weight over one foot. Now I’m shifting my weight back to the other side, so I have that nice line through my left foot. Then, try it on the other foot. So you turn those speeds out again, take a couple of steps, get a little bit of speed and put those hands out. And draw that foot straight up in front of you, all right? And try it on the other foot.

Learn to balance on one foot. Now, another thing you want to think about is your hips: they should be straight and not leaning. OK? If your hips are leaning, it’s very difficult to balance, and that can make your ankles lean: keeping them straight. And then engaging those ankles, because if they tip, you’re going to have a hard time balancing. Now, practice it on the wall: lift everything tall, lift everything straight and tall. OK? We want to take it out onto the ice; lift everything straight and tall.

Once you’ve practiced it by using the wall as a little tiny bit of support, I want you to get out and do it in the middle of the ice. Be brave, and push yourself to try it out in the middle, or at least away from the wall. So you’re going to put both our hands on our hips in front of us, lift up through that core. And take a few marching steps with those feet pointed out. Glide on two feet, and then leave that foot behind us, thinking about that alignment on our skating side. Marching steps, hands on your hips; engaged, lifting those heels; lining everything up. Nice and tall through your torso, tall through your ankles.

Now, you have learned to glide on one foot and that you should remember that good posture, keeping your hands in front of you for balance, is essential when you try one-footed gliding. When you feel like you may fall, move away from the wall. There are many ways to get up if you fall, but we’re going to do it on your hands and knees; first with your dominant side and then the other.   Then you need to turn out your toes, get your marching steps back and practice both one-footed gliding moves. Practice all those moves!

If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

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