Joan Orvis offers important insights about edges in figure skating. With the move away from school figures in the 1990’s, more than a generation of skaters has now grown up without them.
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Remove from My FavoritesGreat video! My sister and I both skated many years ago. I did figures but she didn’t. Now that we have returned to skating as adults, we have found that my edge control and ability to check is still able to help me with my jumps while she has struggled to gain the same amount of control. I may have disliked them as a kid, but am SO thankful now that I did them!
Joan, I did figures many years ago and have returned to skating now about five years and have not been able to get those nice edges back I had on the eights. Your video is very helpful and I will go back to my figure eights to work on deeper edges.
Hi Joan: This was awesome! And I also agree that eliminating figures didn’t do skaters or skating any favors. This would be a daunting task, but might you show us how you would teach the figure 8 on all 8 edges? Thank you for sharing your wondering insight.
JOAN!! I sooooooo agree with you about watching freestyle skaters perform and do jump after jump, spin after spin, but with no real depth of edge. It’s very important! And, for me, makes watching skating much more enjoyable….not too mention that it is absolutely better for the skaters to develop those muscles, tendons, and ligaments to help prevent injury.
I agree about the lack of edges in skating. I also did figures & loved the ‘quiet time’ to focus on control. Figures to me relates to letters in the alphabet. You have to know your letters before you can form words then sentences. Thanks
So much wisdon Joan! Thanks for sharing:)
Really great information. Thank you!
Bravo from a fellow dinosaur!! Edges are the basis of skating and we can only hope that exercises based on figures will be introduced to more training programs.
Very helpful. Thank you. I’m sold on the importance of me practicing figures!
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and insight. Additional Edge practice begins tomorrow!
I’m coming back to skating after being away from it for 14 years, and OMG my ankles!! I mentioned to my mom that even though I’ve been working on my sr.silver skills this season, I’m still no where near where I feel I should be for ankle strength. She asked if I was doing any figures, and I said “Not as much as I would like to be, it gets in the way of the other skaters.” Her response “Skills won’t give you the ankle training you need, hunny. You have a rink at home – do your figures there.” For the record, my mom was NOT a figure skater, but even she could see the difference in a skater following the expulsion of figures from the sport. As a newly certified coach, figures will be a part of any training program for my skaters. They are just so valuable for so many reasons!
If I had a magic wand, I would embed this video into every skater’s phone so that every time they pick it up, they have to watch it first as a reminder of what skating could be. At the very least, I’d embed some version of it on my own phone. Great post! I’d be curious to learn more and see a breakdown of ankle bend and edge depth in some of the updated jump takeoffs we’ve seen on this site.
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