This week I achieved my first outdoor skate of the year, will be doing a few more as I'm not near an indoor facility for the moment.  Makes a nice change, and a good challenge to deal with conditions like debris, a slight slope, wind and an imperfect surface.  Soft knees.

Back in the day (late 80s) I would do morning and lunchtime patch, with work in-between and afterwards on Mondays. Tuesdays and Thursdays saw me doing morning patch at one rink, then working through till 3pm, when I would leave and travel about 60 or 70 miles up to an elite rink to train there in the evening, sometimes not finishing until 1am if there was a competition in the offing. Wednesdays and Fridays were just morning patch at my home rink. Weekends were not for skating, unless there was a late night rehearsal for something at the elite rink or I went to skate at another rink on Sunday morning. Or maybe dance club at Richmond.

I was always going to sleep on my desk at work or in a corner of the warehouse! And nobody checked my diet, although the skating director at the elite rink did insist that I wasn't weighed like the other girls, as apparently everybody knew I didn't eat.

Not a healthy time!

I would hope must able bodied adults under 80 would ace that!


It's described as being used for patients under clinical supervision following a stroke etc but honestly you could do worse than use it as a screening tool for older adults - starting at age 50 perhaps.  Anyone not passing easily is sent away to work on stuff and re-measured after 6 months or so, and you're told that if you are not passing easily then your quality of life is going to start to suffer.  Make Britain Healthy Again!


I still think balancing on one skate is THE single focus that would make the most difference to a beginner, but two takeaways from this morning's session are:
1) Don't look down (your head is heavy and pulls you off balance)
2) Don't skate in a wide stance (weight transfer from one foot to the other, which is fundamental to skating, is much easier with your feet close together because when you pick one foot up, the other will be more "under" you)

Oh yes indeed I always look backwards.  I guess the tricky thing for people who are training to compete as figure skaters is that in a routine you will not look backwards.  But that's for you people who do patch to sort out!  In public sessions with people who are trying to work on simple backwards stride if you have a partner then they can skate forwards and direct you away from hazards, while you get used to backwards.


I still struggle looking over my left shoulder - my right is fine.  Always something to work on!

Yeah looking down is a terrible habit and hard to break.  Trouble is, I struggle to know where parts of my body are without looking at them.  Weak proprioception.  Something of a handicap for a skater!


Looking where you are going is a good idea - but doing it when going backwards is tricky because it forces you to adopt uncomfortable positions that pull you off balance.