Figure skating - Health, Fitness, and Sports - Wrong Planet

I do.

It's been pretty much a lifesaver for me. When I started I had high blood pressure and weighed 210-215lbs, within 4 months great blood pressure and weighed 180. I've been skating for about 2 years now. Started in rental hockey skates, now worked up to very nice stiff Edeas. My biggest is problem is I'm relatively uncoached. I've made a lot of progress all things considered, the only 3 turns I have left to work on are the back insides really, but I might have done better with a coach. My plan right now is just to get really good edging and footwork learned before concentrating on jumps and spinning. The person closest to my coach told me of people who try to jump and spin straight away without concentrating on doing edging "are putting themselves on the fast track to mediocrity." Plus all the edging and turns are relatively simple to learn on your own.

What I do also is I do lots of weightlifting, specifically the training lifts you'd do for Olympic style weightlifting, and I do plyometric jumping and whatnot too. Basically my planning was, while I work on my edging by myself, also work on my power in that fashion, then when it comes time to do jumps, I'll already be very powerful and explosive. One lady who gives me form checks and advice asked if I was a gymnast when I was younger. She wondered where I got my relatively good power and flexibility. Another coach who didn't know me from my back in my idiot days in hockey skates messing around who'd never seen me before told me, rather shockingly to me, that he thinks I have enough power to do triples.

In my case, I'm really blessed with almost free ice time. My gym membership is really cheap, it's $10 a month in my family plan, and it includes my gym and all the public ice time in the price (without a family membership, when I started, it was $27.) Eventually I'll need the more expensive freestyle ice, but yeah. I can't say not having a coach and being really broke and sloppy and disorganized like I am is good, but I've made the best of it I guess.

Lastly, besides the physical benefits, it's a good mental hobby for me. I have NVLD and the dyspraxia that goes with it, so I'm really uncoordinated. It's helped my coordination and visual spatial skills immensely. But I think more importantly, it gives a good outlet for my feelings I can't really express due to my alexithymia. That and it's like, uh, "soft" and really good for me, it's much more how I actually feel. I'm the type 9 times out of 10 that'd rather listen to girly eurodance or something compared to metal or rock.

I guess with skating, what really attracted me to it was the power aspect of it. Not just jumping, but I remember clopping around on my hockey skates like an idiot down the ice, and then having a 100lb girl just FLY past me. To me it like, seemed like the most powerful sport around. It had speed, power, and finesse, things I love. I love sportscars and racing for that reason, too. So for a sport it's perfect. It's a sensation almost like flying. It's great.

I really don't keep track of or know much about pro figure skating to be honest. If I had to pick a favorite skater, it'd have to be Midori Ito of the 80s. When she was younger, she had just lots of energy and seemed to be having lots of fun. But she had a LOT of power, I think she was the first woman to ever do a triple axel. I guess again with the power thing... For males, I dunno, Brian Boitano, again, because he seems like a powerful skater to me. I also liked Patrick Chan's program for 2012's ISU Championships. He seems to be a very nice and smooth skater, which I also like. There's a male Russian pair skater who coaches now at my rink who skated at the ISU worlds level, and I find him pretty admirable. We've got another ISU junior champ who skates at my rink, too, and a few National level skaters from Europe, too.

What else, I didn't really skate as a kid. I had like 8 weeks or something of LTS hockey as a kid, but my parents couldn't send me to play real hockey due to lack of money. I think I went to 3-4 birthday parties or whatever ice skating. It just so happened after high school, I lived within 3 miles of the rink I went to for the LTS hockey, and just decided to try ice skating again one day, and I just kept coming.
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