I’ve noticed that my blog has got some new visitors recently and hi there, if you are familiar with the basics of skating technicality, welcome, I am very glad you dropped by and please feel free to skip this post if you don’t have time for it.
If you are a new or new-ish fan, hi there, I am very glad you dropped by and this post is for you. This came out of a conversation I had with my best friend the other day. So she’s a person who has absolutely no idea about skating, alright? She just felt like taking a look at this blog of mine once, and afterwards she told me that these technical contents I’ve got on here are quite overwhelming and she’s very confused by them all.
Le me: But I have that sticky post in which I list my basic tech discussions.
Le best friend: Yes but it’s a bunch of bullet points, where do I start? How do I know where to start if I know nothing about anything?
Le me: Huh, that’s a surprisingly valid question.
With that, in this post, I’ll try to lay out a step-by-step orientation plan to get you up to speed on the technical side of skating. Also, full disclosure: I am trying to get you guys entertained by some of my old stuffs, because these coming two weeks I’m more or less going to drop off the grid and I don’t want to lose you because of this temporary scarcity of new content.
STEP 1: Watch Some Skating
I know, this is so obvious you are probably rolling your eyes at me, but I promise, I am being completely serious here.
Now when you’ve just discovered skating thanks to a certain skater, it is quite tempting to just go hunt down all of his/her past performances and watch them on repeat. In addition to that, though, I’d recommend, when you have the time, to check out some full events. My suggestion: pick from the three latest World Championships: Shanghai, Boston, Helsinki, or the three latest Grand Prix Final: Nagoya, Marseilles, Barcelona. If you get bored easily, you can skip ahead to the two final groups at Worlds. It is a lot of fun to observe the differences between skaters, and by watching these events and listening to the commentaries you can really start to form a holistic view of the sport. The full version of these competitions will also familiarize you with the fact that when you follow skating, you should always expect an equal measure of great performances and awful mistakes. Figure skating is an incredibly difficult, risky sport and figure skaters are humans, is the idea. In my personal view, all the imperfection in this sport makes the perfection, when it happens, that much more wonderful to behold.
Spoiler alert: this is our 2017 World podium on the men’s side
STEP 2: Make Sense of the Jumps and the Spins
Jumps will serve as a good starting point to get into the technical. They are the most important technical elements and their fundamentals are fairly straightforward. By looking into jumps you will also get used to thinking about skating elements in terms of Base Value (by learning how to recognize the jump) and Grade of Execution (by learning how to tell when a jump is performed well).
Base Value: how to tell the jumps apart, and why one jump type is considered more difficult than another
Grade of Execution: the positive features and the negative features
Spoiler alert: this jump got a perfect Grade of Execution
Then there are the spins, whose basics are also quite easy to understand. So here’s a look at:
The spin positions and variations
The level features, and a practical example of how to apply this knowledge
Spoiler alert: there are three basic spin positions
STEP 3: Make Sense of the Program Component Scores
We are coming to the business of PCS in this step because once you’ve got the jumps and the spins down, you have understood the majority of the Technical Element Score (TES). It’s time to turn to the other half of the scoring sheet and look at what is covered in the five program components.
Once done with that, if you are interested, have a closer look at
Because these two will help prepare you for the fourth step in our orientation.
Spoiler alert: I like to throw in random gifs like this whenever I mention PCS, because reasons
STEP 4: Make Sense of the Turns and Steps
This step is optional, by the way. Getting into this will earn you a badge of honor for being a hardcore fan (at least in my book, you will). I’ve run into my fair share of people who have been watching skating for a lot longer than I have and never bothered getting into the details of turns and steps (for the record, none of them enjoys watching skating any less than I do). It’s just that this stuff is way harder to get compared to jumps and spins. It took me, I think, 3 months of practice before I was able to read turns and steps at normal speed, and certainly not without any mistake, so don’t get frustrated if at first you can’t seem to get it right.
The six turns: twizzle, bracket, loop, counter, rocker, three-turn
The six steps: toe step, chassé, mohawk, choctaw, change of edge, cross roll
Spoiler alert: these are twizzles
STEP 5: Watch Some More Skating
Yes, we’ve gone full circle. Now is the time to rewatch your favorite performances (hopefully after going through all the recent Worlds and GPFs you have found a few more of those) and examine them under the light of your new technical awareness. Try to name the jumps, or count the spin features, or estimate the skater’s PCS, or, if you are into the hardcore stuff, read the step sequences. Remember: when in doubt, you can count on YouTube’s reliable speed control: slow ‘em down to 0.25 and hit replay.
And really, that’s all, folks.
As a bonus, here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:
What is the difference between the flip and Lutz jump? The basics, and some close-up of these jumps’ takeoffs.
What is the ISU Scale of Value? The basics, and one more practical example.
What is delayed rotation?
How do you count the number of rotations in a jump? Also in that post: how to know if a jump is under-rotated.
How do you tell if a jump is pre-rotated?
Why is there such a big gap in scoring between the men and the ladies?
Is there any trick to figure out the level of a Step Sequence?
Happy figure skating watching!
Spoiler alert: I like throwing in random gifs even when I have no excuse to.
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