Thursday, February 9, 2017

Exercises I'm Doing Now

On Ice--My warm up mile
After watching some Brian Orser (swoon) videos on skating warm ups last year I started doing the exercises he suggested as I did 9 laps of my rink (that's a mile). I also added variations. This consistent mile lap has really increased my speed.
Lap 1: Slaloms
Lap 2: Swizzles
Lap 3: Used to be forward edge pulls till I fell and tapped my head, now it's cross rolls
Lap 4: Alternating crossovers
Lap 5 & 6: Fast hard perimeter stroking with crossovers on the short boards
Lap 7: Alternating T-stops hard and fast, no more than 3 strokes between stops (complete stops by the way), though I'm mostly doing 2 strokes between stops. This improves my push off from a T position.
Lap 8: Fun lap--usually two foot turns forward and back, and some mohawks, and maybe some change edge serpentines. I can actually do two foot twizzles too, not that that means anything.
Lap 9: Forward stroking at a cool down pace.

All this warms up my joints (particularly in the hips, knees and ankles) and actually has built up my leg strength and stamina. The issue for the nonce is the rink is packed so I can't do anything backwards due to the ice tourists. When Spring comes, I'll start doing backwards.

Off-Ice--Hip openers for lunges and spirals
My trainer gave me a new exercise where I slide my free foot back along the floor and then draw it forward to the heel of the skating foot. In order to get the slide to work, I put my free foot down on one of those old waxed paper plates. 10 reps on a side, 3 sets. I did them 7 days in a row and FINALLY could get my free leg up to hip height  on my spirals, both sides.

The part that makes this a skating lunge, is to lunge with the free foot on its side, rather than back to the toe.
This

Not This
 So as a hip opener, this works. But I need to build the muscles up a bit more to get better lunges, so I keep up with these.

Off Ice--Getting up from a fall
I've complained over the last few years how slow I am to get up from a fall. No more!

I do a simple exercise of sitting down on the floor without using my hands and getting up from the floor without using my hands a couple of times for each side (left and right) every day. Now I bounce up from a fall like a rubber ball.

I'm the one on the right



5 comments:

  1. So what do you do during that mysteriously missing lap 5??

    My backwards skating usually happens at the very first few minutes of a public before the "public" gets their skates on, generally after a lap or two of forward stroking.

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  2. 5 and 6 are both supposed to be perimeter stroking. Sorry.

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  3. Those puppies are soooo cute! And your lunging ability is impressive, wow!

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    1. Sadly, that's not me. She does have a lovely lunge and posture doesn't she.

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