On our first lesson, Madam Mim had been running me through my forward paces. Stroking, edges, crossovers. She made a couple of tweaks: arm position, leg position, and knee bend. This is the reason you have a coach; You can fall into bad habits unless you have a coach. I'd only skated in the last few weeks a total of about 2 hours. I was still unconsciously favoring my knees and had some sloppy habits. On the good side no one could fault my posture.
So my impression of her impression of my forward skating was that of the 'nice Madam Mim' in The Sword in the Stone.
"No toepicking--nice stroking! Good posture!"
(I takes good news where I can find it)
However, going backwards was another story. I just don't trust my knee yet in deep kneebend going backwards. My back crosses were weak, pathetic really. And my back stroking--let's just say I've been given homework to bring me up to speed. The knee may be (mostly) pain free, but a ligament or a bone, or a muscle, or something else could snap at any moment. Yes, I am a wimp. And paranoid to boot.
So when she saw my back crosses, my coach was like evil Madame Mim.
I reject your back crossovers,
and substitute ones I like
I have to pretty much redevelop back crosses and back stroking. I have backward skating homework, like a remedial student in summer school.
(On the other hand, FO3 and mohawks coming along!)
There's two things that horse back riding and skating have in common: soft knees and independence of upper and lower body.
So, let's tackle 'soft knees' first.
I did a lot of research on this, and all I could find were a couple of comments that 'soft knees means bent knees'.
Mmmmm, no.
Well, anyway, not to me.
My experience has been in both riding and skating that a 'soft knee' is what I'll call a 'responsive leg'. The casual observer sees the knee bend and how it flexes. That's the obvious part. But really, I believe what's going on is much more complex.
From my riding days, I learned that 'soft knees' involved the muscles of the lower back and abdomen, flexibility and strength in the hips and knees, and controlled movement of the ankle. All this has to be balanced and coordinated, otherwise you pull on the horse's mouth as your leg will get in the wrong position and throw off your balance.
Skating's very similar. You have to control the leg relative to the upper body, and to do that you need to get over the right part of the blade and that takes ever single joint below the waist. And as you move up and down, every single joint has to respond together. This is why I think defining 'soft knees' as 'bent knees' is inadequate. That's what the observer sees, but that's only the tip of the iceberg abot what's going on.
As I'm now in my 60's, I'm okay with the muscles of the back and core, the ankle bend and the hip flexion. However, my knee bend is CRAP!
See my knees?
Crap! Crap! I say!
Still, I'd like to chime in with my amateur opinion, that 'soft knees' is something that ought to be banned from a coach's vocabulary. It's much more complex, especially in skating. I'm fortunate that my riding background is so extensive and strong, and Coach Cruella is good at getting everything coordinated both mentally and physically.
Still, a coach can take me only so far. The knees are willing but the flesh is weak.
Since I started taking lessons from Coach Cruella, I've skated deeper in the knee than ever before. It's really improved my skating. More power, deeper edges, greater stability.
Then, I get to back edges in waltz hold. Butt neatly tucked, down in the knee, looking at the right place over Dance Coach's ear. I'm mentally patting myself on the back. Then Dance Coach says.
"Deeper in the knees."
I goggle at him a bit, but just like a well trained dog I go deeper in the knee. At this point I feel like I'm about to sit down in a chair. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not chair sitting deep in the knee, but I'm deeper than sitting on a bar stool deep in the knee. Depressingly, I realize that 'deep in the knee' is the great deceptor. I have no clue where I am in knee bend after a certain point. Maybe because I'm a 'mature' skater, or maybe it's some defect in my head wiring. Don't know.
So for me, knee bend is the Decepticon of ice dance. It's never what I think it is.
Remember the Decepticons? And the Autobots? Transformers, remember those? From the 80's? Oh, and there were some movies too.
Anyway, what I need to do is skate like a red-eyed Decepticon, and not like the good guy blue eyed Autobots. My proof:
Decepticon
All the Decepticons are like this. Good knee bend. Lots of cool weaponry.
Plus, they convert into cars.
If they were smaller, and nimble, minus the weapons, they'd probably be able to solve the male ice dance partner shortage.
Sad. They're the 'bad' guys. But can they do choctaws?
And here is one of the 'good' guy Autobots.
Note that he/she/it/whatever is as stiff in the knees as a first time skater in a pre-Alpha class.
Oh, and yellow--so 1998.
So Decepticons can skate. I happen to have some video of one skating at a top-secret test facility. And it is a Decepticon. Note the red eyes.
Listen, I'm so desperate for an ice dance partner that I'm trying to convert hockey players by telling them it will improve their hockey. At this point, I'd skate with a Decepticon....plus he could drive me to the rink!
