Ice skating, whether it is hockey, ringette, or figure skating, is one of Canada’s great past-times. It is hard to grow up in Canada and not have skated at some time in your life. Being your typical prairie Canadian, I grew up on skates, logging 15 years of figure skating while simultaneously coaching figure and power skating for the last 7 years of my skating career.
Then when I graduated from high school I stopped. It was what was expected. I moved on, went to university, began my career, and eventually embraced downhill skiing as my winter passion. But I still dreamed of skating and this fall after a 20+ year hiatus, I returned to the sport. Doing so has caused me to reflect on the similarities between skating and skiing.
There is a lot of muscle memory involved in a sport you performed regularly over 15 years. Though I had only skated a half dozen times in the last 20 years I had full confidence I would still “have it” when I returned. Skating across the ice the first time, I really missed having a long ski underfoot instead of a wee blade. Which brings me to my first shared skill: Balance. If you can balance on a rockered blade that’s 5 mm wide and less than a foot long, what challenge is there to a 66 cm wide, 164 cm long ski?
Of course, Stance goes with balance and there the hockey players’ semi-prone body position is much more similar to that of a skier’s. For years I had to work on getting rid of my figure skater’s arched back when I skied. Now that I am skating again, I am trying to straighten it back from the rolled over posture I’ve gotten used to as a skier!
Strong skaters have the ability to move quickly from forwards to backwards and backwards to forwards. Hockey players do it by transferring weight from one foot to the other (a Mohawk in figure skating parlance) while figure skaters are also capable of doing it on one foot (a three turn). Both methods of turning require Pivoting – turning with the feet- our second ski skill. Three turns involve bending the knee to initiate, un-bending (unweighting) to pivot, and bending again to complete. Sound a little like a ski turn?
Ever watch a hockey player fly around a corner to pick up a loose puck? How about ice dancers create deep, round edges as part of their program. There is even a warm up drill for skating called slalom. Yes, the third shared skill between skiing and skating is Edging. When skiing, skaters have a great ability to “move inside” the turn due to their well-developed lateral balance.
As a point of departure between the two sports, when you carve in skating, your weight is on your inside leg, the opposite as when you are skiing. This is what makes skaters so good at inclination (leaning into a turn) but sometimes lacking in angulation (maintaining weight on the outside ski by keeping the body in a C-shape).
With skating as in skiing, a lot of forces are built up that need to be reined in. In figure skating you see this when figure skaters “check” using a still upper body to land a jump or exit a turn. You also see it when they land a jump, reaching down to their ice with a straight landing leg that then quickly bends and absorbs the pressure upon contact with the ice. This can be likened to a skier absorbing the forces with their skis for Pressure Control, the fourth shared skill.
The final shared skill is Timing and Coordination. In hockey, you have to have incredible hand-eye coordination to pass the puck or score. Timing is everything. In figure skating, all routines are set to music with jumps, spins, and dance moves timed to the beat. Having the wrong timing on a jump or lift can be disastrous. Teaching skaters how to coordinate their movements and implement a pole plant is a piece of cake.
What these five skills don’t take into account are the intangibles that make skaters great skiers – a zest for life, fearlessness, and embracing of our Canadian winters.
So, if you are looking for a great off-season way to work on your skiing, or a way to stay in ski-shape on days you can’t make it to the hill, why not consider lacing up and getting in some skating? Your skiing will be all the better for it. See you at the rink!
Then when I graduated from high school I stopped. It was what was expected. I moved on, went to university, began my career, and eventually embraced downhill skiing as my winter passion. But I still dreamed of skating and this fall after a 20+ year hiatus, I returned to the sport. Doing so has caused me to reflect on the similarities between skating and skiing.
There is a lot of muscle memory involved in a sport you performed regularly over 15 years. Though I had only skated a half dozen times in the last 20 years I had full confidence I would still “have it” when I returned. Skating across the ice the first time, I really missed having a long ski underfoot instead of a wee blade. Which brings me to my first shared skill: Balance. If you can balance on a rockered blade that’s 5 mm wide and less than a foot long, what challenge is there to a 66 cm wide, 164 cm long ski?
Of course, Stance goes with balance and there the hockey players’ semi-prone body position is much more similar to that of a skier’s. For years I had to work on getting rid of my figure skater’s arched back when I skied. Now that I am skating again, I am trying to straighten it back from the rolled over posture I’ve gotten used to as a skier!
Strong skaters have the ability to move quickly from forwards to backwards and backwards to forwards. Hockey players do it by transferring weight from one foot to the other (a Mohawk in figure skating parlance) while figure skaters are also capable of doing it on one foot (a three turn). Both methods of turning require Pivoting – turning with the feet- our second ski skill. Three turns involve bending the knee to initiate, un-bending (unweighting) to pivot, and bending again to complete. Sound a little like a ski turn?
Ever watch a hockey player fly around a corner to pick up a loose puck? How about ice dancers create deep, round edges as part of their program. There is even a warm up drill for skating called slalom. Yes, the third shared skill between skiing and skating is Edging. When skiing, skaters have a great ability to “move inside” the turn due to their well-developed lateral balance.
As a point of departure between the two sports, when you carve in skating, your weight is on your inside leg, the opposite as when you are skiing. This is what makes skaters so good at inclination (leaning into a turn) but sometimes lacking in angulation (maintaining weight on the outside ski by keeping the body in a C-shape).
With skating as in skiing, a lot of forces are built up that need to be reined in. In figure skating you see this when figure skaters “check” using a still upper body to land a jump or exit a turn. You also see it when they land a jump, reaching down to their ice with a straight landing leg that then quickly bends and absorbs the pressure upon contact with the ice. This can be likened to a skier absorbing the forces with their skis for Pressure Control, the fourth shared skill.
The final shared skill is Timing and Coordination. In hockey, you have to have incredible hand-eye coordination to pass the puck or score. Timing is everything. In figure skating, all routines are set to music with jumps, spins, and dance moves timed to the beat. Having the wrong timing on a jump or lift can be disastrous. Teaching skaters how to coordinate their movements and implement a pole plant is a piece of cake.
What these five skills don’t take into account are the intangibles that make skaters great skiers – a zest for life, fearlessness, and embracing of our Canadian winters.
So, if you are looking for a great off-season way to work on your skiing, or a way to stay in ski-shape on days you can’t make it to the hill, why not consider lacing up and getting in some skating? Your skiing will be all the better for it. See you at the rink!
1 comment:
I was thrilled to see an article like this in my SkiPro magazine. I too skated for 10 years or more before taking up skiing, and then continued to do both for the next 25 years!
I agree completely that there are many transferable skills, and key among them are, as you say, stance and balance. It seems I had (have) less difficulty than you switching between the rolled over back for skiing and the straight or arched back for skating.
Where I encounter the most difficulty is with pivoting. A turn in skating is most often initiated and controlled with the upper body rotating or counter-rotating. This applies to simple edges and open and closed mohawks as much as three turns, brackets, counters and rockers. It is more rare and a very advanced technique when the lower body initiates. Furthermore, and this is where I run into the most problems, the plane of separation is different. For skating, the separation tends to be at the waist area, just below the rib cage. That is to say, the hips stay in a line perpendicular to the direction of motion. You can even see this in one of the pictures above. In skiing, the separation occurs in the hip area. You often hear this described as rotating the leg in the hip socket. The common term "counter-rotating" threw me off for years!
I attribute much of these differences to the physical forces that come into play. A short, narrow, rockered blade, that really has only about 5cm in contact with the ice at any moment creates very different forces than a long, wide platform moving down an incline.
Thank you very much for writing this article and sharing your thoughts about relating skiing to other sports.
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