I am admittedly resistant to the “self-help” genre. Maybe this is because I just like to read stories, or because I value creative writing more than actual information. I’m not suggesting this is a good thing. And I’m not suggesting that I’m not in need of some help, and new perspectives now and then. It’s just that a lot of these books are so cliché and so cheesy. I find myself saying, “no kidding” a lot and rolling my eyeballs so much that I’m in danger of a sprain.

This said, I kept hearing about a book called Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence by Gary Mack with David Casstevens. About the third or fourth time it hit my radar, I was compelled to check it out. The basic premise is that athletes have to train their minds as much as they train their bodies. In other words, they have to build their mental muscle. Along these lines, Ty Cobb is quoted as saying, “The most important part of a player’s body is above his shoulders.” Likewise, golfer Bobby Jones has said, “Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course: the space between your ears.”

Mack, a sports psychologist, uses quotes and anecdotal examples from famous athletes of the past and the present, including several skaters such as Sarah Hughes, Scott Hamilton, and Peggy Fleming. It deals with a lot of concepts that many of us are already aware of but could always use a refresher on, like: think positive, remain confident, and stay focused. Maybe it’s not even valid to call it a self-help book. I suppose it’s more like sports psychology watered down a bit, and snazzied up with anecdotes. The result is very readable.

I liked it. I found it helpful. Granted, it took me a long time to read (about five months!) but I think that’s okay and maybe ideal: it’s one of those books best digested slowly. It’s nice to keep coming back to it. I have an excellent book about writing called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg that I’ve been reading over the course of at least 15 years. I suspect that when I finally finish it, I’ll probably start over again. It’s kind of like a steady, long-term companion. I can see myself taking Mind Gym off the shelf periodically in the future, if not to fully re-read then to review some of the sections I underscored as especially applicable to skating or just to life in general.  

As a coach, I asked myself while reading: How can I use this to help my students? What tips can I pick up to motivate, to inspire, to help allay their anxieties and fears? Like I said, some of this information was valuable reinforcement of things I have picked up elsewhere. For example, Mack discusses the importance of focusing on the things you can control instead of the things you can’t. I started thinking about this simultaneously obvious and brilliant notion years ago after reading Caroline Silby’s wonderful book, Games Girls Play. (I highly recommend you read this, if you haven’t already - she is also a psychologist and a former figure skating competitor.)  I have been trying to utilize and impart this mentality ever since, but it’s great to be reminded of it.

Similarly, Mack extols the power of positive thinking and demonstrates that even the words you use - either out loud or just in your head - impact this. For example, “I’m not going to fall on this, anymore” versus “I am going to land this.” It’s better to avoid the negative formulation altogether: just by planting that image of falling in your (or your student’s) head, you could increase the chances of it happening and vice versa. At this year’s PSA conference in Chicago, Frankie Perez did an excellent sports psychology presentation on this same topic. I have tried to keep tabs on my own phraseology during lessons since then - i.e. instead of “don’t bend your freeleg”… “straighten your freeleg” and I appreciate this as a more direct and clear way of delivering the message. And, even on a more everyday note, instead of “don’t forget your keys” how about, “remember to take your keys.”   

Mack also delves extensively into the use of mantras and mental visualization in order to get in The Zone for game-time. While I was reading this, I had a student who was struggling with a moves test. A painful knee injury and a serious case of asthma meant that she could really only skate sometimes 20 or 25 minutes per day a few times a week. It was hard for her to develop confidence for the test without much repetition of the moves and without much cardiovascular training. Motivated by Mind Gym, I asked her to do a mental run-through of her moves every night for a week leading up to the test. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she ended up having one of her best performances ever, despite all the obstacles. She hurdled them and I’m happy that she now has the gold testing medal she deserves.

I have found that one of the more challenging aspects of coaching is helping students control their nerves on the day of the performance. On this topic, Mack provides one of my favorite anecdotes of the book, and one that I think is very relevant to skaters. He describes working with groups of new firefighters. He writes: “I often give a classroom demonstration. It is a test you can take yourself. If I asked you to stand on the seat of a chair or on a tabletop, would you have a problem doing that? Probably not. But what if that chair or table were twenty stories in the air, and I asked you to perform the same task? What thoughts would you have? How would you feel? Could you do it? The task is the same. So what is the difference? For many, it’s a four-letter word: Fear.”

I have been gradually sharing this excellent image with some of my older students. After all, what is the difference between doing your run-through during practice and during the performance? Only the judges. It is otherwise the same. In fact, it is arguably better, since there aren’t any other skaters on the ice. 

In addition to reading Mind Gym from the perspective of a coach, I couldn’t help also reading it with the eyes of a former athlete. Wow, I kept thinking, what if I had read this or something like it, back then? I was not exactly overflowing with confidence as a skater. One of my own more memorable mantras before competitions was: “I just hope we don’t get last.” I was kind of joking and kind of serious. Mainly, I suppose this was a protective technique: if we happened to get, say, second to last, I managed to feel, if not thrilled, then at least relieved.

But what if? What if I had aimed for the so-called stars instead of planting such a negative image in my head? If I had believed that I could have climbed the podium, would I have increased my chances of being there more often? I suspect that’s possible, but there’s no use in wallowing in regret. I do think it’s useful to analyze these kinds of things so you can extract a lesson. As Joe Biden aptly put in that crazy Vice Presidential debate not so long ago: Past is prologue. What worked? What didn’t? How can you change your own methodologies or thought patterns to reach your own goals and to help others?

My brother and I were incredibly fortunate to be coached by Robbie Kaine. He was a positive force, indeed, and imparted an idea that Mack also touches upon: while you always want to try your best, the process is superior to the outcome. As Charles Barkley is quoted in these pages, “I know that I am never as good or as bad as any single performance.” I think I was slow to understand this, and, in fact, probably didn’t fully process it until after I was finished competing; it’s as if it had to percolate for a while or I needed distance and the resulting perspective in order to see it. Better late than never: now, as a coach, I try to pass this mentality onto to my own students. I can only hope they are more clear-sighted than I was.

Mack touches on so many other valuable concepts like, setting goals, trying to think yet not over-think, and to train in a way that allows you to run on autopilot once you arrive at the game or the performance. He addresses sportsmanship and the importance of loving what you do. I certainly get the impression, from these pages, that Mack is enthusiastic about his own field.

Finally, he encourages athletes to look in the mirror, to really see themselves as others do. I think this is one of the most powerful parts of Mind Gym. It’s not that we should value what other people think over what we think, but it’s good for all of us to realize that we are using our minds and our bodies in a larger context. As athletes, we can get very caught up in the minutia of technique, ranking, and the next competition. This is probably especially true in an individual sport like skating. But what effect might we have on other people as examples or as mentors? It’s great that he helps to broaden this perspective. 

On this note, I’ll leave you with what I think is one of the best sections of Mind Gym. It’s toward the end, and if I take nothing else from this book (or impart nothing else in this blog), this quote makes it worth reading:

“Everyone eventually leaves the game. Imagine for a moment you’re attending a testimonial dinner in honor of your retirement from competition. Maybe you’re retiring after high school or college or at the end of a professional career. Maybe you’re a weekend warrior. Your friends are at the banquet and so are all your coaches, former teammates and those you competed against. Each one stands up and says a few words about your character and how you played the game. What would they say? What would you want them to say?”

Think about this for a moment. Whether you are a skater, a lawyer, a beekeeper, a banjo player…or a writer: what would you want them to say?

                                                    ***

Have you read this book? Any other books that have been of help? Click on “comment” below.

For those of you who are interested, I have another book on deck that’s supposed to be great for skaters called, Skating out of Your Mind. Yes, I’ll reviewing this at some point in the near-ish future.

Thanks for reading.   

So I was going to post a book review today, but that will have to wait until next week. Something funny - well, more like “traumatic” - happened to me on the way to the rink on Wednesday morning and I feel compelled to share this tale of woah. In last year’s post entitled, “Morning Madness,” (to read, click here), I detailed my extreme difficulty with the morning shift. While some people seem to coach at the crack of dawn with relative ease, for me, it’s practically torture.

It’s not just that it’s cold, or that it’s early, or that I have trouble pretending I’m human at that hour. It’s also that weird things seem to occur when it’s still dark, and there are less people around to witness you then lend a helping hand if you need one. There’s a creepy vibe in the air.  

This is how I felt the time when I still lived in the suburbs and I had an early morning, pre-rink show-down with a skunk in my driveway: it was like an old western movie, except he was the only one with a weapon. This is how I felt the time a cop brought the entire highway to a stop and then singled me out to pull over. My heart skipped several beats and I squeezed the steering wheel wondering if I’d been weaving across lanes in a daze, or if I’d been going 1000 miles an hour, or if I’d accidentally robbed an ATM machine in my sleep.  I guess they were looking for someone specific: maybe my car fit the description yet I did not because as soon as he shined his flashlight on frightened me, he waved me away with disappointed disgust.

Then there was the morning last year when I was on the Bruckner Expressway, minding my own business and a huge bag of trash appeared in my lane. The SUV ahead of me practically toppled sideways in an attempt to swerve around it. I made the split-second decision to instead align my wheels on either side so I could just sail over it. Well, it was too big: it grabbed onto the bottom of my car and held on so that within seconds my car filled with the noxious scent of burning trash. In my rearview mirror, I could see that sparks were flying and it looked like my car was pooping trash down the road. People alongside me were pointing in horror and indicating that I should stop, but I couldn’t figure out a safe place to do so.

When I was finally able to pull over, I saw that the bag was lodged in place and because it had started to melt on the bottom of my car, it just wouldn’t budge. There happened to be a sanitation worker parked nearby, but he responded to my damsel-in-distress request for help with a shrug of his shoulders and an unapologetic “sorry” before taking another bite of his Egg McMuffin. So I just laid down on the filthy ground, kicked at that bag angrily, and chiseled it away one nasty chunk at a time with my little ice scraper. When I finally got to the rink, I was practically in tears and, though I was already late, I washed my hands about 42 times. Later, my trusty mechanic put my car on the lift and removed gunk from its underbelly with the help of a blowtorch and a razorblade.

This leads me to my latest early morning misadventure. There I was at 5:45 AM last Wednesday, at a red light, waiting to turn onto 9A. I’d already been awake for an hour and in the car for 30 minutes. This is the time when I traditionally work up the nerve to look at myself in the rearview mirror. After wincing, I decide that maybe some lipstick will help. I reached into my purse and out jumped…A MOUSE.

It scurried right across my lap and disappeared in the darkness at my feet. I proceeded to scream at the top of my lungs and convulse with heebie jeebies violent to the point of whiplash. I turned on the interior lights in order to see better. Where was it? Would it crawl up my pant leg? Should I get out of the car and run for my life?

I noticed that my brother happened to be at the light right in front of me, as he was scheduled to start his lessons at the same ungodly time. If I could just get to the rink, which was only about 3 minutes away, surely he would save me from this unexpected invader. My brother would later report that he could see some woman freaking out in the car behind him, but couldn’t tell it was me. He claimed that either his “facial recognition software hadn’t yet fully booted up for the day” or that my face was so “twisted with terror” that I did not look like myself.  He thought maybe “this lady” had spilled scalding coffee on her lap.  

When the light changed, I sped out in front of him like a banshee, shrieking. I don’t think I ran any red lights but it’s all a blur. I still couldn’t see the little guy and I had no idea whether he was under my seat, under my tensed foot, or perched on the visor by my face. Now this was torture. It made the simple act of getting out of bed seem like a pleasure in comparison.  

When I got to the rink, I jumped out of the car as if it was on fire and leapt from foot to foot spastically. “Mouse! Mouse!” I screeched, pointing to my car when my brother pulled up. “In purse,” I added, in a state of shock, as he started to laugh.

He swiftly took my bags out and sat them on the ground on their sides, as if to allow a whole family of rodents to exit. Then he slid the seats back and forth and peered under them, chuckling the whole time. It was evident that he was amused but I’m pretty sure he was also somewhat squeamish. We didn’t see the interloper, but it was pitch dark out, so he could have been burrowing anywhere or he could have made his escape right when I did.

Okay, so he was admittedly teeny, maybe two inches long. I’ve seen mice before and a few more, recently. The landlord is supposedly on the case. I live in New York, so, to a degree I’ve had to accept living in “close quarters” in many senses. For this reason, I keep my place clean, I keep all my food in the refrigerator (even dry goods), and I always leave my bags on a chair. But I guess the climbing talents of such critters cannot be underestimated.

After I taught my lessons, I approached my car as if it contained a bomb. I tiptoed around it and inspected the interior in the daylight. My brother helped me extract and inspect everything from my trunk, as my stockpile of scarves and mittens would certainly provide excellent nesting opportunities. We didn’t see any stowaways. Paranoid and positive it was going to scramble across me again at any moment, I nervously drove to the car wash and vacuumed. Still, I saw nothing. Maybe he’s still hiding in there somewhere, as one friend insists, or maybe he’s long gone. I’m just not sure I’ll ever be the same, in a psychological sense. 

I keep replaying the morning: was he snoozing cozily while I ate my dry cereal and listened to the reports of the presidential election? Was he snooping around the car while I drove? Or was he, as my brother suggested, having a grand ol’ time in my bag, listening to my ipod, chewing my gum and putting on my make-up? (Lipstick on a mouse!) I don’t know. I’m just glad he didn’t scurry up my arm when I reached in there for the car keys. I’m also glad the “moment of discovery” happened while stopped at a light instead of on the highway.

In times of trauma such as these, I know it’s important to appreciate and acknowledge the support of friends and family.

So thank you to my brother for his prompt heroics. Thanks to my skating student who suggested I invite a cat to stroll around the inside of my car. And thanks to the same student who contended that mice, with their cute little pink bellies, soft fur, and tiny paws, are far more afraid of us than we are of them (though, in my case she is downright wrong). Thanks to the zamboni driver who offered, through laughter, to set a mousetrap. Thanks to everyone who humored me when I wondered aloud whether or not I should call in an exterminator.

Thanks to my mother who was appropriately dismayed by this tale/tail and admitted she would have gone equally berserk. Thanks to the friend who suggested that the mouse just wanted to help out by handing my lipstick to me. (Come to think of it, I’ve always thought it would be nice to have an assistant…)Thanks to the friend who suggested I set out some food in my car overnight to see if any nibble marks would show up in it the next day. When I was leaving her house, she provided a fancy Carr’s cracked pepper cracker (only the best) for this purpose.

Finally, thanks to the friend who posited that the mouse actually had amorous intentions and is now feeling low and rejected. This same friend insists that, having been dropped off at the rink, the mouse has very likely been inspired to become a skater. Maybe he’s working on his jumps right now in order to win my affection.

I am happy to report that I’m doing better. Those early morning freestyle sessions are so clear and productive that I just have to bounce back. There never were any nibbles on that cracker. But I now carry my purse over my shoulder at all times when I’m home, even while I’m cooking dinner, brushing my teeth, and going to bed. I think I’m going to get one with an industrial-strength zipper. And a padlock. Likewise, maybe I’ll get the interior lights of my car replaced with spotlights for improved visibility… 

But surely nothing this crazy will ever happen again in the early morning, right? Right?

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What about you? Anything weird ever happen to you on the way to work? Please share by leaving a comment below…

Truth be told, this unfortunately isn’t my first run-in with a rodent. If you didn’t already read about Ratgate 2008, click here.

Okay, so maybe our country has a few problems right now, but it’s great to live in a place where we can skate to our heart’s content, blog ’til the cows come home…and VOTE. In some countries, people can only dream of such freedoms. I’m heading to the polls today and I hope you are, too.

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Check back next Tuesday when I’ll be reviewing a sports psychology book helpful for athletes, coaches, and even Joe the plumber.

Yup, I love Halloween. It’s silly, it’s goofy, it’s creative. It involves devilish amounts of candy. What’s better than that?

This past weekend, lots of kiddies in my neighborhood (socialites that they are) were making their rounds to Halloween pre-parties. I spotted a bumblebee, a tiny Sponge Bob, and a few impressive action heroes I wasn’t up-to-date enough on my cartoons to identify. I saw a father dressed as a king and a mom dressed as a cat. This, in my opinion, is a beautiful thing.

I have some big costume plans for Friday…I just have to work out a few kinks. Okay, I still have to work out all the kinks. First, it was essential that I carved my joc-o-lantern (see above).

Of course, this time of year, I’m forced to think about Halloweens gone by. A skating friend and I were talking over the phone about what costumes her three kids are going to wear - Peter Pan, Hello Kitty, and a Pirate. This led us to the topic of Halloween-past and she revealed that in 4^th Grade, she dressed up as a Skating Instructor. She carried a clipboard and wore her skates (with guards) around school all day! Now that’s an homage.   

One of my fondest (and maybe funniest) Halloween memories took place at the Madison Ice Arena when I was little. The Figure Skating Club of Madison’s Halloween party that year was going to be a club fundraiser, a Skate-a-Thon for which we were supposed to get sponsors to donate something like 10 cents for every lap we could skate around the rink.

I was personally thrilled with this idea, since we would be doing our laps in costume. My older brother was pleased as well, albeit for different reasons. In several ways, he had already proven himself to be quite a businessman, so he threw himself wholeheartedly into raising money.

Sure enough, he got tons of sponsors. With his help, I also got a few, though my primary focus was really on the costumes. We were going to be Popeye and Olive Oyl. This was mostly our mother’s idea (and it was/is important to ignore the fact that they were a romantic “couple”), but I was delighted and my brother went along with it, probably figuring there were worse get-ups we could foist on him. (And, wow, was he right…oh the skating outfits I would end up forcing him to wear.)     

In order to make Brad’s arms look cartoonishly muscular, our mom cut up a pair of my old ballet tights and stuffed them with mounds of cotton for him to wear like sleeves. She then embroidered an anchor tattoo on one arm with yarn. She found him a pipe and a sailor hat.

I wore my hair in a low bun and Olive Oyl’s iconic black and white striped tights with a red sweater and a black skirt. Even though my mother’s big red, clip-on earrings pinched my ears numb, I loved them.

When we arrived at the party, I remember that everybody had a good chuckle over our costumes. My brother immediately sat down to lace up his skates and I bee-lined for a table displaying an assortment of orange and black cupcakes.   

Though my brother was not necessarily the fastest skater in the club at that point, he was determined to do more laps than anyone else. While the rest of us skated around at a medium clip, blabbing about nothing in particular, he leaned forward like a speedskater, in order to make himself more aerodynamic. With a grin on his face, he of course skated circles around the rest of us, literally, and raised lots of money, all the while holding a can of spinach.

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How about you? Any good Halloween memories? What are you going to “be” (such an existential question) this weekend? Click on “comment” below. I promise I won’t steal your idea. Then again…if you’re in a different state, or on a different continent, or even in a different borough, would it really matter? Come on…

And if you want to see some fab Manhattan decorations as identified by The Informer (me), Click here.

To: My power skating students and the skaters of the world         Re: The benefits of power skating

It has come to my attention that you hate power skating class. Some of you told me this directly. At the beginning of class, you said in no uncertain terms, with an extremely whiney voice and slumped shoulders, “Awww, I hate power skating.”

Some of you used to do power skating but haven’t been back in a long time, thereby letting your absence do the talking. Maybe there was that one class where you tried really hard and then you woke up the next day screaming in pain, as if a boatload of sailors had extracted the muscles from your legs then used them for knot-tying practice. You didn’t realize that this was the “desired” result, in fact, essentially the whole point.

Others of you keep showing up to class but you let me know how much you hate power skating (and, by the transitive property, me) by that expression on your face, the one where you manage to throw daggers from your eyeballs with such uncanny precision that I now must come to class carrying a protective, metal shield. Soon, I’ll be trading in my down coat for a full suit of armor.   

Some of you have never tried power skating or even heard of it. If this is the case, you could probably be in a lot better shape, you could probably be far more powerful, you could probably skate your programs, your dances and your moves with lot more speed and ease. If you were to take up power skating, you might even be a better human being, in every possible, conceivable way.  Okay…maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Power skating is like rigorous exercise class in skates, and specifically, it’s on-ice interval training. In other words: exertion, rest, exertion, rest, and so on, usually for about 30 minutes. The rest period isn’t time for you to lie down on the ice and whimper, as you may feel compelled to do, but to glide around at a lower intensity and prepare for the next exercise.  The exercises can vary from simple stroking to complex footwork steps, depending on level and experience.

If you have a good class, and you push yourself to do your absolute best, what you can expect is that your lungs will feel as if they have caught on fire and sweat will spray from your pores as if they are shower spouts. Your face will turn neon red and steam will rise off your body like smoke.

As a result of exhaustion, your skates may start to feel as heavy as cinder blocks, increasing the likelihood of tripping over your toepicks. Indeed, you might fall down, slide into your fellow power skaters, and knock into them like a set of equally-tired bowling pins. You might even slam your chin into the unforgiving ice. 

Sound miserable? Perhaps. But it’s like medicine: even though it might taste horrible going down, it will make you better.      

My brother and I developed our class several years ago with a series of fast footwork exercises, steps that work the entire body, including the torso and the arms, in addition to the legs and the ankles. These are mostly skated on circles, with either one, two, or three separate circles on the ice surface, depending on how many skaters have had the good sense to show up. We put the whole thing to music so we didn’t have to skate around with a stopwatch and a whistle. This way, we can focus all our energy on chasing skaters like crazy banshees, and, of course yelling frightening encouragements like, “Go, go, go!” “You can skate faster!” “Bend your knees!” and the surprisingly necessary, “Don’t forget to breathe!”

I have a friend who is a skating coach and a trained exercise physiologist. Having read lots of studies on the subject and put the theories to practice herself, she is a big believer in interval training. She says that this is a great way to build stamina for skaters. Interval training more closely mimics figure skating programs than continuous exercise because there are similar physiological changes happening in the body throughout a program, such as increases in fatigue and changes in heart rate, etc.   

My brother and I were first exposed to power skating by the late Pieter Kollen, a figure skating coach who also did power classes with hockey players. This was during summer skating camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  The mornings after power skating classes, my brother and I would lie in our beds and repeat the phrase, “Oh my legs,” with exaggerated misery over and over again, until it became one pathetic word, “Ohmaleggs.”

The thing is, my brother was an enthusiastic student of power skating; he knew it was beneficial and seemed to enjoy the pain. He was always up in front, trying to out skate whoever was ahead of him. He pushed himself to his limits then redefined them. Every once in a while, I see a few determined skaters driving themselves similarly and loving it.  

Me? Well, like many of you, I hated power skating. I can admit this.

I chugged along, I tried, but also used up far too much energy throwing those dagger glares. So I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. But I also know that power skating helped me become a stronger, faster, more powerful athlete than I was previously. And I’ve witnessed it do the same for many others.  

So go ahead, I invite you to hate it exactly as much or even more than I did. But do it. Grit your teeth, scrunch up your face, glare at me angrily then bend your knees and SKATE. You’ll be glad you did.

Oh, and by the way, don’t even think about escaping over to the boards to take an extra long swig from your water bottle or to take off your jacket in a leisurely fashion, one zipper notch at a time. Nice try, though.

                                                      ***

You? Have you experienced or witnessed the splendors of power skating? Click on comment, below.  

She skates faster than a speeding bullet.
Glides with more power than a locomotive.
She triple axels over tall buildings in a single bound.

Look up in the sky!
It’s a bird, it’s a rhinestone-studded plane. No, wait, it’s Skaterwoman!

Are you concerned about what’s going on in the world today and even a little scared? Nervous about the faltering economy? The endless war? The rapid depletion of natural resources?

Have no fear, Skaterwoman is here! She’s been training for this moment. She’s all warmed up, stretched out, and it takes her less than .0000000004 seconds to lace her skates. So just breathe a sigh of relief and sit back to enjoy the performance.

In the next four minutes, Skaterwoman will not only “balance” all the budgets in the land, her spinning will generate enough alternative energy to power the entire planet.

Her smile will melt the hearts of the coldest dictators and her dove-like grace will smooth over international disputes. Besides, you’ll see that she can touch her foot to her head, fly like a camel, shoot ducks with her eyes closed, and stealthily disguise herself as a pancake.

Most impressively, the ease with which she transports herself from place to place will inspire commuters across the universe to abandon their gas-guzzling cars and instead travel to work in their own skates.

Trust me: she skates softly, but she wears big blades.

And so, without further delay, I present the one and only super-heroine who can rescue us from this mess…Skaterwoman!

(Pause.)

(Silence.)

Wait, is the stereo broken again?

Skaterwoman, can you please save the world without the music today?

No? Okay. Well folks, I forgot to mention that Skaterwoman is also a larger-than-life primadonna. I guess we’ll just have to figure something else out.  

So I finally gave in to something I’ve been resisting for a long time. I’d been getting these e-mail invitations from friends to join that social networking site Facebook. No offense, guys, but I deleted them. I mean, I already have about 502 separate e-mail accounts and at least 75,000 websites I need to check in with on a daily basis. How much more can a girl do?

And I know myself: I’m a social creature. I’m prone to blabbing on the phone for hours on end, going out to dinner with friends eight nights a week, and writing jokey e-mails all day long. Besides, I am an avid and (despite what my teenage cousins think) speedy texter.

Outwardly, I played it like I just couldn’t be bothered with one of these online social networks - “Look, I’m already in touch with everyone I want to be in touch with!” - but secretly I knew I could become an addict.

And that’s exactly what’s happened. I joined up about two weeks ago in response to some particularly enthusiastic peer pressure. It’s a good thing I don’t have a Blackberry or a fancy iPhone - otherwise I might be logged onto Facebook every waking moment. What’s remarkable is that I’m not on it right now. Wait, let me just check to see if I have any new Facebook messages….okay, I’m back.

So, other than wasting gobs of precious time and serving as a procrastinatory crutch, what is the point of all these sites, like Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace? I suppose, like the internet as a whole, they make the world a smaller, cozier place by connecting you to others…instantaneously. Feeling lonely? Facebook. Feeling friendless? Log onto Facebook. Questioning whether or not you exist? There you are onscreen, smiling from the picture on your “profile page”. And there you are typing a quippy little note on your “wall” for all to see.   

In some ways, it’s the new address book. If you manage your “Friends” page meticulously enough, you can put together a pretty thorough list of just about everyone you’ve ever known (and some you never knew, or maybe you did, but it’s getting a little fuzzy…).

Granted, Facebook fulfills different purposes depending on your age. I can’t speak for other age groups, but for those of us who are over the age of say, 20 or 25, this site is a slick way of traveling backwards through time. Very few of us stick around our hometowns, anymore: I myself have moved six times since leaving Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin at age 14. I have attended several different schools and have had lots of different jobs. Try as I have, it has been nearly impossible to stay in touch with everyone who I have genuinely enjoyed being acquainted with over the years.

And skaters of the world are an especially amorphous group. I have been associated with several different ice rinks and skating clubs. From both competing and training, I know skaters from all over the country and I’ve never had any organized way of keeping up with them…until now. It’s not like there are reunions or a directory of “past skaters.” In the last two weeks, I have contacted and been contacted by all kinds of flashes from my skating past: people I’ve often wondered about. It’s great to have them on my so-called radar, now, and vice versa. And we didn’t have to hire private detectives to track each other down. 

Of course, it’s still not possible to be in really close, meaningful contact with everyone you’ve ever known, even with the help of a conduit as smooth as this. I have to resist the urge to individually e-mail all the people who have “friended” me or vice versa: I’d enjoy doing so, but I’d never have time to leave my house again. On that note, I have to wonder when I see that some Facebookers (mostly those under the age of 25) have more than 500 friends - do they really know all these people or are they just amassing friends of friends of friends? What percentage of these people are they managing to be in contact with? 

If you can keep control of your Facebook experience (or maybe just accept that control isn’t really possible), it’s a hoot. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself chuckling a lot. Like, “Oh, yeah, her. Wow, she lives in Seattle, now. Who knew?” You might also find yourself going to dinner with two long lost friends from high school on Thursday night. 

If you haven’t joined Facebook yet, then I think you’re time has come. You’re not the last person on earth who hasn’t done so, but I have a feeling you will be, soon. So here’s what you do:

First, go to the Facebook Website by clicking here. Signing up is free - while it will probably end up costing you many many valuable work hours, they never ask you for your credit card number, an admirable and rare thing.

Upload a picture of yourself looking fabulous. (Or, in my case, the best one you can find…and then get a friend to de- redeye it in Photoshop so you no longer look like the devil.) Try to not cringe too visibly when one of your skating students remarks how dorky you look in it and suggests you switch it out for something a little “sexier” i.e. without the glasses. 

From there, you just fill out a few general details about yourself, like where you went to high school and college and where you live and what websites you may be associated with that you want to shamelessly promote, wink wink. 

This next part is when it starts to get interesting: you start to amass “friends.” The first step is allowing Facebook to rifle through your e-mail address book to identify all the people you know who are already in the so-called club. By simply checking their boxes, you will be requesting their Facebook friendship and, unless they still owe you money, the chances are very high that they’ll accept.

Once you start collecting Facebook friends, you can go through their personal lists to see who you know, and contact those individuals as well, forging more and more paths in this gigantic online maze. Along the way, over in the right hand column of your  “home page,” Facebook will be constantly suggesting people you might know, based on their association with someone you already have on your list…and, as a matter of fact, you will know lots of them. Lo and behold, some of them have just sent you a request to be their friend. Receiving such requests might give you a nice tingly feeling: it’s like getting a “Will you be my friend?” note passed to you across a few desks in the second grade.

Finally, using the Facebook “search” function, you can also look up individuals one by one, but just make sure you know the exact spelling of his or her name…and also hope that they have a unique spelling because, according to Wikipedia, there are over 100 million Facebook users worldwide…and, I’ve found, for example, that many of them seem to have the exact same name as that one guy I dated for 10 minutes in high school.

But, in this way, I successfully found a friend from grade school in Wisconsin who I haven’t seen in more than…well, let’s just say many many years. Turns out that, though she now lives in Minneapolis, she often comes to visit my exact neighborhood in New York City. We’re going to meet up next time she comes through town - and I am thrilled about this prospect.

I will also be thrilled to stumble upon your lovely mugshot on Facebook, whether you’ve already jumped on the bandwagon or this CSOM installment is inspiring you to join up. Either way, I cordially invite you to be-”friend” me, Facebook style, by clicking here.

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What do you think? Is Facebook a waste of time, or the perfect conduit, or both? Leave a comment below.      

Boomerang: n. a kind of throwing stick, primarily associated with the Australian Aborigines. When thrown correctly, it travels in a curved path and returns to its point of origin.

I’ve never seen an actual boomerang, or held one in my hands, or tossed one into the air to see if it will return (with my luck, it would probably bonk me in the head.) But I have had several skating students venture out into that big, wide world then boomerang back.

In many cases, it’s because they left the sport with unfinished business, mostly skating tests they now want to check off their lists. Hard as I try to convince kids to finish their skating goals (whatever they may be) before high school graduation, I can’t always adequately impart the urgency I feel on their behalf. Some think, “Oh, I’ll just get that test later, maybe while I’m at college or when I come back for the summer.” And maybe they will…

Of course, what they don’t realize is that, as the months and years pass, there will be all kinds of distractions and a shifting of priorities. (And let’s face it, the body changes in ways we can’t possibly imagine when we’re 18 years old…usually not in ways that are ideal for figure skating.) With panic in my voice, I say things like, “Trust me, it’s not going to get any easier!” And, “Do this now, while you still can!”

Sometimes this message falls on deaf ears and other times skaters do everything they can to get that last test, yet can’t close the deal before leaving for college. I’ve had students in each of these categories, and a handful of them have circled back to finish what they started. When this happens, it’s gratifying, to say the least.

Not only is it generally wonderful to help skaters reach their goals (and especially sweet when delayed), it’s fun to get to know students as they become adults. They are simultaneously the same kids I used to know and also quite different. They’ve gained some perspective while away and independence. Now they’re involved in different pursuits, so their worlds have widened, yet they have become more focused and also more self-motivated.

Granted, this whole boomerang effect in skating is far easier when it comes to Moves in the Field and Dance (what I primarily teach). Coming back to jumps and spins is a whole other story. My sister-in-law, Bobbie Anne Flower, is a rare exception: after quitting skating at age 18, she came back to take her Moves in the Field test at age 29, her Senior Freestyle at age 30 then her Senior Pair test at 31. So this is not impossible, just rare. 

Anyway, this summer, I had three students boomerang back. Two returned from college where they skate on successful synchro teams. One took her Silver Samba International Dance and another passed two Gold Dances. A third, Eric Karnani, took a few years off from skating and recently finished high school. He has just moved to Australia (how perfect for this boomerang metaphor) to ice dance with a partner there. This summer, before leaving, he passed his Senior Moves and his Starlight Waltz after only a few short weeks back on the ice.

I decided to ask Eric and a few other “boomerang skaters” what coming back to skating has meant to them and they were kind enough to answer with the following…

Eric: Skating is like an addiction. It is something that you either consciously or unconsciously try to move on from, but somehow get drawn back because you miss it so much. I worked with two amazing coaches before I “quit” skating, and thought that I would never look back. But like all habits, I eventually knew I needed to skate. I knew I needed that feeling of power and passion all combined into one. And so I took that first step back onto the ice to go and pass my Senior Moves, a goal of mine for a very long time. It’s incredible coming back to a sport you used to love and realize you still love it just as much, or even more; you come back with such a different perspective and appreciation for it. 

Another skater, Sam Mortimer, e-mailed me a response to this topic hilariously entitled: “Trying to Skate When You are Poor, Lazy and Realize that you can Sleep In.” He first practiced his Dutch Waltz with me wearing a baseball cap and cargo pants at the age of 12 and has now graduated from college. Since high school, he has come back to skating to take three Gold Dances.

He writes: Why is it so hard to skate when you stop skating all the time? I’ll start with my biggest reason, which is when I stopped skating competitively and went to school I realized that there were other things to do. When I was skating all the time I did not think about other things like hanging out late or playing other sports more or even just sleeping in. At New York University, I started doing things that I did not do in high school. Besides, college takes up A LOT more time than high school does, as far as workload. I think part of that comes from going to school in NYC but it also comes from the fact that when anyone goes away to college you all of a sudden feel so much more freedom to do whatever you want to do. So when you have been skating for the past 8 years and then you get the chance to take a break it feels good to just breathe and rest and kind of do nothing and then when the novelty of doing nothing wears off, you do something other than skating.

Second, skating costs LOTS AND LOTS of money and when I am trying to budget myself for food, fun, laundry, transportation etc., all the items that I have to pay for, skating is not factored into my budget. So everyone should be really thankful that their parents paid for them to skate. And I think lastly, I really like skating NOT on a schedule. I treat skating as more of a social event than a rigorous practice. I think that when I want to get back into skating it will be hard but for the time being I like taking it easy. I am sure that a lot of people feel the same way I do: that skating without pressure from parents or coaches makes for a more pleasurable experience. I don’t expect anything out of myself so I can just skate the way I want. I cannot say that I regret how I skated in high school at all and it gave me a really great basis for how I view life in general but I am happy with where I stand with skating now. 

Cortney Rosenberg came back to skate with me every summer break from college. She is now a teacher and has her own flock of little prodigies, third graders. She writes: 

I don’t remember anything about starting skating. It has just always been there, a part of me. Skating was always a calming influence in my life. No matter what was happening outside of the rink I could always count on my time at the rink and the people that surrounded me there.

Growing up I took for granted how lucky I was to have found something in my life I was so passionate about. Luckily, my parents supported this passion and made sure that I was always enjoying myself. When, in college, I became too hard on myself to enjoy the sport anymore, I decided to take a break from it. I missed it every single day I was away. Life was just not the same. It was only then that I realized I would never be able to take skating out of my life completely. It has become engrained in my spirit. During my summers, I made a conscious choice to spend summers at home so that I could get back to the rink. I would return to my old rinks purely for the love of the sport and the feeling I got stepping on the ice surface. I was always welcomed back. After all, skating was never just a sport but a community.  Now that I have a real job, and live a few hours away from the rinks that I grew up training in, it is harder to be able to go skate. I still wake up some mornings wishing I could skip out on work and get on the ice for a couple of hours or that my coaches miraculously lived closer. I beg my friends to join me at public skating sessions just for the burst of cold air and the feeling of gliding that I get from nothing else. Deep down I will always be a skater.

And finally, while I was working on this very CSOM installment, a student named Alyson McGee, who I haven’t seen in years, coincidentally e-mailed me out of the blue. She has just returned from Ethiopia where she was in the Peace Corps. She wrote: 

I thought of you today because I just laced up my skates after about two years of not getting on the ice- pretty terrible of me, it was just hard to find the time in college with no skating rink nearby (well actually there were lots of skating rinks near Tufts but they were hockey-ONLY rinks). I recently went to a rink by my parent’s house to see if I still remember how to get around the ice. Thankfully I do and it was really great to get back out there.

I really have missed it a lot since I last competed synchro in 2005. I think it was kind of a shame that I never passed my Senior Moves so I’m thinking about committing to train and finally take that test. Although I am woefully unemployed for now my parents have promised to help me with the costs of skating again (for a limited time only) so that I can accomplish this goal, which I think they have been holding onto for me as well. I definitely have a lot of work to do on my own and I’m expecting that it will take some time to get back to my old self on skates but I’d be interested in having a refresher crash course on Senior Moves and then maybe we can take it from there…

I say to Alyson and to all lapsed skaters who want to test or simply get their “rink legs” back: Of course - boomerang back! Will it be easy? No. Will it be rewarding? Definitely. So call your rink for the schedule and get those blades sharpened. Just remember to take it easy at first. I suggest (from my own experience) that you stretch out your dormant muscles beforehand and also afterwards…

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Thanks so much to the skaters who contributed to this.

What has been your own experience with skating’s Boomerang Effect? Click on the word “comments” below.

My, what a nice loop...and in turquoise skates.

Is it strange that I love the Moves in the Field as much as I do? Okay, don’t answer that.

I know that Moves are basically the piano scales of skating. I know that many skaters and some fellow coaches find these required, fundamental exercises boring beyond words. Yet for some reason, I enjoy teaching them, maybe because I like the challenge of trying to make them fun. I like showing my skaters how the Moves skills relate to other areas of their skating, such as their step sequences and transitions in the Freestyle, Synchro, and Dance programs. And it’s very gratifying to see them climb the Moves testing ladder.  

Last year, we started to hear that United States Figure Skating was going to restructure the Moves. I think this news was received by most coaches with a mix of excitement (something new to teach!) and trepidation (uh oh, something new to teach…). I certainly felt both of these things, especially in light of all the new concepts we’ve had to digest due to IJS. Skaters and parents of skaters frantically wondered if they should try to test all the way from Pre-Juvenile level all the way through Senior within the next year in order to avoid the changes.

In fact, the new Moves were proposed at the 2008 Annual Governing Council Meeting last May. However, they did not pass. At the PSA Conference later that month, many coaches got a look at the proposed (yet unapproved) changes during presentations by coaches Damon Allen and Janet Champion, both of Colorado Springs.

Curious about the current status of these changes, I contacted Wayne Hundley, who is the chairperson for the new Moves Task Force. He is a Technical Specialist, a Controller, a National Judge and former competitor located in Riverside, California. The task force includes about 22 people, including USFS Committee chairs, USFS Board Members and PSA Representatives. Hundley was kind enough to update me with a lot of specific information and he encouraged me to pass it along here.

Turns out that since May, they have basically started over from scratch. They are taking into consideration lots of feedback they have received from members-at-large and have been working to address some of the most common concerns.

Among these concerns, is the length of the tests and the amount of ice time clubs need to purchase in order to host these test sessions. In response, Hundley’s committee is now proposing that approximately eight of the current Moves are simply condensed so that they take less time. For example, in the Preliminary Moves, instead of doing two figure eights of Forward and Backward Crossovers around the hockey circles, the skaters would do only one figure eight forward, then flow directly into a backwards figure eight without stopping. Another example of this is on the Juvenile Eight Step Mohawk Sequence: instead of stopping between directions, they are proposing that this is set up as a figure eight and one circle simply flows into the next, similar to how the Juvenile Backward Power Three Turns currently work.

In this new plan, some moves have been taken away all together, such as the Intermediate Back Perimeter Power Crossovers with Backward Power Three Turns, the Novice Bracket-Three-Brackets and the Junior Forward and Backward Power Circles. This is meant to make time for the addition of some entirely new moves, which feature Loops, Twizzles, and some Circle Eights reminiscent of School Figures. They believe that these will be helpful to competitive skaters using IJS for Freeskating, Pair, Dance and Synchro and that they will also impart important skills for skaters on the test track.

Along these same lines, there are also some revisions to the Novice and Senior Spiral Sequences to incorporate more kinds of spirals. Specifically, the Novice test would include all eight spirals (i.e. now there would be Forward Outside Spirals and Back Inside Spirals on both feet in that sequence). And the Senior test would change slightly at the end of the pattern to include a Forward Outside Spiral. At both of these levels, the skater would be required to hold each Spiral for a designated number of seconds, in some cases three seconds and in some cases six.

In all, there are approximately 16 changes, and this number includes those eight Moves that aren’t really changed, just condensed. From what I can tell thus far from Hundley’s extremely clear and organized proposal, the changes are not very drastic. And they make sense. I like the idea of incorporating twizzles, loops, and some old-school figure eights into the Moves and getting rid of a lot of the restarts.

I think what would take the most effort to learn would probably be the proposed Junior Straight Line Step and the new Senior Circular Step Sequence. This latter pattern does use some of the current version, but with the addition of a few new turns, like Twizzles and Counters. Hundley underscored the fact that the Senior test is the culmination of the whole process, so it’s important that this test incorporates as many of the Moves skills as possible. Truthfully, it doesn’t even seem like these two Moves are very complicated, nothing to get anxious about.

Hundley said, “Skating is constantly evolving and we want the Moves to reflect that progress.” He emphasized that the Moves are meant to improve basic skating skills, such as better turn quality et cetera, for all skaters, not just competitors.    

Hundley assured me that none of this is a secret. They already have the diagrams finished and coach Gerry Lane is helping to get the video clips ready. They hope to have lots of the information for these newest proposals posted on the USFS website as early as mid-November. They will be presenting these New Moves yet again at the 2009 Governing Council Meeting next May, so they are hoping to have lots of input on the proposal before then. The Professional Skaters Association would, as always, put together the manual, which outlines the focus of each Move and the common errors.

If this newest version passes in May, these Moves will go into effect September 2009.

Thanks so much to Wayne Hundley for so generously sharing all of this info and providing lots of much-needed clarity. It will be interesting to see if this all goes through and fun to play with some new (and slightly tweaked) tricks.

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So what do you think of all this? Please leave a comment below.

If you subscribe to Professional Skater Magazine, check out page 8 for a humorous essay I wrote about the PSA Ratings process…

And, this weekend I went to Oktoberfest in Central Park. To read The Informer report, click here.

I’m back. I hope your summer was excellent and that your fall is coming together nicely.

Geeky as it may be, I used to love going back to school in September, mostly because that meant obtaining a new pencil case and also partly because of those What I Did This Summer reports we got to write. Of course, I also adored Show and Tell day, so imagine me reading this report in front of a classroom with the blackboard behind me… 

Let me clear my throat and shift around up here somewhat nervously as I look out at the rest of you folded into your little desks…okay. So this summer, in addition to coaching, I did lots of writing, which involved obscene amounts of java, bleary eyes, and tense typing shoulders (otherwise known as “boulder shoulder” in certain circles.) For better or worse, my skin tone remained utterly unchanged. Rink tan + coffee shop tan = frightening white.

I did stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge once, meander through Central Park once, did enjoy the splendid view from a friend’s rooftop deck (24 floors above the city), watched the sun set once from a NYC bistro on the Hudson River, dined amid two flourishing gardens outside the city, and generally took advantage of as many sidewalk cafes as humanly possible. Mainly though, I tap danced my fingertips across my keyboard.

Recently, instead of telling my friends that I’m writing when they call, I say that I’m at the “office.” Of course, my office is nomadic; it includes a circuit of coffee shops (both in my neighborhood and beyond) and sometimes the desk in my apartment. I like how saying “office” sounds slightly official. I also like how it’s a bit unspecific. What I mean is that if I were to claim that I was writing, that might not literally be the case. I might in fact just be staring at the wall gearing up to write. Or I may be looking at my laptop screen, thinking. Or I may be fidgeting with my fingernails, thinking about gearing up to stare at my screen so I can think about writing. If I say I’m “at the office” this means I’m in the writing space, in the most general sense.

For example, I might answer my phone kind of softly so as to not annoy the fellow coffeeshoppers around me, “Hello?”

“You’re in ‘the office’ aren’t you?” my friend might say.

“Affirmative,” I might say back, cupping my hand over the phone and looking at the person at the table next to me with an apologetic this-won’t-be-long expression on my face.

“Okay,” my friend responds respectfully, but also probably smirking. “I’ll let you get back to work. I don’t want your boss to get mad.”

“Yeah, she’s been a real jerk so far today,” I say, furtively. “Call you later.”

Pretending I have an office and all-powerful writing boss helps me to best utilize the limited hours I’m away from the rink. But here’s the most beautiful thing…and can I get a drumroll for this please?… Here goes: if you put a space between the two syllables of the word office…you get ‘off ice’ and you don’t have to know me well to realize that I find this clever little word play downright delightful. 

So the main thing I worked on when I was off ice this summer was my book, called “Skate at Your own Risk.” Many have kindly requested to see this manuscript and have been denied that pleasure. For that, I apologize, but I believe that “all good things come to those who wait” and “patience is a virtue.” Trust me, the book doesn’t rely on clichés nearly as much as that last sentence might imply. I just want the thing to be fully cooked before I serve it up. Some of you have seen some snippets and others, if you’ve been reading this blog, have gotten a taste without even realizing it.

To “show” the other things I worked on this summer, I present the following three links:  

The first is an article about Tommy Litz for icenetwork describing his exciting foray into “phototivity.” I love to see how this sport can inform other areas of our lives and Tommy is making very cool connections between figure skating and art.  To read, click here.

The second is another article for icenetwork about the venerable Wayne Seybold - he is now the mayor of Marion, Indiana. My brother and I trained alongside him and his sister, Natalie, when we first arrived in Delaware as teenagers. The Seybolds were a huge inspiration to us back then so I was thrilled to interview him about all he’s gone on to accomplish since competing in the Olympics. To read, click here.

Finally, I am excited to announce that I have become a staff blogger for a website called Uppereast.com (because there just wasn’t enough blogging in my life already.) It’s called the Upper East Side Informer. This means I go around and review different businesses and events in this quadrant of New York City. Basically, it’s a matter of enlisting my friends to join me in eating, drinking, and gallivanting through the neighborhood, while I take notes along the way. By the way, from here on, if you’d like to refer to me as the The Informer (as a few people in my life have sarcastically begun to do), you are welcome to do so. To read, click here.

Enjoy, and check back next Tuesday. For the months ahead, I’ve got lots of funny lined up, reviews of skating products and books, interviews, and even some “hard-hitting” journalism (note quotation marks).

If you send this link on to others who might appreciate it, I’ll be forever grateful. And I can aim that gratitude more specifically in your direction if you leave a comment telling me you did so…okay, or just telling me anything at all.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in a few months ago on their favorite installments and who made suggestions for future ones. It’s good to be back!