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Skating on the Planet


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Man, skating is hard. I feel like unless you did dance or some other sport where precision of movement is important in your youth, it's probably really hard to have the hyperawareness of where your body parts are at all times or to understand how your body parts work...synergistically...in a complex movement lol. Like for the spin entry, I could say that I *know* I'm dropping my right hip when I watch myself in a video, but why? It's not like I drop my right hip when I'm walking or just skating around. That would feel weird. But this doesn't feel weird. So I need to raise my right hip, but how do I do that? Or I know I need to turn out my foot but I don't get the feel of when to do it or how. Or how even to tell if your foot is turned out. Until you realize that it's not one or the other and doing one actually helps the other/they're all related. Like turning out your foot actually raises your hips and makes you feel more level. And you don't know how it feels to be dropping your right hip until you know how it feels to not be dropping it. I guess the main lesson is that a lot of these things are just different sides of the same coin...aka they all need to happen to work. Anyway this doesn't make any sense but....yeah skating is hard.

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1 hour ago, yuzuangel said:

Man, skating is hard. I feel like unless you did dance or some other sport where precision of movement is important in your youth, it's probably really hard to have the hyperawareness of where your body parts are at all times or to understand how your body parts work...synergistically...in a complex movement lol. Like for the spin entry, I could say that I *know* I'm dropping my right hip when I watch myself in a video, but why? It's not like I drop my right hip when I'm walking or just skating around. That would feel weird. But this doesn't feel weird. So I need to raise my right hip, but how do I do that? Or I know I need to turn out my foot but I don't get the feel of when to do it or how. Or how even to tell if your foot is turned out. Until you realize that it's not one or the other and doing one actually helps the other/they're all related. Like turning out your foot actually raises your hips and makes you feel more level. And you don't know how it feels to be dropping your right hip until you know how it feels to not be dropping it. I guess the main lesson is that a lot of these things are just different sides of the same coin...aka they all need to happen to work. Anyway this doesn't make any sense but....yeah skating is hard.

I agree. At my rink, the people who are making the fastest progress also dance, one of them competitively. I have no body awareness, so I always have to think very carefully about what I'm doing, and try to see my reflection. It frustrates me that, because it relies on momentum, I can't just slow down so I can think about everything I have to do. I basically end up doing everything faster than I can think, which results in me skating with terrible posture, or holding my arms in awkward ways. At least my fingers look nice, according to my coach. Guess those years of torturing my fingers with music were somewhat worth it. :13877886: Skating really is hard...

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20 minutes ago, guitarist said:

I agree. At my rink, the people who are making the fastest progress also dance, one of them competitively. I have no body awareness, so I always have to think very carefully about what I'm doing, and try to see my reflection. It frustrates me that, because it relies on momentum, I can't just slow down so I can think about everything I have to do. I basically end up doing everything faster than I can think, which results in me skating with terrible posture, or holding my arms in awkward ways. At least my fingers look nice, according to my coach. Guess those years of torturing my fingers with music were somewhat worth it. :13877886: Skating really is hard...

Yeah, I agree, it's so frustrating. I looked at a video of me in one of my spins and even though I thought I did everything right I'm *still* dropping the right side. I guess I still have a while to go before I'm overcompensating so I should hike up my hip as high as it could physically go, LOL. And I'm not pulling my left shoulder back, or keeping my right hand in front of me, nearly half as much as I think I am (I feel like I'm literally playing twister). In the video I look like I'm not trying at all. And totally agree with you about the momentum -- everything you need to do, needs to be done at once, you can't say "I'm going to do this move but only do the arm motions, and then when I have that down I'll add in the leg motions" because it literally has to be done together and doesn't make sense broken apart. But there's a reason why you don't try to debug three things at once, you have no idea what's wrong, lol. /sigh/

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Wow, I went to a freestyle session instead of the public one. It's like magic :tumblr_inline_n18qr5lPWB1qid2nw: Only 10 people or so. Which I realize is quite a lot compared to several other ice rinks, but what can I do, it's NYC... I was finally able to get real practice done, I'm so happy! My edge control is slowly going from "complete joke" to "it could be worse" :tumblr_inline_mqt4grU8ua1qz4rgp:

 

If only it weren't so expensive...:13877886: And it's so hard to get up at 5... Maybe I'll do it once or twice a week from now on.

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1 hour ago, guitarist said:

Wow, I went to a freestyle session instead of the public one. It's like magic :tumblr_inline_n18qr5lPWB1qid2nw: Only 10 people or so. Which I realize is quite a lot compared to several other ice rinks, but what can I do, it's NYC... I was finally able to get real practice done, I'm so happy! My edge control is slowly going from "complete joke" to "it could be worse" :tumblr_inline_mqt4grU8ua1qz4rgp:

 

If only it weren't so expensive...:13877886: And it's so hard to get up at 5... Maybe I'll do it once or twice a week from now on.

 

It makes such a difference having some space on the ice. Idk about the prices at your rink but I think a session where you have space is worth at least twice a packed public session :tumblr_inline_ncmif5EcBB1rpglid: (waking up that early tho.... respect)

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1 minute ago, robin said:

 

It makes such a difference having some space on the ice. Idk about the prices at your rink but I think a session where you have space is worth at least twice a packed public session :tumblr_inline_ncmif5EcBB1rpglid: (waking up that early tho.... respect)

It was very worth it! But in the interests of being saving money and being a Responsible Adult (who am I kidding I had ice cream for dinner last night), I'm only going to go once or twice a week. Ah, yeah, I like to be in the office by 8:30 or so, and the rink is used for hockey at night, so it's my only option.

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1 hour ago, guitarist said:

It was very worth it! But in the interests of being saving money and being a Responsible Adult (who am I kidding I had ice cream for dinner last night), I'm only going to go once or twice a week. Ah, yeah, I like to be in the office by 8:30 or so, and the rink is used for hockey at night, so it's my only option.

Skating in NYC is so expensive! It's one of the reasons I'd be averse to moving back! Lol. But I see people use it as an entrance fee kinda thing where you pay and go in and then skate for however long you like, depending on the schedule ofc. Here they'd kick you out/charge you for it, but in NYC they don't? Anyway not sure if you'd want to do that anyway (and there's a limit to how much you can skate as well).

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I skate at a commercial rink here and instead just by year long membership. It's about 600-700 USD for an entire year, you can use anytime it's public ice time (because the ice is rented out to hockey teams about a third of the time), and on public sessions and even private lessons, you have to share rink with public skaters and about a third of the ice is walled off for hockey lessons. 

Otherwise it's about 10 USD for 2 hours....:happy:

 

Only time to get empty ice here is lunch time Mon-Fri. But the ice is usually bad since it's right after hockey practice, and they haven't cleaned the ice yet (no cleaning until 2:30 pm). 

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12 minutes ago, Xen said:

I skate at a commercial rink here and instead just by year long membership. It's about 600-700 USD for an entire year, you can use anytime it's public ice time (because the ice is rented out to hockey teams about a third of the time), and on public sessions and even private lessons, you have to share rink with public skaters and about a third of the ice is walled off for hockey lessons. 

Otherwise it's about 10 USD for 2 hours....:happy:

 

Only time to get empty ice here is lunch time Mon-Fri. But the ice is usually bad since it's right after hockey practice, and they haven't cleaned the ice yet (no cleaning until 2:30 pm). 

Aww a year-long membership sounds really nice!

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1 minute ago, yuzuangel said:

Aww a year-long membership sounds really nice!

Yep, if you skate 2-3 times a week, it pays itself really fast.  And sometimes they have discount sales, so I got mine last time when it was about 30% off. Win-win. 

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24 minutes ago, Xen said:

I skate at a commercial rink here and instead just by year long membership. It's about 600-700 USD for an entire year, you can use anytime it's public ice time (because the ice is rented out to hockey teams about a third of the time), and on public sessions and even private lessons, you have to share rink with public skaters and about a third of the ice is walled off for hockey lessons. 

Otherwise it's about 10 USD for 2 hours....:happy:

 

Only time to get empty ice here is lunch time Mon-Fri. But the ice is usually bad since it's right after hockey practice, and they haven't cleaned the ice yet (no cleaning until 2:30 pm). 

Wow, nice. I just calculated what going to public skate an average of twice a week costs in a year and it's like 1000 USD, yours sounds like a much better deal... Freestyle sessions are 25 USD for 50 min, but apparently you can pay for one and stay the whole time...? @yuzuangel did you hear this about Chelsea Piers, or the outdoor rinks? I wouldn't know, this is the first time I've gone. General skating is 12 USD if you have your own skates (slightly cheaper if you buy a 10-pack), and it's usually 3 hours. The ice is generally not a problem, except for one time when there was a competition going on in one of the rinks so they had to use the public skate one for a hockey game. When public skate started and I got on the "ice", I was seriously wondering whether bringing skis would've been more useful... 

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1 minute ago, guitarist said:

Wow, nice. I just calculated what going to public skate an average of twice a week costs in a year and it's like 1000 USD, yours sounds like a much better deal... Freestyle sessions are 25 USD for 50 min, but apparently you can pay for one and stay the whole time...? @yuzuangel did you hear this about Chelsea Piers, or the outdoor rinks? I wouldn't know, this is the first time I've gone. General skating is 12 USD if you have your own skates (slightly cheaper if you buy a 10-pack), and it's usually 3 hours. The ice is generally not a problem, except for one time when there was a competition going on in one of the rinks so they had to use the public skate one for a hockey game. When public skate started and I got on the "ice", I was seriously wondering whether bringing skis would've been more useful... 

It was Chelsea Piers...I didn't hear about it, and I'm sure you're not supposed to, but I just saw people doing it haha..

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Just now, yuzuangel said:

It was Chelsea Piers...I didn't hear about it, and I'm sure you're not supposed to, but I just saw people doing it haha..

Oh. So maybe that's why the guy stared at me weird when I asked for the 100 min session:rofl:

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Reading about how much it costs for y'all to go to a local rink I guess I'm lucky I live in a rural area. It only costs me $4 to get in for a single session, which I think it 2 or 2 1/2 hours and $1 to rent a set of skates. That deal will also only get better since with the student ID from the university I'll be attending in the fall, I get free admission for any public session. 

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