Want to know your inside edges from your outside edges?

Here is our top 10 ice skating terms you are likely to hear during your lessons.

 

1) ’Snowplough stop': helps us to stop safely. Well, we can't rely on crashing into the barrier forever.

We turn our toes in to form an inverted ‘V’ shape, then apply pressure to the blades. This will make us skid and allow us to come to a stop.

 

2) ‘Edges’: are the edges either side of the skate blade. Imagine the blade as a potato peeler rather than a knife. There is an ‘inside edge’ and an ‘outside edge’. The edges help us to change direction as we skate across the ice.

 

3) ‘Inside Edge’: is the skate blade facing towards the body.

 

4) ‘Outside Edge’: is the skate blade facing away from the body.

 

5) ‘Toe Pick’: describes the ‘teeth’ at the front of the blade. They help to propel us into the air when we want to practise jumps and spins.

 

6) ‘Stroking’: is forward skating by pushing off from the inside edge of one skate to the inside edge of the other skate. Stroking helps us to gain speed as we skate across the rink.

 

7) ‘Lemons’: a warm up exercise for the knee joints. We put our blades together to form a ‘V’ shape position. We then push out on an inside edge, then inward to make our toes touch.

We repeat this several times, leaving a trace of a series of ‘lemon’ shapes on the ice as we skate; though when I started out, my ‘lemons’ looked more like twiglets.

The lemons exercise helps us to bend our needs in between pushes. Knee bends are essential to allow us to shift our weight, from one skate to the other. As a result, our skating appears more graceful.

 

8) ‘Crossovers’: help us to gain speed as we turn corners on the ice rink.

When we skate anticlockwise, we cross our right foot over our left, as in the photograph above. Skating clockwise, we cross our left foot over our right foot; hence crossovers.

You’ll find that you have a ‘good side’ or a ‘bad side’ depending what your dominant foot is. Unfortunately, nobody escapes as we are tested in skating both clockwise and anticlockwise directions; backwards and forwards.

 

9) ‘T-Stop’: The ‘Dancing on Ice’ stop.

We glide on one foot, then place the other foot behind it on an outside edge and at right angles. Once we are comfortable, we apply pressure to the skate blades as with the ‘basic’ snowplough stop described above and we should come to a stop.

 

10) ‘3-Turns’: We do them by forward gliding on two feet, then a turn to glide backwards on one foot. 3-Turns allow us to change direction from forwards to backwards skating.

An ‘inside 3-turn’ is skating on an inside edge, while an ‘outside 3-turn is skating on an outside edge. As we turn, the blade should trace a ‘3’ on the ice; hence ‘3-turn’.

I’m still working on it.

 

“For more information on ice skating courses at Alexandra Palace Ice rink”:

Visit, http://www.alexandrapalace.com/ice-rink/ice-skating-courses/week-term-time-courses/ or dial tel: 020 8365 4386

 

“Your skating experiences”

Any other skating terms we should know about?

Feel free to share them in the comments box below.