USOPC Presentation #1
Under 10 Years Old By Terri Milner Tarquini
E
ach level of skating requires different skill sets, on a variety of levels, from a coach. At the 2019 PSA Conference in Palm Springs, coaches were led through the concepts of grassroots skating, off-ice strength and conditioning, mental training and the success structure during a skater’s formative years on the ice, titled USOPC Presentation #1 – Under 10 Years of Age, available now on PSA TV. One of the segments in the hour-long presentation that revolved around the idea of “Discover, Learn and Play,” was led by Brandon Siakel, USOPC Strength and Conditioning, who urged audience members to close their eyes and take a trip back in time. “In the early years of your childhood, what did play look like?” Siakel said. “What were some of the games you played? What were some of the games you created? Take yourself back there.” Coaches offered a variety of classic kid merriment: hopscotch, tag, red rover, freeze tag. “For these skaters developing right now, when it comes to off-ice,” Siakel said, “it has to be kids being kids and having fun.” This first stage in a skater’s journey typically encompasses the first four years they are on the ice, from Learn to Skate to an Axel, and Siakel has two main areas of development, the first being body awareness, balance and rhythm, and the second being fundamental movement skills. Body awareness: “Learning what their joints can do by moving different body parts all around. Even hula hooping can be great for this development.”
them be free and letting them figure out their bodies.” Fundamental Movement Skills: “Shuffling, skipping, running, moving forward and backward, tumbling, cartwheels, somersaults, rolling – you can incorporate all of these things into relays. Or you can give them a few of these fundamentals and tell them to go make up a game out of it. Tell them to use their imagination. And all these skills can be incorporated in freezer tag, red rover, and the other games you played when you were young.” What Siakel emphasized is, when skaters get off the ice, coaches don’t want the idea of going to off-ice to be some type of drudgery. “It’s all about unstructured play,” Siakel said. “That means incorporating these concepts for them to learn so, when they get to the next stages, we aren’t having to teach these components; we want them to have these skills developed. When they do it through play, they want to come back and keep doing it.” The rest of the information-packed presentation focusing on the beginning stages of a skater’s development, included Audrey Weisiger, two-time Olympic coach, discussing the grassroots concepts for skaters and parents; Nadine Dubina, USOPC Coach Development and Mental Skills, presenting beginning mental training ideas; and Scott Riewald, USOPC Senior Director of High Performance Projects, explaining what success looks like in the early stages and how to communicate that with the skater and the parent. To learn more about the concepts of skating, the body, the mind and successful progression during a skater’s formative years on the ice, go to the PSA TV tab at www.skatepsa.com and watch the event in its entirety.
Balance: “It can be simple line walking. Have them do it while looking down, looking up, with one eye closed. Can they balance on one leg? With their arms out, arms in, eyes closed?” Rhythm: “As part of every warm-up, we just dance. Specifically for this learn-and-play group, to make it fun and to enhance these types of skills, there are many ways to skin a cat, and dancing can be a very, very fun way of letting
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NOVEMBER/ DECEMBER 2020
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