6 minute read
Drawing the Line, Pointing the Toe, and Keeping Your Balance
Drawing the Line, Pointing the Toe, and Keeping Your Balance
WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTIE ALLAN-PIPER, RM,CFS,RG
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“You’re riding around the circle with your hip out! When the hip is IN, there should be a hollow in your hip for your fist,” Maribel Vinson Owen exclaimed in my first lesson with her, as I wobbled around a first test figure eight. She pounded her fist into her hip to demonstrate as she skated deep edges in the ice.
Maribel, Olympic bronze medalist, nine-time national ladies champion, five-time national pairs champion, had learned skating from Willie Frick, the Boy Wonder of Berlin. She and he were my first teachers. In rinks all over Massachusetts, even on the coldest night on outdoor ice, Maribel, ever moving on fast, deep, ripping edges, with her lambskin jacket flying open, wore a skating skirt to demonstrate line. Back at The Skating Club of Boston, Mr. Frick, in a banker’s suit and tie, slowly led on figure eights, his students following, struggling to match his straight back, neat feet, and extended free leg.
They both taught line, straight back, deep skating knee, straight free leg, and neat feet. Extending the free leg and pressing the toe down the moment it left the ice was as obligatory to them as good manners. Slouching shoulders, slack free leg, or sloppy feet were, we learned, like bad manners—needless and inexcusable.
Sometimes on Christmas Eve, Maribel took her daughters and some of her students to walk about Beacon Hill, enjoying Christmas festivities. We would return to the Vinson family home, the large old farmhouse in Winchester, for tea and cookies.
We gathered in the dining room, where sterling silver trophies filled the shelves, the buffet, and even the floor. Leaning across the dining table to light the candelabra, she balanced on one foot, outstretched arm in front, extended free leg behind.
“Of course!” Maribel replied, surprised at Lynn’s surprise. “That’s how you keep your balance.”
Clearly the extended free leg added beauty. But only long after passing the gold test did I fully appreciate Maribel’s remark. Beyond beauty, the extended, well-placed free leg is ballast. Though she preferred to call it the “unemployed foot”, it’s always working. As Maribel said, it helps you keep your balance.
The extended free leg, with the blade parallel to the ice over the line of travel, guides us around circles and turns. It leads the way in front, or steers from behind, the prow or the rudder.
Practicing figures was as rigorous as ballet barre practice. While mirrors are dancers’ feedback, ice marks were oursour line detectors. While the free leg presses the air and steers, all the other muscles in the body stretch or contract in counterbalance.
Pencil Doll: head, shoulders, hips, and foot along the axis
Figures helped train the body to achieve stillness and control. Free skating is the beneficiary. A great skater moves only what he needs to move, to do what he needs to do. At high speeds, he may be motionless above the speeding skate.
Removing figures was a loss for skating, but ways remain to strengthen skills. Drawing on paper may substitute for drawing on ice, not only the figures, but the figure itself. Kori Ade, at a PSA seminar, remarked “every skater should be able to draw at least a stick figure.”
Drawing helps skaters move knowingly, rather than with mere muscle memory. Imagine a long axis running from the sky, through the body, from head to foot, to the center of the earth, head, shoulders, hips, foot, like building blocks,stacked along the line. For the figure skater, all parts align along the axis. Any part misplaced weakens the skater. Aligned, he is balanced.
To draw the skater, one looks for the plumb line. Head, shoulders, hips, feet usually align along it. Any part out of position may make a turn skid, a spin travel, or a jump fail. Illustration 1 shows both balanced and out of balance figures.
Illustration 1
Figures in and out of alignment
The oft repeated imperative “push your shoulders against the hips” prompted me to construct a pencil doll to demonstrate, making small paper boxes for the head, shoulders, hips, and feet, then punching holes through their centers, to slide onto an unsharpened pencil, as photo and drawings indicate. The arms attached to the shoulders, legs to the hips. Head, shoulders, and hips swivel. Ankle and knee bend and straighten. Cross body tension between hips and shoulders in alignment, generates motion, controls edges, executes turns, centers spins, and lands jumps cleanly.
Illustration 2
Tenley's Back Paragraph Loop
Tenley's Back Paragraph Loop
Tenley's Back Paragraph Loop
Illustration 2: Archimedes said “Give me a fulcrum and I can move the world”. To move, one needs something to push against. Often, the fulcrum is less slippery ice beneath the skate, than the shoulder or hip, one moving, the other holding, taking turns, in relay. At the end of a turn, on ice or air, shoulders pushing against hips, halts, or checks rotation. The iconic photograph of Tenley’s silhouette on a back outside loop, demonstrates how the arms and “unemployed” leg actively engage to balance, shape, and trace the figure. Had the free leg been limp, there would have been no counterbalance—no balance, no strong torso, no lean, no loop. Unable to obtain the Getty owned photograph of Tenley, I have taken the liberty of sketching the line, as I often observed, from my own patch nearby.
Bending along the axis, equal weights balanced
One can see the long extended free leg, pressed down, allowing shoulders to lean back, in the opposite direction, “pushing shoulders against hips”. The strong diagonal line from the left shoulder to left toe, pressed down, left hip pushing toward the right shoulder, are all in counter balance.
Maribel Vinson Owen
PHOTO COURTESY SKATING CLUB OF BOSTON
Maribel Vinson Owen
Back paragraph loops were the final figure of the ultimate USFSA Gold test. Of all compulsory figures, that figure demands the most rapid swiveling neck and waist, while knees and ankles rise and bend repeatedly in the tight confines of a circle, no larger than the skater’s height.
Maribel Vinson Owen
PHOTO COURTESY SKATING CLUB OF BOSTON
Maribel Vinson Owen
Spirals, camels, laybacks, sit spins, spread eagles, and Bauers would seem exceptions to the rule. For these, the back bends. Yet even then, shoulders still push against hips, along the axis. Arms and free leg also act as counterbalance. Whether one learns from drawing figures on the ice, or from drawing figures, understanding body mechanics leads to safer, more beautiful skating.
Willi Frick's candle dance
U.S. FIGURE SKATING WORLD MUSEUM & HALL OF FAME
Willie Frick's candle dance
Skating is a system of checks and balances around a moving long axis. Leaning, against the air, feeling the ice beneath the skate, shifting, soaring, one feels like a conduit between heaven and earth. Willie Frick, Maribel Vinson Owen, and all legendary skaters would agree, skating is done with the minimum motion, straight back, weight over the skate, cross body tension—and a well extended free leg.
That’s how you keep your balance!
