These exercises are designed for any skating artist, to develop body awareness and control needed for successful skating.
Introduction
Spine Rolls
Breathing
Pelvic Tilt
Second Position
First Position
Spine Twists
Ability to twist and control the spine separates amateur (“lost in space”) from professional (“strong and direct”) skating. Skating a forward figure 8 requires a 90-degree twist between the hips and head (eyes); whereas a backwards figure 8 requires a 180-degree twist, allowing us to see where we are going while skating backwards! This exercise allows us to isolate and practice the critically important movement of twisting our hips and shoulders against each other.
Stretches
Promenades
A promenade in ballet is slow, steady rotation on one foot. We use this to simulate skating around a circle, in which we rotate 360 degrees each time we go around the circle — in other words, we stand on a blade and the world rotates around us. Depending on what we are doing, we need to move the shoulders and hips in the same direction or opposite direction from each other, both are included in this exercise. Also, we need to execute the hip/shoulder movement at varying speeds — from slowly, as when skating around a full circle, to quickly as when executing a 3-turn or loop reverse check.