Trying out ice skating

[chalcedony_starlings]

^β(The bulk of this is cross-posted from our personal journal, but a few minor details are access-locked.)

Today, at the urging of a good friend, we wound up trying ice skating for the first time! “first” meaning that the zeroth/first of us had taken some basic classes about… fifteen years ago? We weren't sure whether there was any motor memory of it left. This is also part of more general Adventurousness Training, of which “retraining the visceral, body-facing side wrt things like risk tolerance” is a major part.

Illum was fronting most of the time today; at some point I want to try it more thoroughly myself, but I still caught a lot of it.

Results so far:

• No reliable memory of how to brake properly.
• Error recovery is still pretty wonky in general.
• How to balance on the ice seems mostly workable.
• These reflexes work for falling, sort of.
• It's an interesting sort of exercise… I assume this involves core muscles quite a bit?
• These foot arches complain a lot, and it's not clear what to do about this.
• They don't have half-sizes of skates, but a 13 “wide” worked better than a raw 13.
• No reliable memory of how to properly lace the things either, 403 had to show us. c..c
• Definitely noticing a lot of flickery signaling waking up on the other side of the system↔body rubble while trying out motion in that environment.

I'm a little stymied by the foot arch issue, since that seems the most significant. These feet have gotten pretty wonky over the years in general, and I feel like there might both be some arch issues and some circulation problems. Same for the sizing… I don't know if any of this is common enough that any of y'all might be able to give quick answers to it.

Thinking of going back for some basic classes, resources permitting. Would appreciate sharing of other experiences, or feedback on ways to get more out of this kind of practice. :-)

(ETA: oh, for those of you who might not be aware, since I'm not sure we've posted here before: we're the in-same-body successors of the one behind this comment thread, and the “get the somatic link working properly” matter has surfaced in its own way in our era, having undergone interesting twists and turns. Just in case the context is useful.)

Comments

[fred_mouse]

I took up figure skating six years ago in my late 30s, when my kids started doing lessons. Some observations, based on the fact that I was fairly out of shape when I started, and had long term issues with my right ankle, hip, and lower back

- core muscles -- the more you skate, the more you will use them. Straight lines not so much, but anything that involves turns or crossing the body (eg. crossovers to Australians, crosscuts to Canadians, no idea what anyone else calls them). Fifteen minutes of half-arsed practice at turns when you are starting them can lead to quite deep pain. Butt muscles can also get quite sore, if you are bending and straightening as you push.

- foot arch pain -- are you trying to hold on to the skates with your toes? There will probably be some habits of the way you walk that you will be transferring across that don't work in skates. Also, check that you haven't done the skates up too tight around the ankles and higher. My natural habit is to tie the skates too tight, do a couple of loops of the rink, and then have to loosen them when my feet start screaming in sharp sharp pain.

- other foot pain -- I found that doing calf raises (both feet, knees and feet together, so everything goes up straight) has helped. also, practice standing still on one foot. I think this is because I've become more aware of where my feet are. But just the skating has strengthened my problem ankle in ways that everything else I tried in nearly 20 years didn't.

skate type -- as was said above, brands are really different. I used to use men's hire skates (typically more hockey than figure), and when I bought my first pair just went with the cheapest model of the common brand in the store. They were fine, but when one of my kids outgrew my size, and I got a higher model of the same brand, they were much less painful. And then I tried a different brand on when they were on sale, and I discovered how much of my pain while skating was skates, and not the fact that I've lingering pain from dislocating various joints in my feet!