Moves in the field expert Karen Olson continues her discussion and demonstration of how she teaches the Sustained Edge Step pattern of the USFS Senior Moves test. In the first part of this discussion, she broke the move down into a series of exercises and drills to build the fundamental skills needed for the pattern. In this video, she shares more exercises and she talks about how she uses a special kind of lunge for the development of many skills.
Karen begins this discussion by explaining how she develops the back inside three turn in isolation. The exercise is simple in concept but many skaters will struggle with rotational control after the turn. Next Karen talks with the demonstrator about the free leg position after the turn.
This leads into a somewhat unrelated discussion by Karen of a Doug Webster video on iCoachSkating where Doug demonstrated a lunge. Karen uses the concept of Doug’s lunge to solve a variety of skating issues as she explains. This discussion was a little off-topic and was mainly Karen talking with Trevor Laak who was taking the video. This “aside” was so valuable, however, that even though the video wanders we kept the information edited in. As Karen explains, doing a lunge like this forces the skater to straighten and fully lock out the leg (for stability). She uses this trick for camel spins, cross-strokes, spirals, and anything requiring extension and a straight leg.
When the skater has mastered all of Karen’s exercises, she draws the pattern on the ice for the skater to use as a guide. She initially makes it quite a bit narrower than the rink, but as the skater gets better and stronger and more comfortable with the pattern, the pattern widens out to fill the whole rink as desired. She says, “I think if you try to do the pattern the way it is in the book right away bringing it as far across the ice as you can, you end up having them skate flats.”
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