Edge warm-up

Also called Two-foot pulls

Slow swizzles, two-foot slaloms and two-foot pulls on a switching circle, the first minutes of many sessions.

Not checked yet. The drill details on this page are a first draft by a non-expert, and no coach has seen them yet. Read them as a starting point and check them with a coach. Corrections are very welcome.

The run Swizzles · two-foot slalom · two-foot pulls, one foot on an outside edge and one on an inside

Not drawn in the body frame yet: each part is drawn on its own page; the warm-up has no fixed order to draw.

Slow, full swizzles, then two-foot slaloms, then pulls on both feet round a circle that switches direction, one foot on an outside edge and the other on an inside. Each piece is a basic, but done slowly and fully they wake up the ankles and the knees.

The two-foot pulls are the useful surprise. With both feet on the ice the skater can feel the edges change together, and switching the circle asks for the change to come from the body moving over the blades rather than from the feet.

It is a warm-up, so it should be gentle enough to do without thinking and long enough to get warm.

This drill trains

• SwizzleBoth blades on the ice throughout, drawing two mirrored curves that open and close.
• SlalomBoth blades held parallel and swung side to side, drawing a wave down the ice.
• Two-foot change of edgeBoth blades rolled from one set of edges to the other, in one movement, without a step.

Found in 3 independent sources: coaches' public teaching and published skating-skills tests, taken as base guidance and written for the guide.