Balance on one leg
Standing on one leg with the ankle correcting all the time, as every edge asks.
Not checked yet. The suggestions 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.
Almost everything after the first lessons happens on one foot, on a blade a few millimetres wide touching the ice along a centimetre or two of its curve. The ankle makes small corrections all the time, and an ankle that has never had to do it on the floor does it late on the ice.
Skaters work on this standing on one leg with the knee soft, then with the eyes closed, then on something that moves under them. The free leg goes where the element puts it: held behind for a glide, lifted for a spiral.
Ask a coach which way the free side should face for the edge you are working on, and practise that, because balancing square to nothing in particular is a different balance.
On the ice, this prepares
- One-foot glideThe same glide with the other foot lifted, which is where balance stops being shared.
- Backward one-foot glideBackwards on one blade in a straight line, the free foot carried at the skating knee.
- Left forward outside edgeLFO: the left foot travelling forwards on an outside edge, tracing an anticlockwise lobe.
- Right backward outside edgeRBO: the right foot travelling backwards on an outside edge, tracing an anticlockwise lobe.
- SpiralA held glide with the free leg extended at or above hip height.
- Extended edgeA plain edge held for a third of a circle, long enough to be a position in its own right.
Written for the guide from what each element asks of the body. No governing body's material.