Field Guide to Figure Skating

Made to be read at the rink.

What each element actually is, drawn from three views and on both feet, with the Learn to Skate USA and U.S. Figure Skating levels it belongs to. Free to read, no account, and it keeps working when the signal does not.

Not checked by a coach yet. Every page here is written from public material and derived from first principles, and none of it has been checked yet. Coaches, judges and technical officials can help verify it: a page only loses this notice once real people have signed off the passage on it.

Every edge there is

Three letters: foot, direction, edge. LFO is a left foot travelling forwards on an outside edge; RBI is a right foot going backwards on an inside one. There are 8 of them, the dot marks where the blade goes down, and almost everything else in skating is one of these followed by another.

LFOLeft forward outside RFORight forward outside LFILeft forward inside RFIRight forward inside LBOLeft backward outside RBORight backward outside LBILeft backward inside RBIRight backward inside

Four shapes, twice over. Every cell above is the mirror of the one beside it, so a skater who rotates the other way gets the same detail as everyone else.

And what a turn does to one

It runs on its own. The foot and the circle stay the same: the skater rotates half a turn towards its centre and comes out backwards on the other edge of the same blade. Pause it, scrub it, slow it to an eighth, or mirror it and watch the same element come out the other way round.

mirror

outside edge: the paler lineinside edge: the darker line

LFO → LBI. A skater who rotates the other way traces RFO: the same element, generated from this one.

That is a left forward outside three turn, and there are 47 more turns where it came from, plus 34 basics, 32 twizzles, 42 transitions, 116 clusters, 14 jumps, 52 jump combinations, 11 spins and 5 positions. Across all of them, 97 draw the skater's body in three views as well as the tracing.

Start here

Elements34 basics, 8 edges, 48 turns, 32 twizzles, 42 transitions, 116 clusters, 14 jumps, 52 jump combinations, 11 spins, 5 positions, 6 steps and sequences and 30 pattern dances with the 6 holds they use
Testswhich syllabus each element belongs to, 8 recorded so far
Your first sessiongetting on and off the ice, which way to skate, and never standing on metal
Glossarythe words skaters and coaches use, each in a sentence or two
Kitthe blade, the boot and looking after them
Off the icewhat the body needs for the elements, and which elements need it
GradesAmerican levels first, then every other country's
Body frameone rig, three views, one clock: what the rest of the body is doing
Searchtype an edge code, a name, or the name your coach uses for it

If you have never read a page here before, start with the left forward outside edge. Everything else in the guide is that page with one or two things changed.

American grades

Learn to Skate USA: Basic 1 to 6The six Basic Skills levels, from the first glide to the first three turns and spins.
U.S. Figure Skating: skating skillsEight levels of skating-skills patterns, Pre-Preliminary to Gold, each linked to the elements it is built from.
U.S. Figure Skating: free skatingThe minimum content of each singles test, Pre-Preliminary to Gold, linked to the jumps and spins.

This is the copy of the guide for the USA: elements carry American names where a programme here uses its own, and each one says where it sits in these grades. The copy for every country is still there.

What this is

A personal project, built in the evenings, for skaters and parents who have been handed a syllabus and told to go and learn a bracket. It is not affiliated with British Ice Skating or with any club, it reproduces no governing body's material, and it will not ever charge for access. More about it here.

404 elements recorded across 8 tests.