So after watching lots of videos from Worlds 2017, I feel a little maxed-out on skating commentary. So apart from the very brief lesson notes (double threes, navel towards the circle, open mohawks, more speed), I will just write about the very useful article that I found about improving my “ankle rocker” range of motion. Track coach Chris Korfist makes a really compelling case for why ankle function is crucial to speed for runners.

Mr. Korfist talks about how many athletes work on developing hip extension and strengthening glute muscles, but don’t think much about the way the ankle works. He describes what happens when the  “ankle rocker” (the way the ankle moves when one is in the middle of a step forward) is inhibited or locked. The body cheats by swinging the free leg around at the hip in order to compensate for this lack of motion, or the knee buckles inward, or the arch collapses.

It is this motion of the ankle that allows for efficient weight transfer and proper alignment. An athlete can be strong in other ways, but “it is proper ankle rocker that dictates an athlete’s ability. ” As I read this detailed account, I realized that my “ankle rocker,” particularly on my right side (the ghost of broken fibula and torn ligaments past) is really inhibited, and the inability of both my ankles to rock properly affects a lot of the movements I do both on and off the ice.

The article doesn’t specifically talk about skating, but I can think of many ways in which the same principles apply. Just think about the rocker of the blade as following the proper motion of the ankle!

Mr. Korfist gives a number of useful suggestions about how to make progression on developing the “ankle rocker.” He includes a video from Dr. Shawn Allen of “the Gait Guys” that has a couple of really good exercises that I’ve been doing for the past couple of days. Call me optimistic, but I think I can already feel a difference in the way in which my ankles and feet are moving. As Mr. Korfist says, this isn’t a magic bullet–but for me it’s hopefully (hahaha!) a step in the right direction.

Here’s our post-skating (post-mortem?) session!

Jo, Marc, JoAnne, Sonia

The New York Times came out with another article in support of adult skating: well, actually in support of country dancing for older people. The University of Illinois did a study comparing the effects of walking, gentle stretching/balance training, and dancing on a group of people in their 60s and 70s who, while all healthy, were fairly sedentary. After six months, the group that was participated in regular bouts of country-dance choreography (three times a week for hour-long sessions) was the only group to show improvement in the brain’s white matter. White matter is the “wiring” of the brain: specialized cells and their offshoots that pass messages from neuron to neuron and from part of the brain to another. This slows down as the brain ages (as I can attest to, unfortunately!)

This group of country-line dancers actually showed improvements in the density of the white matter in their fornixes (the part of the brain associated with processing speed and memory). While the other groups improved their general fitness, they did not show this increase. While six months of tests didn’t reveal changes in cognitive ability for any of the groups, the conclusions looked promising for the benefits of dance.

But what about skating? Well, between all those challenging sequences of moves and the fact that I am trying to move in ways that feel entirely new to me, I would expect that my brain is getting rewired every time I step out onto the ice. Even if I never pass another skating test, my white brain matter will just get denser and denser. And that’s a good thing. Now where did I leave my keys?

So after yet another lesson that proved I wasn’t really on a left forward outside edge when I thought I was, I have come to the conclusion that I need to set my new foot down waaaay outside the circle that I think I am making. It feels like I have to exaggerate and cross my left thigh in front of the right. When I do this (both on and off the ice), I can definitely feel a stretch in the muscles of my hip joint: those same familiar muscles that have been tight for years now.

So now I have another way of assessing my body mechanics: if I don’t feel that stretch, I’m definitely not far enough over. Practicing this the last couple of days has made me aware of (a) how much better this is than how I used to skate, and (b) how much strength and mobility I still need to develop in that left hip. My left glutes are pretty sore!

Laurie gave me another exercise that I am using to put some mobility back in my ankles as well as check my alignment. I strike out on an edge, bring my feet together (am trying to practice good foot positions with toes actually touching), do a little extra rise and bend with my ankle and knee, and then do that “bob” again just before pushing into the next edge. We started doing this on progressives, and I have been trying it with other sequences as well.

This reminds me of an exercise I got a long time ago when I was taking lessons with Bert Wright in LA. He would have me do an edge and then bob up and down on it to get the correct alignment. Laurie has added the push, which means that I have to use the motion to deepen the edge into the push. This has made me really aware of my ankle motion, which I will write about in another post.

Boy, my brain’s white matter must be getting denser, because I’m remembering all too well how much work skating is. And how tired those muscles can feel at the end of the day. Time to get out the foam roller!

Did you know that one-quarter of all the bones in my body are in my feet? And that my each of my feet contains more than 25 bones, 30 joints, and 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments?

I had no idea I was so complicated!

While the multitudinous anatomical aspects of my feet and ankles are awe-inspiring, some are also presenting major obstacles in my road to skating glory. On my left side, I continue to have some foot pain at the ball of the foot and tightness around the ankle. On the right side I have limited range of motion: when I try to point my toe, I have to work really hard and there are some strange clicking and popping noises that make my ankle feel like a ratchet socket wrench.

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly where these things happen (first metatarsophalangeal joint? around the navicular bone?) and why, but as I said, my feet are complicated. Looking at all those different diagrams of foot and ankle anatomy can be quite daunting. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I just need some basic principles to follow. Rather than trying to put Dumpty back together again (or identifying pieces of Dumpty), I’ll just imagine the egg-shape and go from there.

One goal is to retrain my walking and skating patterns so that I am more balanced evenly over my feet. On my left side, I tend to walk on the outside of my foot (avoiding that sore ball of the foot, no doubt). Similarly, I have to work on making sure I am using my entire foot actively while skating. It takes some remembering to engage the skating ankle and foot to get the best glide, and to prepare myself so that I don’t just flop (or pound) onto the new foot when I transfer my weight. I have been working on this in my turns as well (trying to initiate the turn with foot and ankle pressure, rather than with the rest of my body).

Another is to continue with my off-ice regime of exercises, like my steady diet of calf raises, toe pointing and swiping (I found a really good video of these by Maryann Berry), and short feet. I need to be more mindful of my ankle and foot alignment and movement when I do other exercises, like my single leg deadlift.

With both goals, I need to be patient. Like my hip issues, progress on my complicated feet is going to take a while. The good thing is that learning to use my feet and ankles properly is going to make a world of difference in my skating. It’s like discovering a whole new set of tools (25+ bones, 30+ joints, and 100+ muscles, tendons, and ligaments) that I can use in addition to my ratchet socket wrench ankle!

Lesson notes:

• cross rolls. Again, do these slowly: stop with feet parallel, turn free toe in, then push and cross.
• your push creates the extension. Count those pushes in the Paso!
• back progressives. Back inside push is better but think of sending weight back to outside edge and continuing to load the new foot rather than rising. Free leg extends assertively to counter balance force backwards. Work on toe point and getting free foot parallel to ice on right foot; it’s okay to bend knee slightly to compensate. Arms really hugging circle (forward arm in front).

Okay, fun picture time. Here’s Janey on her first day back on the ice in a while. It’s so awesome to see her!

Long day at work, so I’m just chilling out by reading different websites that talk about ankle impingement. Fun, fun, fun.

Well, not fun, but at least it takes my mind off work. And puts it back where it belongs–on my current skating obsession about bending my ankles more. I have written several posts about this, but I’m hoping that one more post might just exorcise those demons (a.k.a. stiff ankles).

I have been trying to face up to another one of those bitter skating truths in the last few weeks. I noticed how much ankle flexion really good skaters had. I noticed that when I bend my ankles too, some kind of magic happened and I have a lot more stability over my skates. And I noticed that when I don’t bend them enough, the magic goes away and I am wobbly and my pushes are ineffective. Alas, woe is me!

Okay, it’s not particularly tragic even as skating problems go. It’s just one of those things that I have tended to forget about, but that has become increasingly obvious as other aspects of my skating get stronger.

My right ankle in particular has trouble both flexing (dorsiflexion) and pointing (plantarflexion). This is probably the result of a bad injury I had a long time ago; ligament damage and scar tissue now make this ankle much less mobile and much weaker. So even though my left side is weaker overall, my right ankle is definitely inhibited.

I’ve been doing lots of calf raises and foot exercises and ankle-stretching for weeks or even months now. I can tell there is is some progress, but it is slow (I was going to make some kind of joke about its being slow, like my skating, but I am trying to be kind to myself in the face of this cruel world). And like any therapy, there are times when the exercises are uncomfortable.

I told PT Sarah that my ankle was feeling wobbly and a little sore. I told her that I was afraid that if I got rid of all that scar tissue (or at least made it more mobile), that I wouldn’t have anything left keeping the ankle stable. She told me in her characteristically upbeat but no nonsense way that if I only had scar tissue there, the ankle would be totally immobile and stiff, and that ankles are supposed to move side-to-side (within reason).

In other words, snap (or bend) out of it!

Lesson notes:

• cross rolls. Use skating side rather than free side. Practice “stop action” in which you stop the free leg just when your feet are parallel, then push under as if you were doing a crossover.
• alternating swing rolls. Work on body placement, retrogressing the changes of edge into the push, and on bending the ankle.
• outside loops. Push off, upper body twist with tight forward outside edges, and forcing edge to curve), strike off, twist more, ride edge.
• inside loops. Good push off, then trace with free foot.
• fully stretched free leg countering the twist of the torso and skating leg. This is easier to see than to write about.
• back crossover, turn free foot in, change edge, bring free foot in, back outside three (free foot in front afterwards), forward inside three (foot comes back). Watch your head position.
• tight outside swing rolls emphasizing the deepening edge into the change of edge (push into ice to rise and resist), inside mohawk, edge pull.
• three step closed mohawk pattern. Where is your body weight? Draw foot in rather than step to it. Work on weight placement and lean, and place your shoulders–not your hips–correctly over the tracing.
• inside threes (keeping skating arm over foot on three and afterwards). step forward cross.

Enough with the hips already!

I am happy to say that my hip alignment is good enough these days to deserve much less attention. My side planks are things of beauty, even on my left side. And while I sometimes feel less confident or tighter on my left side, it’s nothing a good Ashiatsu massage can’t beat out of me. I know that now.

So does that mean I can just smile deeply and roll up my yoga mat (or use it for yoga?) Nah! It’s just time to turn my attention to some other joints and learn about their cool anatomical features and exactly what I can be doing to improve my quality of movement overall.

Take my ankles, for instance. I have been thinking and writing here quite a bit about the hip and some about my feet, but only in a really vague way about ankles. Why is that?

Maybe it’s because up until fairly recently I’ve taken my ankles for granted. The legs and hips take up more space and the feet, while relatively small, are pretty vocal when something’s wrong (lots of nerves in those size-6 babies!). I’ve sprained or rolled my ankles lots of times, but largely treated these incidents as minor setbacks. And when you stick your ankle into a skating boot, you don’t think about it too much. Who knows what’s inside that armor?

Now that I’m starting to figure out how ankle bend actually works in skating, I am sorry that I neglected these two incredibly important joints ‘o mine. As it turns out, I have quite a bit to gain from developing more strength and mobility in the ankles.

Let me say that this is not the fault of my coaches. Ari could say “Think of bending your ankles rather than just your knees” and “You should feel your shins press into those laces” until the cows came home. But there I was, the stiff-legged one.

The problem is that I have had limited ankle mobility, probably due to a history of those injuries. I didn’t really realize this until I started trying to do more squats off-ice. I found that I was having trouble getting down, not because of my leg strength but because of my stiff ankles, like in this picture (from this useful posting at the “Invictus Blog” (love that name) about ankle mobility):

But they were stiff not only because of scar tissue and inactivity, but also because trying to squat in this position was really really hard–which led me towards trying to lock my ankles even further in an attempt to get stability. So working on correcting this movement is definitely a good goal and not a lost cause.

This is how the ankles should bend. Nice and soft. And I can do it!

My lack of attention to ankle stiffness has haunted my skating as well. No wonder I’ve always had trouble with lunges, and gave up a long time ago on shoot-the-ducks. Even without aspiring to those special moves, ankle mobility is really important to basic skating. Look at the amount of ankle flexion on these edges, as illustrated in Swedish figure skating master Bror Meyer’s 1921 instructional manual, Skating with Bror Meyer.

A quick anatomical note: as the ankle flexes (dorsiflexion), the talus bone rolls forward and slides backward. The Achilles tendon engages and the calf muscles tighten to stabilize the joint. The tibia (leg bone) slides forward.

I wrote on an earlier post that I needed to add an additional knee bend (Swoop!) on many of my edges. Another way of thinking about this is that I needed to add ankle bend, which has the incredible benefit of stabilizing the ankle as well as deepening the edge. It also helps with posture, since the movement of the leg bones forward also allows the hips to move forward. Ha, another mystery solved!

So here I go on my skating ankle adventures. Those cows are coming home!