BEST BEGINNER FRIENDLY STRETCHES FOR FIGURE SKATERS (journeybacktotheice)

Hello and welcome back to my channel. This is a very long awaited and one of my most requested videos. So today is all about basic stretches that any figure skater can do. And this is specifically ones that are, I think, great for beginners as well as intermediate level skaters. We are going to start with all of our stretches off ice. So make sure that you find a spot that you have a lot of room where you can comfortably do some of these stretches. The first stretch we're going to start with is just stretching our arms above our head like I'm doing in the video clip here. And you can hold this for about 10 to 15 seconds, however long you feel like you need to. Once we've done that, we're now going to stretch our arms straight out behind our back. I usually hold this for about 10 to 15 seconds. Now we're going to move on to putting one arm behind our shoulder blade. Your other arm can either be out to the side or you can put it behind your back. Don't forget to switch off and do both sides. Now we're going to reach down and touch our toes. If you are not completely able to touch your toes, don't try and push yourself too far. Just bend down as far as you can. You definitely don't want to stretch yourself past your limits, so make any adjustments that you may need. Again, I would like to suggest holding this for 10 to 15 seconds. You can hold it less or a little bit more. Now we're going to do that exact same stretch, except this time you're going to take one leg and cross it in front of the other. From here, we're going to turn our upper body to the side and put one arm behind our back, keeping one arm down by your foot. Same thing with this stretch. Make sure that you do both sides. For our next set of stretches, you're going to want to move over to a place where you can lift your foot up to at least hip level or higher. For this, you want to make sure that you're just holding each side up on the boards for at least 15 to 25 seconds. You can adjust where you put your arms and which direction you lean. It's completely up to you for this one. And like I had just mentioned, we're going to do both sides. So once you're done with one, make sure that you put the other one up and do the exact same thing for the exact same amount of time on the other side. After I'm done with that, I like to do a nice hamstring stretch with both legs. Now we're going to move on to some walking kicks. Again, this is something that might be a little bit more advanced for beginner skaters, so you can either choose to do this one and just not pick your leg up as high, or you can choose to skip this one, whatever works best for you. That concludes all of my off-ice stretches. So now it's time to get your skates on and head onto the ice for some of my on-ice ones. We are going to start at the boards for the on-ice stretches. Just like we did off-ice with putting our leg up onto something that is hip level or higher, we are going to do the exact same stretches on the boards here. We are going to start with one leg up on the boards, and we're just going to have our upper body facing forward. Once you have completed that, slowly rotate your upper body to face the leg up on the boards so you can get a deeper stretch within your hip. If this is something that causes you pain or you can't quite do at the moment, please make any modifications that you may need. Do not push your body past. Now, if you would like a bit more of an advanced stretch, you can either put your arms above your head to get a deeper stretch into that hip. You can reach for your toe, or you can twist your upper body a little bit behind your back. Once we've done all that, we are now going to lower our chest to the board so it's laying flat, and we're also going to move our foot to the side so instead of being on our heel, it is now laying flat on the side like I am doing so in this video. And of course, we are going to repeat this whole process on both sides, making sure that we get an even stretch with both legs. This is something that I recommend holding anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. If you can, whatever your body's limits are, please don't max them out. Just ease into a gentle stretch. And after a few weeks, if you do this continuously, you will start to notice that your body will let you go a little bit lower, a little bit deeper, and hold it a little bit longer. This next portion of the video might be something that is more of an intermediate level skater's stretch, but beginner skaters can start doing this as well. If you are a beginner, I highly recommend trying this off ice before you try this on ice at the boards because it takes a lot of core strength to hold our spiral stretching positions in place, which is what we are going to be doing next. So we are going to move into holding either a regular catch foot spiral, whatever style of catch foot you prefer. You could even do a Beelman style if you would like. Hold it in this position for a little bit. I like to do both legs. Now we are going to move on to our Y spiral or our I spiral stretch. Again, this is something to do on both legs and don't push yourself past your point of current flexibility. The very final stretch of today's video is one that's kind of fun, kind of silly, and I love to do it before all of my sit spins just to get my hips all warmed up. The next stretch is just really low dips around the rink. I like to do one to two laps just to get my hips fully warmed up. That is my stretching video for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Comment down below what other videos you'd like to see. Make sure you subscribe so you can stay up to date, and I will see you in the next video.