Adult 6 Learn to Skate (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

The first item on Adult 6 is forward stroking with the crossover end patterns. I'm going to be honest, there were a few things on Adult 6 that made me scratch my head a little bit, mostly because I am only reading this off of the PDF guide that I link in my description box below given to us by US Figure Skating, where I taught Learn to Skate did not do the Adult 1 through 6 levels through US Figure Skating, so I don't have any other information other than forward stroking so this is just my best guesstimation of what I think this is and I do believe this is the stroking pattern from the pre-bronze moves test. It would absolutely make sense to put this on Adult 6 because theoretically US Figure Skating wants you to transform from Adult 6 to the Adult Testing Track. And if you are wondering what the Adult Testing Track is or have any questions about it, don't worry, I'm going to be making a video in January covering everything about it, so stay tuned for that. But anyways, let's just get into our forward stroking with the crossover end patterns. For this, you are going to start on that thin red line on either end of the rink by the hockey goal. You are going to want to make sure that you are lined up with that red dot in the middle of the circle right next to you. We're going to start in our T position, so making sure we're standing up nice and tall, our arms are out to the side, and our feet are in that T position ready for our T push. From there, we're going to go into two to four optional just forward stroking pushes, one crossover, and then you are going to do your forward stroking. I did go over forward stroking in the Adult 3 video, I will link it somewhere on screen here, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, I'm just going to go over this full pattern for the Adult 6 item. And some of the clips I am using for this item, along with the next one, are from the Moves in the Field app, which I highly recommend downloading, especially if you wish to continue testing in the Adult Track. So I will leave the app and the YouTube videos linked in the description box below. Anyways, back to our forward stroking. So for our forward stroking pattern, you are allowed six to eight forward stroking pushes in between your crossover end pattern. And I believe you are allowed up to four, maybe even six, crossovers for your end patterns. And since this is Adult 6, do not worry about how many you are allowed to do, this is something that you should start focusing more on when you are serious about the Adult Pre-Bronze Moves in the Field test. For Adult 6, the main thing you should be focusing on is being able to go from your forward stroking into your forward crossovers. We're basically at this point taking something we've already learned, and another thing we've already learned, and now putting them together. So once we finish our first crossover end pattern, we are now going to go back into our six to eight forward stroking pushes on the second side. And once we finish that, we're going to go straight into our last crossover end pattern, except after this end pattern, you are just going to skate forward on a one foot glide, or just one forward stroking push that keeps on going. And you will call this your forward presentation. Don't forget to end everything with a nice big snowplow stop. Now this is not mentioned anywhere on Adult 6, which is one of the reasons why it slightly makes me wonder if this is the correct item, but for Adult Pre-Bronze, you would then go the opposite direction. So you want to make sure that you can do this both clockwise and counterclockwise. You want to make sure that you go both directions. The second item on Adult 6 is backward stroking with crossover end patterns. I think this is the one that confused me the most because I have never heard of backward stroking with crossover end patterns, so I was starting to wonder if this was the crossover figure 8, but then there's no stroking in that, and then I was trying to think of every other move item from Adult Pre-Bronze, but then I started to think of the Adult Bronze one with the back extensions. Yes, I got very confused with this. So if you are currently in the Adult 136 Learn to Skate series or you teach this, please let me know if this is correct. This is just my best bet, but now as I'm editing this, I don't think I was correct. Anyways, if this is the thing I'm thinking of, this is from the Adult Bronze Moves in the Field test, which is mostly why I think this is not the correct item because you have to know a mohawk for this, and I don't believe we've ever touched on mohawks in this entire series. So here is a little modified version that I have kind of created for this. You are going to start exactly like the first item we talked about with the forward stroking pattern, except when you get to the end, you are now going to do a two-foot turn. When you do your two-foot turn, make sure you are turning to the left. This will be a lot easier. You are then going to do one or two, depending on how big your crossovers are, one or two counterclockwise crossovers. So you go around the circle. From your crossover, you're going to do this edge lean, which since this is Adult Six, I don't expect you to do it as well as the video. Just give it your best try because I'm honestly probably really wrong about this being on Adult Six. Anyways, from that edge lean, you are then going to go into one or two crossovers going the opposite direction. So this is now going to be clockwise. We're then going to do an edge lean leaning the other direction and continue our pattern of doing crossover, lean, crossover, lean. You want to think of that first circle that we saw at the beginning of our pattern and envision it all the way down the rink so you can follow it throughout the entire pattern. You want to make sure when you lean, you're always leaning into your circle. And when you're doing your crossovers, you are also leaning into your circle. Once you have made it to the other end of the rink, you are then going to do a few backward crossovers, finish with a nice back extension, and turn forward for your presentation. Now, because this is Adult Six, you don't have to do all of that. You can actually finish once you get to the end of the rink and not do the crossover end pattern. However, the crossover end pattern I do believe is mentioned. Next, we have our forward inside three turns, both left and right. I went over the forward outside three turns in the Adult Five video, so I'll leave that link somewhere here on screen. I'm also planning on coming out with an in-depth tutorial for forward inside and forward outside three turns in the future, so I won't go over these in too much detail for this video. I'm just going to cover the basics. So for our forward inside three turn, we are going to practice this on one of the hockey goals at either end of the rink. I like to practice all of my three turns here because this creates a great visualization for where you're going to turn at the top of your circle, and that is the most important part for your three turns. Now, if you are unable to use one of the hockey goals on either end of the rink, I strongly suggest going to find one of the circles on the ice and using half of the circle space and making sure your turn happens between those two dashes at the top of the circle. So you still have something to visualize while you are doing this. For this forward inside three turn, you are going to stand on either end of the hockey goal. You're going to start in a T position. For this T position, you want to make sure that the foot that is facing towards the outside of the circle is the one that will be tracing our half circle, and the one that is facing the inside is going to be starting behind so you can push onto that one foot tracing the circle. I know that sounds really confusing, but it will make a lot more sense when we do our forward inside three turn. Instead of picking up the foot that is the outside of the circle like we would in our forward outside three turn, we are now going to be picking up the foot that is facing the inside of our circle. From our T position, we are going to push onto the foot that is tracing our half circle. We are then going to pick up the foot that is facing the inside of the circle and do a one foot glide. At the top of our circle, we are going to turn towards the inside of our circle and we'll be doing a one foot glide out of it. The complete three turn should trace this entire half circle or hockey goal. Make sure to practice this going both directions, so starting from each side of the hockey goal. One super easy thing you can do to get comfortable with your forward inside three turns is actually something you can do with the wall. I didn't go over this when talking about our forward outside three turns, but you can do this with those as well. For this, we're going to head over to the wall and you are going to make a similar half circle, but a lot smaller than the hockey goal that we are working on. For this, you're just going to grab onto the wall and practice that forward inside three turn going both directions, just getting comfortable with the motion. As you get more comfortable with this, slowly start to take your hands off the boards and inch a little bit further away, so you start to do it by yourself. If you find that you are struggling to do the pivot part of our three turn without going up onto your topic, I'm just going to have you practice something I have all of my students do before we even start working on three turns. I like to call this exercise the dancing flamingo and this is just going to get you comfortable with that one foot pivot that you do in the forward inside and outside three turns. For this, we are going to put both hands on the boards and we are just going to stand on one foot and twist and turn in one spot, just getting comfortable and getting used to that feeling of turning on our rocker. I've talked about the rocker a lot throughout this adult one through six learn to skate series. This is basically the spot on our blade that allows us to spin and turn. Our rocker is the spot on our blade just below our toe pick where the ball of our foot is. So when we are doing our flamingo exercise, you want to make sure that you're paying close attention to where you're putting the pressure on your foot while you're doing this turn. You want to make sure that you're not just turning really nilly and having a Once you have felt where your rocker is, I highly suggest going back to that mini three turn at the boards that we did before this flamingo exercise so you can get comfortable with the smaller version of the three turn before we put it on our pattern, which is going to be the half circle or the hockey goal. Now that we covered all of that, let's go back to our half circle and work on this full three turn. When you lift up your foot for this forward inside three turn, you want to make sure that it stays nice and close to the heel of the other skate. A common mistake I see a lot of skaters make when they're first learning their three turns is wanting to wave this free leg around as a counterbalance, and this is actually going to make your three turn a lot more uncomfortable, so you want to make sure that you keep that foot nice and close to the other one. The other common mistake I see a lot of times is waving your arms around to try and help yourself through the three turn. You want to make sure when you do the three turn that your arms are hugging the inside of the circle, and that is why we are tracing everything on a half circle. The last thing to remember with this is when we reach the top of our circle, we want to make sure we bend our knees into the turn. A lot of beginners like to keep their leg nice and straight. This is just going to make your three turn feel absolutely impossible, so make sure that when you get to the top of your circle, you bend your knees and bend into the turn, something that I've talked about on a lot of other items in this Adult 1-6 Learn to Skate series. My last tip for the forward inside three turn is to do that same exercise we did with our forward outside three turns in the Adult 5 video. For this, you're going to go into your three turn just like you normally would, but when you get to the top of the circle, you're going to put both feet down and do a two foot turn, and then immediately pick your foot up and do a one foot glide out of it. Your goal is to keep practicing this until you don't need to do the two foot turn at the top of the circle, and you can just do the one foot turn, which is our three turn. If you have any questions about this exercise, make sure you go back and watch the Adult 5 video because I go over it in a lot more detail there. The next item in Adult 6 I was slightly confused about when I read it on the paper, but I think I got this one correct. This is forward outside to inside change of edge on a line right and left. I could still be completely wrong about this, but I interpreted this as the edges on a line from the adult pre-bronze moves in the field test. This one is actually super easy. We are just taking those forward inside and outside edges that we did on the circle in a previous video, and now we're doing them on a straight line. So you are going to want to find a line on the ice, and while I am using this thin one at either end of the ice rink, I actually suggest going to find one of the blue lines or the red line in the center. The blue lines are the ones you'll be using for your pre-bronze moves in the field test, so I highly suggest if this is the correct item, which I still don't think it is, I highly suggest practicing these edges on those. For this, you're going to start in your t-push position. We're going to start with our outside edges, so you're going to have the foot facing the outside of the circle being in the back of our t-push. Unfortunately for this, since we are on a line, you don't have a circle to trace, so you'll just have to make an imaginary half circle on either side of the line while you are doing this. Generally, you start all of your moves on your right foot, but since this is not a moves test, you can choose to start on either your right or your left. I will be starting on my right. I am going to push off from my t-position and do a forward right outside edge doing a mini half circle. I'm going to make my way back to that line that I started on, and here I will switch off and go on to my left foot. I am then going to do a forward outside edge on my left foot doing that half circle all the way back to the red line, continuing this pattern of forward right outside and forward left outside all the way down the line. I think this item is pretty self-explanatory, so I feel like I don't have to go into too much detail with this. There are just a few key things to remember when you are doing these edges on the line. You want to make sure that you're standing up nice and tall and that your arms are tracing the circle with you. Each time we finish our half circle and come back to the red line, you want to make sure that you splice your arms so that you can brace for the next direction. When I do my forward outside edges on the line, I like to start with my foot for the first half of the circle touching the ankle of the one that is on the ice. When I reach the top of my circle, I like to slowly bring it in front and point it towards the direction of the red line. Now, if you're someone that would rather keep your foot touching the other one the entire time while you are making this half circle, then feel free to do that. Now, our forward inside edges on the line are basically the exact same as our forward outside, except this time, instead of picking up the foot that is on the outside of our half circle, we are picking up the foot that is facing the inside of our half circle. So when you're doing your t-push for this, you just want to make sure that the foot you are pushing off of is the one you'll be lifting up on the inside of the circle. And like I had previously mentioned, everything for our inside edges on the line are exactly the same as the outside, the only difference is that we're picking up the foot on the inside of the circle. I personally think the forward inside edges on the line are a lot easier than the outside because there is a natural curve to inside edges compared to our outside edges, but obviously this opinion differs from skater to skater. Even if this actually isn't on adult six, I highly recommend practicing this every time you go skating. Just for like five minutes, find a line and practice these edges because again, like I said, if you are planning on testing in the adult track, this is going to be on your first moves in the field test, which is actually your first test you'll take because it goes moves in the field and then freestyle for every level. Alright, so the next item in adult six is a t-stop, both right and left. And technically it does say right or left, but I highly recommend at least trying both directions to figure out which one feels more comfortable. I would always make a deal with my students that I would practice my bad direction with them because even though I can do it really well in one direction, I always want to try and improve the other direction and I think that's something you should always strive to do in skating. Now by this point, you've probably heard me talk about a t-position or a t-push a lot throughout this entire series. This can refer to us making a t-shape with our body, our feet, or both. So for our t-stop, we're going to have one foot facing forward and one foot behind that is facing out to the side and this is going to make a t-shape like I am showing here in this video. Instead of using both of our feet to stop like in our snowplow stop, we are now just going to use the back foot. For our t-stop, we're essentially applying pressure to that back foot which will cause us to stop. So the first thing we're going to do is push off in that t-position onto a one-foot glide and then when we come to a stop, we're going to make sure that that foot that is behind us facing out to the side slowly comes down and creates a force that will allow us to stop. When you're stopping, you want to make sure that you actually lean your weight backwards and I know that sounds counterintuitive considering I've said that leaning your weight backwards is going to cause you to fall and so you have to make sure you do this correctly. When you're leaning your weight backwards, you want to make sure that that foot that is facing forward, you're actually applying pressure to the ball of your foot and not to the back of your blade. This will help keep you upright while you are coming to a stop. You want to create this fast sweeping motion or a dragging motion of the back foot bringing it close to the foot that is facing forward. If you let the back foot drag for too long or you don't bring it to the foot facing forward fast enough, you're not going to be able to come to a complete stop and this is going to start to become really tricky. My best advice for this is just to start with short glides into that T-stop so you can get used to that motion and doing it faster and faster every time. This will definitely help you come to a more complete stop. The other thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you are naturally bending your knees and not locking them. You also want to make sure that you're not flailing your arms around so just keep them in that nice T-position and if it's really hard to keep them still in the T-position, try and lower them closer to your hips. T-stops can honestly be really tricky but one thing I like to visualize when I'm doing this is that I'm thinking of stopping on the ball of my foot or that rocker and this is not necessarily exactly where you have to apply the pressure but this really helps me every time when I do my T-stop. Don't feel bad if you find yourself frustrated or struggling with this T-stop. I personally would categorize this as what I consider a show stop which basically means it's just a fancier way to stop. In skating, once you find a stop that works for you whether it's a snowplow stop, a hockey stop, or whatever you want, that is kind of the stop that you get to stick with and the judges are not going to penalize you for that. Like I always say, just keep practicing this and eventually you will be able to get it. The next item on adult six is actually kind of a fun one and this is the forward lunge. I would say this is pretty easy but if you're not so flexible in your hip flexors, this might be a bit of a challenge. I will try my best to break this down into simple easy steps and over time just keep working on it and trust me, you will get lower. It just might take a little bit of time. The easiest way to do our forward lunge is to start in our T position and essentially you are just gonna push from that back foot forward except this time instead of lifting our back foot up like we would in forward stroking or any of the other things we've been doing throughout this series, you're just gonna drop that foot flat on the ice like I'm doing in this video here. The leg that is skating on the ice is bent into a 90 degree angle while the foot that is dragging behind us is laying flat on the ground. Don't worry too much about having that back leg completely straight. I still can't do this as you can see from the video. It's one of the things I struggle with which is why I prefer to do the spider lunge or what many people call the Johnny Weir slide. Once you get the basics down of just your basic forward lunge, you can start to play around with really fun variations. We want to make sure that our arms are straight out to the side like we keep them in our T position and you want to make sure that your upper body is nice and straight. You're not bending all the way backwards and you're not leaning too far forward. Try your best to keep that back leg straight out behind you. If it starts to go to the side, you're gonna have a lot of issues with your lunge. A common issue I see a lot of skaters make is dragging their toe pick instead of turning their boot out to the side and keeping it flat on the ice. My best advice is just to practice this off ice if you can. Even practicing this with your hard guards on in your skates before you get on the ice to get used to that feeling and which way you should turn your boot so you don't drag your toe pick on the ice. You can also do this pivot drill that I'm doing here on the ice. This is just going to help your legs gain a little bit more strength so you can get back up after your I know that's one of the harder parts is once you're down how do you get back up and it just takes a lot of leg strength and core strength. Just keep practicing this and definitely practice it off ice. Practice getting lower into your hip flexors so that when you're on the ice you can sink lower into this lunge and then eventually work your way up to some really fun variations. The very last item in adult six is a two foot spin and I actually have a full in-depth tutorial on my channel already for the two foot spin so I won't go over it in this video. I'll just leave it linked on screen here and you can go watch it. Well that is it for adult six and that concludes the adult one through six learn to skate series I have on my channel. Like I said earlier if you have missed any of the videos I will leave the playlist linked in the description box below. Make sure you subscribe to stay up to date. I will keep posting new skating related videos every week. I have a lot of things planned for the new year but that is going to do it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.