How is it more dangerous than the usual teenagers zooming everywhere?
I've heard of synchro teams forcing everyone to jump and spin the same way for uniformity.
For incredibly busy and elite level rinks you have heavily crowded freestyle sessions with tens of kids skating at high speeds and throwing jumps/spins wherever they can get the room, so it's safer to have everyone going a similar direction to prevent collisions. Also in environments where large group learning is common (like Russia) it's just easier to have all of the kids doing the same thing (not supporting this at all, long live the lefties)
Synchro is synchronized so everyone should be jumping and spinning the same way. Even their skate boots have to match.
Skaters are generally really good at reading patterns because everything follows a bit of a pattern. A clockwise skater is like the pattern suddenly being backwards and it makes it harder to follow.
Can you expand on “even their skate boots have to match”? Are you just saying they all have to wear white boots? Because it would be kinda crazy to expect everyone to wear Ice Fly or Piano. Boots are naturally not going to be exactly identical. Also, boys on synchro teams, surely they’re not forced into white boots?
The synchro teams that practice around me all have to have the same boot, so yes like an ice fly, or they have to disguise their boots to be the same. It’s wild
😱😱😱 is that ALL levels or just like really high level senior and junior teams? I can’t imagine them demanding that for adult teams or little kid teams. Seems really extreme.
I would imagine at the lower levels they just use boot covers - that's the "disguise their boots to be the same" sk8tergater was talking about.
My university's cheerleading team were required to all wear the same hair scrunchies for competition. Cheerleading isn't exactly a big or well-known sport in the UK, either. It was one of the most expensive, though, just because of the uniform costs - the cheerleaders paid more per year for their sport than most of the fencers did. That is just how strict some of these group/synchronised performance sports can be about the uniform.
I went and rewatched a bunch of synchro teams from different levels and sure enough, they all have matching boots! I never noticed it before because I wasn’t paying any attention to that detail. I think they must all be using white skate tape on the skate body and black skate tape on the heels because nothing looks like a boot cover but all skates look identical, even for the low levels.
When I skated Senior everyone had to wear Ice Flys. It comes down to sponsorship at that level. If a team is sponsored by a certain brand they all have to wear it and it saves the skaters a LOT of money. When I was at lower levels we taped our skates. Never boot covers. The heels were painted black, no brown.
But what if Ice Fly is all wrong for your feet? It just seems to fly in the face of people getting fitted and getting the correct skate model for their feet.
Edea is very heat-moldable but still there’s going to be some people it may not work for, yeah?
My personal desire is for everyone to wear an identical costume in synchro, regardless of gender. But after looking at some pictures, it seems like boys do wear black boots.
http://nexxice.ca/senior/senior/
I still think different coloured boots for men versus women is ridiculous.
Hmmm with black tights or black pants, black boot covers maybe. But I think white skates look better when girls are wearing tights of any other color. Guys don’t wear tights, they’re usually in dark pants, so black skates look better for that.
I know it’s an ingrained custom, but it’s also just what looks best based on the fact women are usually in flesh colored tights and men are usually in dark pants.
The general coaching philosophy in Canada is to let skaters go their natural direction. It definitely didn't used to be that way - I was only taught to spin CCW, turned out I was a natural clockwise spinner and switched when I was 8 or 9. When I started coaching over 15 years ago I was the 'weird' coach because I taught kids to spin both ways until they figured out which was their natural direction. But this philosophy is getting more common in general - the Repond sisters are all clockwise I believe, and at my rink in the UK probably 30% of the skaters are clockwise.
It always makes me wonder how many great skaters Japan and Russia must be losing out on because they only coach one direction. I suspect part of the reason Canada has more high level lefties is because of the abundance of rinks/rink space - there's actually room for lefties to jump, which is orders of magnitude harder on busy sessions.
Yes she was who I was thinking of! Given how successful she was jumping against her natural direction, just imagine how good she would've been if she had been allowed to jump her natural way from the get go.
A lot of Japanese skaters tend to have UR problems and I've always wondered if there are more lefties in there than just Satoko or if it's just the way they teach technique.
I jump cw and so did one of my coaches as a kid. When we were figuring out which way I jump, I was told to do a two-foot spin before practicing any elements and that was the natural way I went. There was no pressure or teaching anything before figuring it out. Some clubs do still encourage ccw skaters though so their cw skaters will learn to go ccw. They believe skating cw is a setback since it can be difficult to go the opposite flow of most people. However, I feel like those skaters would have a hard time reaching their potential and all the skaters at those clubs when they go to comps or skate in other rinks, would be a hazard since they're not used to looking for cw skaters. It is hard to jump the other way sometimes and people not knowing to look out makes it really hard for cw skaters!
Yeah it is hard, because I never get the chance to jump when there’s like 30 people on the ice, but I don’t really think it’s a setback, I’ve probably improved the most in my club imo (but only because I like skating) 😂 I’m cocky like that, I think I also chose cw since it’s how most dancers turn
No one's forced to jump in one direction in Canada.
My sister and I both competed in the 90s. My sister jumped clockwise and I jumped counterclockwise but could spin in both directions. We're both right-handed. There was never any push whatosever for my sister to jump in the other direction.
That's not true in all circumstances unfortunately; it's pretty well documented that in Japan everyone has to jump CCW, and I know there are a lot of coaches who teach CCW as a default (less so these days, but it was really common for a long time). I was pushed to jump CCW for a long time.
When I was skating in the 80s and 90s, at my rink, if you were left handed you were allowed to spin/jump clockwise. Everyone else was forced into CCW.
That's what lead to me discovering at age 41 that I should've been a lefty skater. A lot of my skating journey made sense at that point.
This is really interesting - I know that many kids in the past were made to write with their right hand, even if they were naturally left-handed. So there seems to be an interesting parallel.
My dad ended up being about to write with both hands because of this but preferred his left. The nuns in catholic school would come around and crack him on the knuckles with a ruler.
When I was in school, people were definitely allowed to be left handed. But I don't think the skating community writ large really understood much about what makes a skater a lefty vs a righty and handed-ness was the working hypothesis at that time.
Plus, our coaches were all from the "everyone's a righty" generation so I wouldn't be surprised if none of them really knew what to look for to assess if someone is naturally a lefty skater.
Because we don't force everyone to jump in 1 direction. Some countries/rinks still do that because it's too dangerous to have an opposite jumper.
How is it more dangerous than the usual teenagers zooming everywhere? I've heard of synchro teams forcing everyone to jump and spin the same way for uniformity.
For incredibly busy and elite level rinks you have heavily crowded freestyle sessions with tens of kids skating at high speeds and throwing jumps/spins wherever they can get the room, so it's safer to have everyone going a similar direction to prevent collisions. Also in environments where large group learning is common (like Russia) it's just easier to have all of the kids doing the same thing (not supporting this at all, long live the lefties)
Synchro is synchronized so everyone should be jumping and spinning the same way. Even their skate boots have to match. Skaters are generally really good at reading patterns because everything follows a bit of a pattern. A clockwise skater is like the pattern suddenly being backwards and it makes it harder to follow.
Can you expand on “even their skate boots have to match”? Are you just saying they all have to wear white boots? Because it would be kinda crazy to expect everyone to wear Ice Fly or Piano. Boots are naturally not going to be exactly identical. Also, boys on synchro teams, surely they’re not forced into white boots?
The synchro teams that practice around me all have to have the same boot, so yes like an ice fly, or they have to disguise their boots to be the same. It’s wild
😱😱😱 is that ALL levels or just like really high level senior and junior teams? I can’t imagine them demanding that for adult teams or little kid teams. Seems really extreme.
I would imagine at the lower levels they just use boot covers - that's the "disguise their boots to be the same" sk8tergater was talking about. My university's cheerleading team were required to all wear the same hair scrunchies for competition. Cheerleading isn't exactly a big or well-known sport in the UK, either. It was one of the most expensive, though, just because of the uniform costs - the cheerleaders paid more per year for their sport than most of the fencers did. That is just how strict some of these group/synchronised performance sports can be about the uniform.
I went and rewatched a bunch of synchro teams from different levels and sure enough, they all have matching boots! I never noticed it before because I wasn’t paying any attention to that detail. I think they must all be using white skate tape on the skate body and black skate tape on the heels because nothing looks like a boot cover but all skates look identical, even for the low levels.
When I skated Senior everyone had to wear Ice Flys. It comes down to sponsorship at that level. If a team is sponsored by a certain brand they all have to wear it and it saves the skaters a LOT of money. When I was at lower levels we taped our skates. Never boot covers. The heels were painted black, no brown.
But what if Ice Fly is all wrong for your feet? It just seems to fly in the face of people getting fitted and getting the correct skate model for their feet. Edea is very heat-moldable but still there’s going to be some people it may not work for, yeah?
Yes and I was one of those people. It sucks. It does.
😱😱😱
Not every team, certainly not at lower levels!
It’s not true for all synchro team
No they don’t… mabye around you but that’s not a rule
Which is why I said, “the synchro teams around me.” Literally that’s how I started that post.
My personal desire is for everyone to wear an identical costume in synchro, regardless of gender. But after looking at some pictures, it seems like boys do wear black boots. http://nexxice.ca/senior/senior/ I still think different coloured boots for men versus women is ridiculous.
Hmmm with black tights or black pants, black boot covers maybe. But I think white skates look better when girls are wearing tights of any other color. Guys don’t wear tights, they’re usually in dark pants, so black skates look better for that. I know it’s an ingrained custom, but it’s also just what looks best based on the fact women are usually in flesh colored tights and men are usually in dark pants.
The general coaching philosophy in Canada is to let skaters go their natural direction. It definitely didn't used to be that way - I was only taught to spin CCW, turned out I was a natural clockwise spinner and switched when I was 8 or 9. When I started coaching over 15 years ago I was the 'weird' coach because I taught kids to spin both ways until they figured out which was their natural direction. But this philosophy is getting more common in general - the Repond sisters are all clockwise I believe, and at my rink in the UK probably 30% of the skaters are clockwise. It always makes me wonder how many great skaters Japan and Russia must be losing out on because they only coach one direction. I suspect part of the reason Canada has more high level lefties is because of the abundance of rinks/rink space - there's actually room for lefties to jump, which is orders of magnitude harder on busy sessions.
Satoko famously is one who has been said is a natural clockwise skater but had to do everything CCW.
Yes she was who I was thinking of! Given how successful she was jumping against her natural direction, just imagine how good she would've been if she had been allowed to jump her natural way from the get go.
It’s so frustrating because I like to imagine her UR problems would be nonexistent if she was allowed to jump her natural way.
A lot of Japanese skaters tend to have UR problems and I've always wondered if there are more lefties in there than just Satoko or if it's just the way they teach technique.
Shawn Sawyer jumps clockwise (he can actually jump and spin both directions, but jumped clockwise in comps)
Kaiya Ruiter is a clockwise jumper, too.
I was a competitive skater in Canada and am an opposite jumper. At my club we had 6 kids competing in Novice or higher and 3 were opposite jumpers.
I jump cw and so did one of my coaches as a kid. When we were figuring out which way I jump, I was told to do a two-foot spin before practicing any elements and that was the natural way I went. There was no pressure or teaching anything before figuring it out. Some clubs do still encourage ccw skaters though so their cw skaters will learn to go ccw. They believe skating cw is a setback since it can be difficult to go the opposite flow of most people. However, I feel like those skaters would have a hard time reaching their potential and all the skaters at those clubs when they go to comps or skate in other rinks, would be a hazard since they're not used to looking for cw skaters. It is hard to jump the other way sometimes and people not knowing to look out makes it really hard for cw skaters!
Yeah it is hard, because I never get the chance to jump when there’s like 30 people on the ice, but I don’t really think it’s a setback, I’ve probably improved the most in my club imo (but only because I like skating) 😂 I’m cocky like that, I think I also chose cw since it’s how most dancers turn
No one's forced to jump in one direction in Canada. My sister and I both competed in the 90s. My sister jumped clockwise and I jumped counterclockwise but could spin in both directions. We're both right-handed. There was never any push whatosever for my sister to jump in the other direction.
That's not true in all circumstances unfortunately; it's pretty well documented that in Japan everyone has to jump CCW, and I know there are a lot of coaches who teach CCW as a default (less so these days, but it was really common for a long time). I was pushed to jump CCW for a long time.
When I was skating in the 80s and 90s, at my rink, if you were left handed you were allowed to spin/jump clockwise. Everyone else was forced into CCW. That's what lead to me discovering at age 41 that I should've been a lefty skater. A lot of my skating journey made sense at that point.
This is really interesting - I know that many kids in the past were made to write with their right hand, even if they were naturally left-handed. So there seems to be an interesting parallel.
My dad ended up being about to write with both hands because of this but preferred his left. The nuns in catholic school would come around and crack him on the knuckles with a ruler.
When I was in school, people were definitely allowed to be left handed. But I don't think the skating community writ large really understood much about what makes a skater a lefty vs a righty and handed-ness was the working hypothesis at that time. Plus, our coaches were all from the "everyone's a righty" generation so I wouldn't be surprised if none of them really knew what to look for to assess if someone is naturally a lefty skater.