Recreational skating versus training

As I mentioned in my first post, I started to skate in a recreational manner, once a week, in group classes and I enjoyed every second of it. I was skating around, sitting around, talking to people, and practicing at leisure, without pressure to get something until a certain time, or ever.

Now, I skate 5 days a week, I take 2 private lessons a week and it feels like training.Why? Because while I always wanted to skate well, slowly I realized that I actually could.

Before starting group lessons I had no contact with skating, I wasn't even watching much on tv. In group lessons I met people like me. The first realization was when I started to go to adult practice ice. While most of the skaters started as kids, there were some that started later in life and they were skating beautifully. What skating beautifully (as an adult) means to me, is skating with confidence, good posture, flow between forward and backwards and maybe some "tricks" (jumps and spins).

Next realization was when I got into the MITF (Moves In The Field) group class. That wasn't usually open for adults, but in one summer the class wasn't full so I was allowed to join. My previous group lessons were following Freestyle (FS) curriculum and covered mostly "tricks" not the flow that I wanted. Well, I found that in the MITF class.

The third realization was during the MITF class, which was a children class, and I saw that kids my level of FS were not actually much better than me. I had it in my mind that it's impossible for an adult to learn as kids learn. That is true for the highly athletic skills like jumps (triple, double, even... singles). But not so much for the steps with flow, edges, transitions, at least up to an intermediary level.

The last realizations was the kids practice schedule. At my level (a very wobbly FS4, that I would call and advanced beginner) I was skating twice a week, one group lesson and one practice session, they were skating 3 times more. They were in average in 2 group lessons, at least one private lesson, syncro team and practice ice 2 to 5 days a week. Some of them were also doing off ice training.

Training is committing to a certain level of practice focused on achieving a certain goal. My goal is to get to skate confidently and hopefully beautifully! As my first desire was to get flow on ice, I started to work on MITF and Ice Dancing. To keep myself motivated and have a structured approach to learning I decided to take the USFSA tests. Test would be a prerequisite if I ever wanted to compete, which I don't at the moment. I take one half hour lesson for MITF and another for ice dance every week, and I practice on my own 7 hours spread from Monday to Friday. I would like to somehow add soon the FS.

The commitment is huge, to learn skating means that after you got a skill correctly, you repeat it as long as you need for it to become muscle memory. And it takes a looong time... After I decided on the financial and  time commitment, I also had to accept the inconvenient schedule and the fact that skating takes away most of my free time. And then is hard work! My body hurts, I get discouraged, impatient, frustrated and then there it is, progress and satisfaction.