I have noticed around the web that a number of people have questioned why ballet specifically geared for skaters is even necessary, and that taking a “regular” ballet class should be good enough. I’d like to just share some thoughts and reasons here for you as a skater, coach or parent of a skater to consider: Page from my "Fundamentals of Alignment and Classical Movement for Figure Skaters" book THE SITUATION: · The Classical ballet syllabus is comprised of we

Because of the huge volume of responses to my post last week about how coach behaviour influences the entire culture of a club – I feel the need to express not only my heartfelt empathies but also to address what I believe to be the crux of this phenomenon. This will be my last post on the subject as it is both personal as well as painful and needs maturity to even consider. The problem is nominally about education and mentorship, and it will never be a specific “program” wh

Skates on floor exercises at Atlanta Workshop 2018 This is such a difficult subject as coaches are required to teach both "stiff" and "hyper-mobile" skaters in the same lesson! I am going to just give some suggestions and bullet points as this is TRULY an entire week seminar in study (in person!). So here goes - and I am purposefully leaving this open ended so that we can study this more in depth in the future. Mobility is the KEY! The precise combination in methodically teac

Here I am again about how social media is not only changing the way we communicate - but also the way we LISTEN to instruction. Earlier I wrote about people not wanting to read these days - our emails will even "summarize" a correspondence so that we don't even need to read it in order to respond! But even in listening - we now want to cut to the chase. It has become "just give me the "take away", and this doesn't work for deep learning, or really any kind of learning at a