Athlete Centered Skating

Hello all,

First and foremost, we are thinking of you all as we work from home.  I have not been off the ice this long since I was less than four years old!  Hard to believe!

We look forward to getting back into the rink and training again and remind you that this will be a steady process – making that connection with the ice again.

Sean and I are quite pleased with our off-ice coaching and programming.  We design worksheets for our skaters with specific goals for each week.  Our skaters perform the workouts and then submit videos of select exercises.  We use virtual meetings, not to workout, but to review and critique technique, their program run-throughs, and performances from top athletes to broaden their conceptions of quality.  We really enjoy this system as it allows our athletes to self-regulate their training on their own time and we coaches can provide feedback directly when we review the videos.

As you might expect, we have been relentless in our work for Athlete Centered Skating- and for the figure skating community in the United States.  I was recently names to a small task force of 7 coaches by USFS and PSA to present ideas for the future of how athletes are trained and coaches educated in the United States.  I sit amongst World and Olympic coaches and this is quite an honor!  Currently, I reside on the PSA’s sport science committee and have made many contributions including: writing 5 Continuing Education Courses and exams for coaches; two articles for PSA Magazine, an article for Skating Magazine (summer release).  I continue to write courses and Sean is writing several as well too.  Athlete Centered Skating hosted a webinar for over 300 registered coaches in early April (as we reported in our last update).  Finally, I was nominated for two awards by the PSA this year: The President’s Award for Excellence and The Pieter Kollen Sport Science Award (awards are in May).  Then there is the book for Routledge…

We hope you are all keeping healthy and busy and, please know, that you are the inspiration for the work we do!  Thank you so much for your sincere support.  We have the greatest community within figure skating!

Send us a message – let us know how you are doing!