You head to the rink. Today, you’re going to learn how to do a double salchow.
You’ve watched countless YouTube videos of people doing double salchows. You’ve taught yourself how to do a double rotation off the ice. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never set foot on the ice before, you’re ready to land a double salchow.
You lace up your skates and step onto the ice. It’s a bit more slippery than you thought, but not to worry, you’ve already memorized how to skate.
Hands low. Knees bent. You slowly march around the rink, taking small steps.
Once you’ve gone around the rink twice, you take a moment to refresh your memory.
Left arm in front. Left forward outside three turn. Check with the right arm back. Freeleg passes through. Double salchow. You visualize the jump in your head.
Yes, you’re skipping a step. You know that you’re supposed to learn how to do a single salchow before you do a double, but you weren’t able to find any footage of high level athletes doing singles, so you decided to skip it.
Now, it’s time to do a double salchow. You set up your phone on the boards so you can take video of yourself. That way you’ll be able to analyze your technique in slow motion, so you can figure out what you’re doing wrong.
You set yourself up on the blue line. You take a deep breath, before pushing yourself into the three turn.
Unfortunately, something goes wrong on the three turn and you end up face planting onto the ice. Wincing, you stand up and head over to review the video.
Upon review, you decide that the problem was the angle of your head, so you correct that and try again.
Silly
Yes, this was a silly example. There’s a reason skater’s find it funny that the protagonist from Ice Princess says she learned how to do a double axel using physics.
It’s difficult if not impossible to learn how to jump using books. After all, this isn’t “The Matrix”. We can’t download a triple loop into our head.
Sure, you could probably do it, given enough time and effort. After all, people teach themselves how to do backflips all the time.
But, the ice is unforgiving and you’re gonna take a lot of hard falls. Plus, it’s going to take a long time and you’ll probably develop bad habits.
That’s why you hire a coach. They teach you good technique. They give you an outside perspective. They make sure that you’re on the right track.
They make the entire process of learning a jump easier and safer.
But, here’s the thing. There’s one area of figure skating where athletes follow the example above. Mental game.
DIY
You’re afraid of jumping. Whenever you go to jump, you freeze. So, the first logical step is to figure out how to solve the problem.
You borrow a book from the library. It’s a book that teaches you how to overcome fear.
The first step in the book tells you that in order to overcome your fear you must face it and push through.
So, that’s what you do. The next time you go to jump, you force yourself to do it.
Surprisingly, it works. You’re able to land the jump.
Everytime you go to do the jump, you force yourself to do it. You land it. Most of the time.
But, then all of a sudden you can’t land it anymore. You aren’t sure what’s wrong, but forcing yourself to jump doesn’t help anymore.
So, you hit the books again.
You find a new technique. It works for a while. Then, it stops working.
The cycle continues. It repeats over and over again.
At the same time, the frustration continues to build. Eventually, you reach the end of your rope.
How to improve your mental game
You wouldn’t learn how to jump using books, so why would you expect to fix your mindset or mental blocks using books?
For anyone who wants to be the best skater they can be, mental skills are just as important as your jump technique.
Mental skills are taught and learned in the same way your skating skills are, through repetition, feedback and practice.
Wouldn’t it be horrible if you were learning a jump, but you kept fixing the wrong things?
That’s what a coach is there for, to tell you what you’re doing right, and when you need to correct something. The coach is an expert and is there to keep you on track, so you don’t waste time.
Mental skills coaching is the same.
If skaters took Mental skills training as seriously as they do their on ice technical skills, they would find that their technical skills would improve exponentially.
Start here. Download “Confidence Myth Busters,” a complimentary eBook and make a change.