Adults Are Special

In skating parlance, Adult Figure Skater (AFS) refers to someone who didn’t skate as a child and only took up the sport as a grown-up. However, there are also subtle shadings to the term. Adults, even those who are quite skilled and even talented, tend to skate more clunky, less gracefully, and more slowly than kids.  It takes us three times as long to learn new skills. We have reputations as scaredy cats who won’t push themselves past certain limitations because we’re too afraid to fall. We often look weird or strange and move in erratic ways. To say you “look like an adult skater” is a bit of an insult.

I skated as a kid and off and on for fun as an adult. But I really only pursued figure skating when I reached my 40s.  I had a few advantages in that I could skate backwards, knew some basic edges, and could stop. Otherwise I was hopeless at first. I took lessons for a couple of years. Quit for about a year and half. I came back and started working with a new and amazing coach (I will call her Coachie because that nickname would make her vomit). I’ve been taking private lessons with her for two years and have progressed remarkably.

But I still suck. Royally.

As of this date, here is a brief list of some things I can do consistently and reasonably well: upright spins, waltz jumps, salchows,  toe-loops (real ones, none of those toe-waltz things), Adult Bronze MITF, forward and backward spirals, forward crossrolls, and forward and backward power pulls on my left foot.

Some things that I can do occasionally, but am still working on: loop jump, flip jump, sit spin, backward cross rolls, right-sided power pulls, and a real live scratch spin (like, fast to blur spin).

I work very hard, skating about six hours a week, with two half hour lessons a week. My slow learning curve is relative; I’m learning much faster than most adults, but compared to the kids I’m stuck in the Pre-Cambrian Age.

In the figure skating world, most adults are perpetual beginners because the overwhelming  majority of us never learn an axel jump, the milestone that marks the difference between newbies and advanced levels. (My husband learned an axel as an adult.  That is an incredible accomplishment. I’m proud of him but I still want to strangle him when he lords it over me.)

I’m gonna write lots of entries about adults. That’s just how special and complicated we are.