How good is blading for figure skaters?

Aside from the obvious similarities, does blading help any of your ice skating skills?

Thanks for your input,

Sarah

From personal experience, yes. But with a caveat.

First of all, you should stroke on blades the same way you stroke in figure skating. It east to develop a different stroking technique with blades that can spill over to figure skating. My coach made me awarre of that!! I was stroking like aspeed skater, rather than a figure skater.

The second point is to get inline skates that bend like figure skating boots. They now have such skates available and it has made a world of difference. I found that with regular inlines, my knees would hurt after a run. The reason was that the boot flexed differently than my figure skate boot does, resulting in the sore knees. With the new inlines, the knee pain is gone.

I try to get out 4 to 6 days a week and do 10 miles at a time. I found that it keeps my endurance up and my leg muscles in shape, especially in the summer when I don't have as much ice time.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Figureskates!

Thanks so much for your super helpful reply! I have one more question; do you think that a pair of inline skates composed of figure skating boots and inline wheels would be the best bet for me? The boot is an expensive figure skating boot and the inline wheels are apparently adapted to doing ice skating "tricks".

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Sarah

I think they are called pic skates or something like that. I have seen them advertised in the skating magazines. I have heard two reviews. One person was not wild about them, another was. The person who was crazy about them was an elite skater. She says she uses them on only smooth concrete, she has trouble with them on really rough asphalt.

The other person was not really into inline skating anyway so that was probably the reason why she was not crazy about them.

The inlines I have are not that expensive ~$100 and they seem to do well on a relatively rough surface.