Skating Pet Peeves & Moves You Dislike

[sinnerspinner]

When some ladies need to readjust their knickers while skating, to me it looks awkward and perhaps try something better fitting that minimises wedgies lol!

It is distracting. Other skaters go the other way and let it all hang out. lol

 

[Xzander]

My pet peeves: I-spins, Camels or Bielmanns without extending the knee of supporting leg. Long preparations before jumps. Two footed skating, except if you are Adam Rippon.

 

[Ares]

My pet peeves: I-spins, Camels or Bielmanns without extending the knee of supporting leg. Long preparations before jumps. Two footed skating, except if you are Adam Rippon.

This one is often accompanied by wild travelling and strenuous yanking out of that raised leg I am not sure whether all these spins are actual "I" spins a la Lipnitskaya or Cohen, as this lifted leg is more often in front of you and in some distance from your head and when it's jerky ... it's my least favourite spin by far. One of my pet peeves for sure, please don't go for that if you're not very flexible. Not extending your supporting leg in other spins is not all hat much my pet peeve but it definitely does not make it look good. As for Biellmanns - not a fan of it no matter how well executed it is also because we have a surplus of that vs other layback spin positions that are becoming forgotten.

 

[kwanatic]

Oh man, my list is so long but I'll try to shorten it...

- The lack of classic layback positions. I'm talking about just a simple attitude position layback. Only a few skaters do them right now (Karen Chen and Carolina Kostner come to mind). If I were a judge that'd be at least an automatic +2 just b/c it's so rare to see.

- The lack of sustained movements in skating. No one holds a move anymore, even when the music is begging for it. It's all about rushing on to the next transition. This has several subcategories but my main two are:
- Arabesque spirals: it's just not something we see much of. People throw spirals in but they hold them for about 1 second before moving on to something else. Thank god for Karen Chen...
- Checked landings: it's all about cramming as many transitions as possible onto a landing so you do get the long, smooth riding edges we used to get.

- Flesh colored fabric that isn't nearly flesh colored enough. If you can't get it to match your skin, don't wear it.

- OTB tights. Been over them for eons at this point. Thankfully, they've gone out of style for the most part but there are still those who wear them and, even worse, do the half over the back of the boot thing which is beyond hideous.

- Deaf choreography. This means is you can put on any piece of music while the skater is skating and you wouldn't be able to tell they're skating to something different. There's no attention to the nuances of the music in the movement. Why bother skating to music if you aren't even listening to it?

- Excessive backloading. It's annoying and point-wh0rish. It leaves the program completely unbalanced and it needs to be limited.

- Tanos/Rippons on every jump. Again, limits need to be set.

- Averbukh's choreography. Nuff said.

- The ridiculous over-scoring of skaters, especially when the person isn't necessarily getting any better. They're doing the same thing they've been doing and yet their score continues to rise higher and higher and higher with no ceiling in sight.

- Lopsided scoring. This is probably the worst of everything and I know it's not going away. Still, it's what aggravates me the most.


I've got more but that's it for now

 

[Lota]

Although these have probably been mentioned already, but I loathe laboured step-sequences... those are so hard to watch through in any discipline, especially since the step-sequence is probably my favourite element of the program.

Also pair spins. Just... pair spins :hopelessness: It is almost impossible to find pairs that have nice, decent, fast spins with interesting positions that add something to the program, instead of the spins being the welp-the-program-is-ending-and-we-have-to-add-these-thingies-here-we-have-zero-strength-please-pray-that-we-don't-fall element. Ice Dance teams are slightly better at this, but not by a whole lot. Maybe spins should get more points or be evaluated more strictly so that the skaters pay more attention to them, because now they are just not working very well.

In general, low-quality execution of elements. Skaters are trying to put in as much stuff into their programs as possible to hit all the levels, at times disregarding the execution of said elements and the system awards them for it. I'm really glad we can now see the GOE in the tech box during competition, it really shows some of the BS judgement that goes on. An example of all of this could be the men's quad race, where after jumping the quads some men are too tired to do other jumps or elements well, but still get good points, while skaters with fewer quads can have a better overall quality of all the elements but still get awarded the same points for execution and etc. as the previous group of skaters.

Also, smaller issue, but I wish more skaters filmed themselves and really really looked at their spin/lift positions. I know that the ~beauty~ of a position is not evaluated (it's not, right? :scratch3: ), but there HAS to be a way to get the same amount of points but with better looking positions. Try harder for my eyes plz

 

[Mathman]

I am not a big fan of the besti squat or frog positions.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

Oh man, my list is so long but I'll try to shorten it...

- The lack of classic layback positions. I'm talking about just a simple attitude position layback. Only a few skaters do them right now (Karen Chen and Carolina Kostner come to mind). If I were a judge that'd be at least an automatic +2 just b/c it's so rare to see.

- The lack of sustained movements in skating. No one holds a move anymore, even when the music is begging for it. It's all about rushing on to the next transition. This has several subcategories but my main two are:
- Arabesque spirals: it's just not something we see much of. People throw spirals in but they hold them for about 1 second before moving on to something else. Thank god for Karen Chen...
- Checked landings: it's all about cramming as many transitions as possible onto a landing so you do get the long, smooth riding edges we used to get.

- Flesh colored fabric that isn't nearly flesh colored enough. If you can't get it to match your skin, don't wear it.

- OTB tights. Been over them for eons at this point. Thankfully, they've gone out of style for the most part but there are still those who wear them and, even worse, do the half over the back of the boot thing which is beyond hideous.

- Deaf choreography. This means is you can put on any piece of music while the skater is skating and you wouldn't be able to tell they're skating to something different. There's no attention to the nuances of the music in the movement. Why bother skating to music if you aren't even listening to it?

- Excessive backloading. It's annoying and point-wh0rish. It leaves the program completely unbalanced and it needs to be limited.

- Tanos/Rippons on every jump. Again, limits need to be set.

- Averbukh's choreography. Nuff said.

- The ridiculous over-scoring of skaters, especially when the person isn't necessarily getting any better. They're doing the same thing they've been doing and yet their score continues to rise higher and higher and higher with no ceiling in sight.

- Lopsided scoring. This is probably the worst of everything and I know it's not going away. Still, it's what aggravates me the most.


I've got more but that's it for now

I agree with you on so many of these, but must add a point on about the lack of choreo nuances. This is because the creativity is gone with most of todays skating choreographers. It’s now same crap, different skater/music piece. Jeff Buttle and Lori Nichol are notorious for this kind of thing, sadly.

 

[Tulipstar]

I don't mind the helicopter arm so much, just find it funny. I really dislike spirals that last a second. I love Karen's long spiral and wish Yuna was still skating to show us more.

Very short Ina Bauer's are also on my dislike list. The only one I don't mind doing that is Anastasia Tarakanova, since everything she does is wild.

Cheering when the skaters do something exceptional, I don't mind. Like acing a jump for the first time or finishing the last jump at an important competition is cool for me.

 

[chopinskate]

I don't mind the helicopter arm so much, just find it funny. I really dislike spirals that last a second. I love Karen's long spiral and wish Yuna was still skating to show us more.

Yuna's spiral wasn't really good. Her lower body needed more extension in general. Perhaps the only flaw she had.

(Great speed that she maintained, and was able to hold her position, though.)

 

[lyverbird1]

BOND HANDS!!!!!!!!

It's top of the hated clichéd move list for me. It's James Bond music. Must do Bond "gun" hands. Ugh.

I also hate some of the costume clichés - green for Riverdance, blue for Rhapsody in Blue, Red/Flames for Firebird etc when really unsubtly done, accents of the relevant colours would be far nicer in my eyes but I could be in a minority there!

Also on the hate list - sloppy or ugly arm positions in tanos (especially when used multiple times in the same programme), mule kicks into muscled jumps and spins that travel miles across the ice instead of being nicely centred.

Ooooh - miming - I forgot to add miming. Literal representations of the music are unnecessary.

 

[Grin]

Nobody hates figure skating more than figure skating fans

 

[lyverbird1]

Shoulder shimmies (most of them)

I trust that Boyang's Spider Shimmy is exempted from this dislike of shoulder shimmies.

 

[kwanatic]

I don't mind the helicopter arm so much, just find it funny. I really dislike spirals that last a second. I love Karen's long spiral and wish Yuna was still skating to show us more.

Very short Ina Bauer's are also on my dislike list. The only one I don't mind doing that is Anastasia Tarakanova, since everything she does is wild.

Cheering when the skaters do something exceptional, I don't mind. Like acing a jump for the first time or finishing the last jump at an important competition is cool for me.

I have to second chopinskate's comment about Yuna. Her upper body lines were lovely; but her lower body lines...:noshake:. Lack of extension, no turnout, clunky feet...not so good. Thankfully nearly everything else she did was amazing so it wasn't hard to forgive her for it.

Tarakanova's style is a pet peeve of mine. There is nothing pretty about her skating. She's just all over the place. There's not even an attempt at refinement. You can perform with emotion and passion and not look like a crazy person is all I'm saying...

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

Tarakanova's style is a pet peeve of mine. There is nothing pretty about her skating. She's just all over the place. There's not even an attempt at refinement. You can perform with emotion and passion and not look like a crazy person is all I'm saying...

In the SP she is supposed to be a crazy person who is trying to escape the nut house. I love her wild style equally as much as I love the controlled style of someone like Wakaba. Oh well...I gues there must be something wrong with me

 

[skatenewbie]

I dont like when skaters does extra extension in their leg when landing a jump to make it seems they have good extension lol. Also some skaters should not attempt biellmann tbh. I prefer fast and centered haircutter/classic layback than sloppy biellman (or forced biellmann like Wagner, its look painful tbh) and illusion entry to layback is nice when its done properly but many do it sloppy. Some make it look like camel entry lol. Maybe it should count, a camel entry to layback spin Also why everyone now doing FSSp when some of them cant do the flying part decently and travel a lot in landing... Unlike others i dont mind butt/A spin tbh. It does not look elegant but not that bad! Lastly unfinished move bothers me too! When someone hold the position so fast and just change to do other things... And i dont get why many people like cantilever so much...i disilike it tbh, it does not look so pretty and the constant praise for that is bugging me

 

[kwanatic]

Ugh, another big one...

Charlotte spirals: Is anyone capable of hitting a vertical split? It's supposed to be as close to 180 degrees as possible but most people get no better than 130/140. The free leg doesn't go vertical enough, the knee is bent...it's fugly!

These girls need to take a lesson from 37 year old Michelle Kwan on how to do a Charlotte spiral.

 

[kwanatic]

In the SP she is supposed to be a crazy person who is trying to escape the nut house. I love her wild style equally as much as I love the controlled style of someone like Wakaba. Oh well...I gues there must be something wrong with me

Yeah, you're insane. :whack:

JK, Sam. Well, in that context it does make more sense. Which leads me to another pet peeve...

Programs with overly dramatic concepts and backstories are hella annoying to me. I know it's subjective and some people like it but I can't stand it. Prior to Sam cluing me in, I had no idea Tarakanova was supposed to be an insane person in an asylum...she just looked like a sloppy hot mess to me. I don't like having to research the concept of a skater's program for me to understand what I'm seeing.

I'm fine with a general concept, e.g. she's portraying a bird, she's playing Satine/Carmen, she's the white/black swan, she's a portraying a doll, etc. It's nice to have a general idea of a program. But nowadays it's like, "Oh, she is supposed to be a swan that decides it wants to fly over the ocean but then gets sucked into the Bermuda triangle and has to fight the evil spirits that cast a spell on it to become a cow who is forced to jump over the moon before the winter solstice..."

I'm exaggerating of course, but that's how convoluted some of these backstories and explanations for these programs sound to me. Personally, I feel skating (and art in general) is supposed to go beyond all of these elaborate explanations and stories. If people get it, they get it. If they don't, they don't. That's where that whole art is subjective thing comes back into play.

 

[Maribelle]

Plushenko's excessive hand waving, pantomiming, anyone who does the split jump because no one can compare to Sasha Cohen on that.

 

[Kitt]

Plushenko's excessive hand waving, pantomiming, anyone who does the split jump because no one can compare to Sasha Cohen on that.

Jason Brown's is pretty good, very impressive when he does it right in front of you!

 

[Maribelle]

Jason Brown's is pretty good, very impressive when he does it right in front of you!

Oh I forgot about Jason, yes his is great.