With today's level of training doses and difficulty of elements athlete's body will always be damaged in a certain way. No possibility to avoid it.
But taking care about athlete's health we can postpone the start of health troubles or decrease damaging effect of injuries. This improves the quality of life after retirement. This allows to have longer career. This allows skater to show her / his maximal potential.
Top athletes are used to undervalue their injuries. Overcoming pain daily they learn to ignore the most important thing which pain brings - WARNING.
Because stress fracture or tendinitis never happen immediately. Increasing pain, muscle group / muscle fascia changes come much sooner giving a sign that load is more that the body is able to deal with.
I miss ISU doing an
EVALUATION OF SKATER'S INJURIES (directly or with help of Figure Skating Federations). To determine whether changes in rules are a step in a good direction or not. Because from time to time some less common injury may start to appear more frequently which can be a warning. (Last season Shawn Rettstatt told that skaters were asked about their opinions as to rule's changes. No words about health.)
I am sure that since Level 4 lifts were created, number of injuries in Ice Dance cathegory increased. But I am also almost sure that it went "under the radar", because evaluation does not exist.
Don't take my posts as a criticism, take it as a possibility to change things in a way that will help skaters to reach maximal potential and decrease number of injuries.
Rehabilitation is not wide spread in Figure Skating world. And no, I don't mean electrotherapy. (To explain meaning of Rehabilitation in top elite sport fully - there is not enough space for it.)
But let's look at an excerpt of professor Kolar's lecture about right technique in hockey which goes hand in hand with right postural stabilization:
https://youtu.be/SfrecVVndL8?t=1413
- from 23:33 to 25:10 (it has English subtitles).
Those principles are working like this in almost every sport.
Let's go to
ICE DANCE LIFTS:
I have
8 topics to write about from my view as a Rehabilitation Doctor.
1) CONCUSSIONS - their number is increasing in Ice Dance cathegory. How many of them are caused by lifts, that is the question.
Evalution looking for which part of lift (entry, exit, established position, change of pose) is leading to biggest troubles AND which feature (Spread Eagle, One Foot position, lady leaning away...) leads to falls the most - it would be helpful. This would give an indicative insight as to acute injuries. (Though it can never be precise as we have many variants of lifts using different combination of features.)
2) INJURIES IN GENERAL THANKS TO NOT IDEAL TECHNIQUE (without concussions)
Both for ladies and men.
Couples are executing ACROBATIC LIFTS. If you are not strong enough in deep stabilizing muscles, superficial back / belly muscles and upper arms muscles, you activate additional muscles. It leads to overloading those muscles, it creates muscle imbalances....at the end of this chain reaction there is a big range of injuries (of muscles, tendons, joints, vertebral discs.)
As professor Kolar mentions - spine must be straight. Only right posture = right position of segments allow to activate deep muscle stabilizing system. Only with this activation in the beginning of the movement segments of the body can be stabilized. No strengthening can be right WITHOUT right deep muscle system activation in the beginning.
Entry / exit / change of pose with
LADY ROLLING AROUND MEN'S SHOULDERS AND HEAD. Few men are doing this with right technique. Many men (especially juniors) are tilting their head to the side to avoid lady's body. This is suspicious from not good strengthening.
Some men tilt their heads to the side and forward. Tilting head forward - it usually leads to transfer of lady's weight on men's neck while rolling her around.
ROTATION IN SPINE in any moment of the lift is wrong and leads to overloading. Rotating in spine = NO postural stabilization.
I expect these mistakes to be more frequent in juniors.
.
for this! I'll have to watch the whole performance if I can find it. I don't remember having seen him skate before, but he looks amazingly like my own partner, the one I competed with for almost ten years, in face, body build, and enthusiasm
. That solid upper body makes his partner feel so secure.
www.youtube.com
www.classical-music.uk
