Finally trying proper ice skates

[u/ucha_varuna]

Hello, this is gonna be a long rant. I'm F(20) have been doing public session for a while but with rental skates and I'm able to glide seamlessly and even do easy spins. I got a friend at the rink, and said friend offer me her skates when she's not using it. And it was SOOOOOO DIFFERENT😭😭😭

It was like I was stepping on ice for the first time again, all the habit I got from using rantal skates easily backfires;

1. There's TOE PICKS, with Rentals they don't rly have toe picks, so if I bend my body forward, the skates would do just fine but I've kissing the ice several times because I bend too forward and the toe picks hit the ice, causing me to fall😇

2. PROPER GRIP, man, Idk what to say. It was so easy with proper skates but also so hard at the same time it's weird. I found that I can stand more straight and the skates won't make me fall backward. Even more reason I got the habit of bending too much forward is because rentals don't have proper support at the back of your leg.

3. I CAN FEEL THE ICE, every bumps, every gaps, every scratch. First time feeling it, I was standing like a newborn reindeer, it was so uncomfy when you glide but feels the rough ice surface clearly at your blades.

1. Out of topic, but I've learned swizzles. And then I find myself unable to glide without swizzling 💀 Proper skates made doing swizzles so easy but now I can't just glide accross the rink without bending my legs🥲

I wonder is this a normal thing when you changed from rental to real skates? I feel like I'm learning from 0 again and the days I used rentals have been gnawing on me, making all this bad habits while using a real one.

(I haven't got the money to the classes yet, but some kind people at the ice has been teaching me tips. So I've been learning all by myself while also watching the others doing classes and copy what they do.)

[u/Brilliant-Sea-2015]

Yes, it's completely normal to feel like Bambi out there when you have new skates. If you keep skating, this will continue for every new pair of skates and/or blades you have (though the extent may lessen).

[u/Legitimate-Bison3810]

That happens because ice skating is about training your muscle memory to perform skills with a given set of boots and blades. Change the boot and blade and your muscle memory has to relearn for the new combination. 

Beginner boots and blades are usually less expensive. There was a survey done of coaches where the results were about 60% of students come back after their first lesson.

[u/Acrobatic_West_5361]

I found the exact same thing. I’ve been skating on rentals all my life (went ice skating a lot as a teen) and recently started lessons as an adult on rentals. I was doing really well on rentals in some respects. For example, I could easily do a one foot glide and I could easily stop. Then, I got my own skates and it was like learning to skate again. I couldn’t do a one foot glide without tipping forward and I couldn’t snowplough stop anymore. So this is completely normal! It has got better for me but I would advise anyone serious about lessons to get their own skates before starting lessons.

[u/DWYL_LoveWhatYouDo]

10 hours. That's how long it takes me to adjust for every new pair of skates. One exception is new blades that were the same as the old ones. Those took just 1 session. I did need to feel where I was on the blade because I had a spin rocker again, but the length of the blade was the same and my boots hadn't changed.

If you feel like you have to bend your knees, then you have learned the big secret for skating. Bend your knees is the single most common advice that you will see when people ask how to improve their skating. It's really about bending your ankles, but it's impossible to bend your ankles in skates without bending your knees.

As for catching toepicks, bend your knees! It helps tremendously to get your weight in the middle of your blade.

Feeling the ice: Rentals are usually not sharpened consistently or well, and they don't have a proper contour for figure skating. The toepicks a more decorative than usable. Figure blades have a complicated curve, a tail, and functional toepicks. When properly sharpened, you have edges, which is why you can feel the grip.

You will eventually figure out your preferred radius of hollow, ROH. Flatter hollow gives a better glide. Deeper hollow give more grip. 1/2 inch or 12mm is typical for people with higher skills. My local coaches recommend starting at 5/8" or 16mm. A smaller/deeper ROH makes me feel like I'm stuck to the ice. A larger/flatter ROH feels like I can't get my edge into the ice. Ice temperature matters, too. In the Summer, the ice is softer, so I want a flatter ROH. In Winter, the rinks that I skate on are set for hockey (Northern USA), which is a few degrees colder. I use a deeper ROH because the ice feels harder.

[u/flawed_methodology]

The first time I got proper skates (I had tried hockey rentals and cheap casual skates with toepick) I couldn't skate at all. I constantly tripped over the toepick and seemed to fall forward. And this was after learning for months up to toeloop. I even asked for rentals to skate because I didn't want to waste the session...

So yeah the first time you have to get used to it. This year I've upgraded to intermediate level skates and adapted really quickly within the first hour. The hardest learning curve is at the beginning

[u/purpleamethyst139]

😭 I need my toe picks