Adrenaline and Nerves in Performance and Competition

So it’s just under one week until my first figure skating performance - an adult amateur competition in SmallTownski, about 4 hours from where we live in Russia.

I am jumping through two emotions. 

• One: Everything will be fine. I am completely calm, and am going to enjoy every second of my first figure skating competition. I am ready, and all set to perform.  
• Two: Aagh!! What on Earth am I doing???! I can’t skate, I can barely stand up on ice! I feel like I only just learnt my program yesterday and I’m still screwing it up every other time I skate it. Cancel, cancel, cancel!!!

But I can’t cancel. I’m working three days this week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, Skate Mate (my training partner) and I are going to spend all day at the rink. Late breakfast, on to the ice, lunch, back on the ice, home at tea time when it starts to get busy. 

Then on Friday morning, we leave for SmallTownski. Four of our friends are coming to support us. F, my fiancé and long-suffering best mate; a friend of ours, so F has some non-skating, male company; and two girls, W and C, colleagues and friends who love to skate, too. I think I'm most nervous about letting them down, or not living up to their expectations. Silly, really, as I was the one who wanted their support in SmallTownski.

Skating-wise, I think things are finally coming together. I think. I still have this problem where I go to program ice, skate the program flawlessly through, then practise bits of it while I wait for my turn again, then skate it again, this time with the most mistakes possible. It’s ridiculous. Why can’t I do it cleanly twice in a row?? And for some reason, the other skaters make me nervous too. Especially if they all stop to watch. It's much easier when there's no-one else on the ice.

My toe-loop is not there yet – I’m still a bit scared of the speed I reach just before going into it, but I do always land it – just don’t get the height I want. My sit-spin is really beginning to get to me now – in a lesson or practice I can do twenty perfect ones in a row (perfect except Coach P wants them lower – good luck with that) – and then I’ll screw it up mid-program. I don’t know why. 

According to Coach P, I am “skating well at the moment, [I] just need to concentrate”. When it gets to the day, I know whatever I tell myself, or how much deep breathing I do, I’ll be nervous. 

But something I used to think of when I went through my teen Am Dram phase has occurred to me again. In a situation where you are nervous, your brain does you a favour by releasing lots of handy adrenaline into your bloodstream - causing your heart rate to increase and air passages to dilate, getting lots of lovely oxygenated blood round your body. Cheers, brain - exactly what I need before doing some endurance sport.

There are really only two ways this adrenaline surge can affect you as a skater. The two main reasons your brain releases it. Fight - or flight.

• 1. If you take it as fear (flight), and let it get in the way, you just choke. You can’t concentrate, your brain goes into overdrive and overthinks, no doubt missing some important detail, or you don’t think at all, and you have to rely on muscle memory rather than ability and concentration to get you through. 
• 2. If you take it as power (fight), energy, your body supplying you with strength and equipping your muscles with vigour, and use it in every movement – keeping your upper body strong and controlled so your movements are not compromised, springing upwards with energy and swinging your arms forward in every jump, pulling in as tightly as possible in every spin and holding, holding, holding it till the exit, then you’re going to skate as well as you can. The energy you put in then yields results. Things go right. Landings feel good, and you’ve got good pace on the ice without bailing. 

This positive energy straight away shows on your face. I always find, no matter who's watching (let's see what happens when there are judges...!), when I get to the last third of my program, if things have been going well, I beam. Simply beam. Expression floods through my arms and features, but I try to keep concentration to the last. I know that if I can do that, I will skate the best I can, and that’s all I really want. 
 

I've heard it said and read it: “the podium is not for the top three skaters, but the three least nervous”. I don’t think that’s true. I think the podium is for the three skaters who know how to control their nerves the best, and use adrenaline as strength, not fear. I’m sure it takes practice. But it’s what I’ll be focussing on in SmallTownski on Sunday.

Welcome to Big Kids on Ice!

Hi everyone, and a very warm welcome to the ice!

I’m 25, and have been training with my figure skating coach for just under a year now. I’m a regular at the websites of lots of brilliant figure skating bloggers – Rinkside and Ice Mom to name just two. But it strikes me that while there’s a wealth of figure skating info on blogs and websites just like these, they aim to target either younger figure skaters or their parents with advice, tips, hints and tricks to ease newcomers into the figure skating world, and guide those already part of that world along its winding path.

All very well. But what about us adults? There seems to be so little in the way of an adult community of figure skaters - and that's why I'm starting this blog. To guide those just starting out in the world of skating in every way I (and you, my readers) can. To share new experiences and compare progression with other skaters of all different ages and levels. To positively engage with one another across the world. And to seek out help and advice from those in the know - adult, child or parent - and share it with others.

And finally, at the risk of sounding like Pickard's monologue at the start of Star Trek, but with better grammar: to dive boldly and ever more deeply into the addictive whirlpool that is figure skating! With the aim to have as much fun and learn as much as possible along the way; we are, after all, just big kids on ice!

The background picture is copyright Pradipta Dutta, 2006.