Youtuber Trains to be Competitive Figure Skater | Golden Skate

Youtuber Trains to be Competitive Figure Skater

macy

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 12, 2011
Came across this on Instagram today and thought I'd share. Youtuber Michelle Khare took lessons with 5x Olympic pair skater Lloyd Eisler for 8 weeks with the end goal of competing. She skated 5x a week for 2 hours, did ballet, strength and flexibility training, and worked with a choreographer.

https://youtu.be/bL28tcsAVJs

A few of my takeaways...

-I thought a good portion of this was pretty realistic for what she tried to accomplish. I liked the fact she put in the work and commit to it and knew she wasnt going to be landing triple lutzes in 8 weeks. She progressed quickly for only 8 weeks.
-im happy she ended up getting real boots and blades that were right for her and learned the pain and challenges of breaking them in.
-i was confused at how cold she said she was after practice. I guess it could have been from not training programs at that point, but I always came off the ice in a tank top and dripping sweat after a session.
-im also confused why she was taught a flip first instead of a salchow or toe loop, as flips are usually learned 2nd to last due to difficulty.
-it was great how she didnt let her temporary move stop her, and she drove 2 hours round trip to the rink and even did open skate sessions late at night just to train for that time period. She understood she had to stay committed.
-Once she started training a program she learned how different and hard it is to do jumps in a program vs out
-the "competition" at the end was a sad mockery of what a real one is like, even at the club level, although I cant say I expected it to be realistic after everything shown in every skating movie ever. It kind of tainted my opinion of the whole video since it's the last thing shown...she talked the whole thing about her real experience with learning the sport but then kind of ruined it with the show costumes/programs from the other skaters, the older woman competing with young girls, skating under a spotlight, getting flowers and medals on the ice, and the "judges" holding up paper marks. It was honestly the farthest thing away from a real competition, but she would have had to join a club and wait to attend a real USFSA sanctioned adult competition if she had done it correctly.

Anyway, I always love to see people who have hardly ever stepped a foot on the ice really get involved with it and realize how difficult of a sport it is. It is definitely an interesting watch if you have some free time!
 

draqq

FigureSkatingPhenom
Record Breaker
Joined
May 10, 2010
That was very insightful! Thanks for sharing the link.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Thanks for the link.

-I thought a good portion of this was pretty realistic for what she tried to accomplish. I liked the fact she put in the work and commit to it and knew she wasnt going to be landing triple lutzes in 8 weeks. She progressed quickly for only 8 weeks.

Indeed. Most beginners wouldn't put in that many hours per week, but even so her progress was impressive.

-im also confused why she was taught a flip first instead of a salchow or toe loop, as flips are usually learned 2nd to last due to difficulty.

She also did salchow, solo toe loop, and waltz-toe loop combination in her program. Chances are she learned them before the flip. But the flip was more of a challenge and evidently still a worry by the time she "competed" her program so they discussed it out loud several times, unlike some other elements that didn't present problems for her.

I thought I saw a loop attempt during one of the earlier practices, but I could be mistaken about that.


-the "competition" at the end was a sad mockery of what a real one is like, even at the club level, although I cant say I expected it to be realistic after everything shown in every skating movie ever. It kind of tainted my opinion of the whole video since it's the last thing shown...she talked the whole thing about her real experience with learning the sport but then kind of ruined it with the show costumes/programs from the other skaters, the older woman competing with young girls, skating under a spotlight, getting flowers and medals on the ice, and the "judges" holding up paper marks. It was honestly the farthest thing away from a real competition, but she would have had to join a club and wait to attend a real USFSA sanctioned adult competition if she had done it correctly.

Yeah.
That performance would have done just fine in an Adult Pre-Bronze competition.

I guess she never had the opportunity to connect with the adult competitive community and did want to showcase other skaters that she shared ice with while training. And/or there just wasn't a competition with adult events available within her timeframe.

It would be nice if she continued skating and plugged into the adult competition circuit. But probably she's now on to accepting her next challenge.
 

ruga

Final Flight
Joined
Oct 20, 2017
The competition really bothered me as well. The whole video was in such serious mood so I expected her to enter some sort of real competition where skaters are scored with judging system of some kind (even the 6.0 would have been okay as it has been used in actual competitions). Instead there was a strange mix of galas, TV show worthy performances and some actual skating as well. But she probably couldn't find any adult competition that would fit her schedule, so I'll let it be. Another thing is that her coach has some controversial reputation as he was suspended by Skate Canada for sending inappropriate messages to underage skater. However, the creator wasn't involved in skating world so she probably didn't know anything about it and it didn't harm her video overall.

And the whole thing was really well done. It gave me more insight into what it takes to learn many simple moves that we see top skaters do easily. Hopefully she'll inspire more adults to start skating!
 

macy

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 12, 2011
The competition really bothered me as well. The whole video was in such serious mood so I expected her to enter some sort of real competition where skaters are scored with judging system of some kind (even the 6.0 would have been okay as it has been used in actual competitions). Instead there was a strange mix of galas, TV show worthy performances and some actual skating as well. But she probably couldn't find any adult competition that would fit her schedule, so I'll let it be. Another thing is that her coach has some controversial reputation as he was suspended by Skate Canada for sending inappropriate messages to underage skater. However, the creator wasn't involved in skating world so she probably didn't know anything about it and it didn't harm her video overall.

And the whole thing was really well done. It gave me more insight into what it takes to learn many simple moves that we see top skaters do easily. Hopefully she'll inspire more adults to start skating!

completely agree about the competition...like she did all this work and showed some actual glimpses of real life inside the skating world and then sort of just ruined it. and i had no idea about what her coach did either, she probably had no idea.

i skimmed through her YT channel and it looks like she tries all these different things, like sports and careers. it makes me wonder if she has stuck to any of them, and if she's still skating a bit.
 

drivingmissdaisy

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
What I thought was interesting is that she did a reasonably good spiral; that's something I thought would have been harder, given how much the element was worth before it was removed as a requirement.
 

bunnybarista

If I risk it all, could you break my fall?~
On the Ice
Joined
May 27, 2018
I've been watching Michelle's videos for a while prior to her skating video. I wish she had approached this video in a similar way to her ballet video: she wasn't setting out to be "competitive," and the grand finale was a lovely little exhibition for friends. I think the ending of the skating video would have been much stronger if she had done an exhibition instead of creating her own bogus competition - in an actual competition, I don't see any scenario where she'd win over all of the kiddos who've clearly been skating for years, even the lower-level ones. I agree with previous posters in this thread that the "competition" ended the video on a sour note.

As an adult skater, I would have loved to see her engaging with the adult skating community (beyond the brief mention of the elderly lady rocking it) - her comments along the lines of "omg I'm too old for this" paired with dramatic crying wasn't super impressive... it felt disrespectful to the large adult skating community (she might not even be aware of how many of us are working our butts off to live out our skating dreams). Yes, skating is really hard, but you're never too old...

Since I like her videos in general, and love skating, I thought I would enjoy this video. Ultimately, I didn't really. However, I will say that she progressed quite well for two months. (Then again, most beginners aren't on the ice for several hours a day, nor are they already in great shape like she is.)
 

hanyuufan5

✨**:。*
Medalist
Joined
May 19, 2018
Very interesting!

-the "competition" at the end was a sad mockery of what a real one is like, even at the club level, although I cant say I expected it to be realistic after everything shown in every skating movie ever. It kind of tainted my opinion of the whole video since it's the last thing shown...she talked the whole thing about her real experience with learning the sport but then kind of ruined it with the show costumes/programs from the other skaters, the older woman competing with young girls, skating under a spotlight, getting flowers and medals on the ice, and the "judges" holding up paper marks. It was honestly the farthest thing away from a real competition, but she would have had to join a club and wait to attend a real USFSA sanctioned adult competition if she had done it correctly.

....and I don't think I'll be watching. :laugh:

However, adults ARE allowed to compete standard track at most levels in the US. She definitely could have done a standard or basic skills or non-qualifying competition rather than an adult one. But uh, yeah, they don't have paper marks.

As for being cold after getting off the ice, I'm usually boiling hot while and immediately after skating, then about half an hour later, I start to freeze for some reason.

And as for spirals, some people are just naturals at them and get them right away.
 
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