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Figure Skating Practice Book Cover
Elevate your figure skating practice with the Figure Skating Prompt & Record Book. This essential tool is designed to help skaters structure their independent practice sessions effectively. It encourages daily recording of success rates for planned programs and weekly recordings of success rates for individual elements, fostering a more disciplined and thoughtful approach to practice.

About the Freeskate Practice Prompt & Record Book, 1 st Edition

Figure skating practices are largely autonomous unless receiving a lesson. While this independence fosters important life skills, not all skaters use their practice time effectively, and some could benefit from a more thoughtful approach.

Primary Objective:
The primary objective of this book is to offer figure skaters additional structure to incorporate into their independent practice sessions. Skaters will document their success rates daily for each element in their solo. One to three times per week, skaters will also record their success rates for individual elements.

Secondary Objective:
The secondary objective is to provide a time-saving tool. This book includes a very condensed yearly planning instrument segmented into seasons and weeks, well-suited for personalized, concise review and planning meetings with skaters and parents. Other content is designed for off-ice group meetings with skaters of various ages and levels to start each season right.

Engagement Approach: This approach engages skaters in a unique way. Although figure skating is an individual sport, coming together as a group and declaring their personal goals in their own Freeskate Prompt & Record Book fosters a sense of camaraderie.  A chance to ‘talk shop’.

Team Involvement:
Parents can easily review their child’s self-assessments, evaluations, test results, goals set (and achieved), and brief, accurate daily overview of lessons, including the coach and focus area. The calendar(s) within the book are particularly helpful when working with a team of coaches, ensuring that all aspects are taught with a mindful and balanced approach, even when schedules change on the fly.  

Features:

  • Goals: All age friendly prompts to set realistic goals with short-form answers.
  • Tests: Succinct templates to declare test goals in freeskate and other disciplines.
  • Arena Patterns/Program Layout: Templates to draw detailed diagrams of solo patterns with program elements on the ice, aiding in visual placement.
  • Level Up: Tailored input from coaches ensures a skater’s focus during independent practice times has additional purpose and balance. Includes time-saving templates for individual meetings with parents and skaters.
  • Calendars: Tools for tracking important dates, sharpening schedules, and providing a short overview of lessons, including who and what the focus was during the lesson, competition dates and test days.
  • Self-Evaluation and Self-Assessment: Frameworks for skaters to assess their own progress and performance in both their programs and individual elements.
    • Self-Evaluation: Involves an individual reflecting on their overall performance, such as solos.
    • Self-Assessment: A process where an individual evaluates their own knowledge, skills, or abilities, such as elements.
  • Simulations Record: The opportunity to skate alone on the ice surface is excellent competition preparation with detailed records of marks on simulation days, completed by a coach or evaluator.
  • Croquis: A fun exercise for skaters to imagine and assess competition attire. If they already have an outfit, they can design and color body templates to resemble what they will wear.
  • Active Leisure or Cross-Training: These periods ensure skaters maintain overall mental and physical health and fitness.  It encourages skaters (and parents) to recognize that time off the ice is still active time. Even family vacations can be active. Skaters/parents can write down activities they will engage in while off the ice/on vacation/participating in another sport. Cross-training should include input from coaches to address specific weaknesses to improve before the next season begins, reducing the risk of injury and a positive start to the season.
  • Team Coaching: Another great use of the calendar is a quick note at the end of the skater’s lesson of who and what was involved, by coach or skater. This helps ensure a well-balanced, accurate approach to skater’s lessons in a simple overview.
  • Review & Assess: Recorded assessments show improvements or areas needing more attention. Next objectives can be set from there, allowing skaters to gain deeper insights into their strengths and areas needing improvement.
  • Inspiration: Discover quotes or brain-teasers placed throughout the book, adding a touch of fun and surprise to the journey.
  • Best of all: Managed all in one place.
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FAQ

The recording should only take moments per session. If the skater is performing their program during a lesson, this is a perfect time for the coach to mark and record the elements, instead of the skater doing it after the program. When the self- assessment elements are being recorded (1-3x per week), the skater should have performed (at least) 5 elements before ‘breaking’ to record their success rate.

A habit takes 21-days to make. Lead your skaters by informing them the expectation is for their Practice & Record book is to be brought out to the boards every freeskate session and kept in their bag, even after reviewing it with parents at home. Place it back in bag. The book now lives in their skate bag.

STAR 3 who will be soon moving up to STAR 4, up through Gold, Pre-Juvenile – Novice. Younger skaters, no matter their level may need more explanation and assistance utilizing the book at first. For example: after the initial set up of the book during a group off ice meeting, a coach can utilize the book during the next couple of lessons with skaters to reinforce what they learned during the initial set up.

Printing has been found to be more beneficial for the brain than typing. Research shows when we write by hand, we engage a complex network that includes enhances brain connectivity,
motor skills and sensory processing, helping to improve spelling, memory recall, and conceptual understanding. Additionally, handwriting provides, richer spatial details, making information
more memorable and easier to recall in the mind’s eye. 

Athletes need to quickly and efficiently gather and process important sensory information to perform well. Skilled performance requires a decision-making process that involves determining what information to extract during the unfolding task and based on this information, when to make the next movement and which movement to make.

Also, nobody wants skaters to have their cell phones at the boards.

Summer training varies wildly between clubs and skaters. From no ice surface, to fitting two seasons worth of training into the summer. Some skaters will use summer as a pre-competition phase while others will use it for acquisition. From vacation time to training at a different school under different coaches, it’s difficult to standardize or structure a summer practice module that would encompass all possibilities. After using the Practice Prompt & Record Book for the previous 32 to 46 weeks, perhaps skaters will apply their knowledge and create / maintain their own basic records during their summer school wherever they may be training.

The “work” involved focuses on setting up both the book and the skaters for success. This process should be a positive, team-building exercise for everyone involved.

The books assists skaters to be accountable for their use of practice time as well as introducing a new way of observing their training, progress and consistency.  Where coaches may use the book for reference, strategy and insight.

Skaters then bring the book to the ice surface daily to record their program’s success rate, as they should be practicing it every day (with the exception of the first few days after a competition).

Skaters should note who conducted their lessons and what was covered (this can be done at the end of the session, off the ice).

At the coach’s discretion, skaters should also complete the individual elements one to three times per week.

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