I’ve been thinking about how learning to skate is both a physical and a mental skill. Of course you need to be able to physically move your body in certain ways, and involves a certain amount of strength in your legs, butt and core. But perhaps the harder aspect of skating is building up the mental skills and habits it takes to execute various moves.
Just think of moving yourself forward.
For our entire lives we have moved forward in a couple of basic ways — by walking and running. Walking is essentially propelling yourself by pushing off from the ground with your rear leg, while your forward leg catches you, and then you switch legs.
Skating forward is totally different. You are propelling yourself mostly by pushing to the side, while you roll forward on the front leg. And then you switch legs. This feels counter-intuitive — it breaks how we normally move in the world. So you see beginners trying to skate by using their toe stop to propel themselves forward, like they are walking. Which of course doesn’t really work.
Eventually, you learn through trial and error how skating forward works. In the beginning you have to think intentionally about pushing to the side with each stroke, and gliding forward with the other foot, before transitioning to the other leg. You might think “push… glide… switch… push … glide…. switch.” At least, that’s what I did when I initially learned how to skate.
And then your brain and body learn the movement, and you don’t have to think so intently about it. You start to build what is erroneously called “muscle memory” for how to execute the move. In fact, you are creating new neural pathways in your brain that get more efficient as you get comfortable with the move (UNESCO, Edutopia).
Neuroscientists have been chorusing “cells that fire together, wire together” since the late 1990s, meaning that if you perform a task or recall some information that causes different neurons to fire in concert, it strengthens the connections between those cells. Over time, these connections become thick, hardy road maps that link various parts of the brain — and stimulating one neuron in the sequence is more likely to trigger the next one to fire. Thus, says Willis, “Practice makes permanent. The more times the network is stimulated, the stronger and more efficient it becomes.”
Edutopia (2010)
So consistent practice may cause changes to your brain’s structure. How cool is that?
This means that the neural pathway associated with a specific skating movement becomes more efficient as you master it — you have to use less mental energy to call upon that skill. After hours of practice you don’t have to think so intently about skating forward. Your brain knows how to execute it, and you just go. Your mind is freer to focus on other tasks like turning, speeding up, slowing down, avoiding obstacles. But that takes time, and practice — hours and hours of mindful practice.
As we get older, it gets harder to develop new neural pathways. We might short circuit that learning with other mental distractions and emotional stress that gets in the way of pathway development. We never leave that initial learning phase. And it’s probably why a lot of people stop skating. I see it way too often at the rink.
Many other physical pursuits were like this for me. Learning to tap dance stands out as my biggest fail. While I could struggle through basic steps like the shuffle or a ball change, and do simple combos, I never got to the level where I was able to actually tap without intentionally thinking about EVERY SINGLE THING my body was doing. It was mentally, physically and emotionally draining. Weeks and months of effort for very little payoff. So I gave up.
I think the same thing happens for skating for a lot of folks. They see other people skating, or they have some memory of skating as a child, and imagine it being a fun physical pursuit. And then they put a pair of skates on and experience the gap between what they saw or imagined and what effort it would take to actually skate. They feel uncertain, unbalanced, and unsure of what to do.
If they are lucky, they have others around to help them — a friend, a teacher, a kind stranger. But often they are by themselves, in their garage or living room. They shakily try and get from the couch to the doorway, and they fall down or they crash into the lamp. For some people, that’s where their skate journey ends, sadly enough.
Or they pick themselves up, take a deep breath, and try again. And again. They graduate from the living room to the basketball court. And from the basketball court to the skating rink. They put in the hours to develop those mental pathways and physical skills it takes to skate. And hopefully they have fun doing it.
So whenever I see a new person at the rink, I try and encourage them, give them a thumbs up, ask how they are doing. If I see the same person a couple of times in a row, I remark on it and congratulate them for returning. If they ask me how did I get so good, I tell them I put in the hours and the days and the months, and I encourage them to keep at it.
Cause it takes time to rewire your brain.
Relevant Literature:
- “How to practice effectively…for just about anything” (2017) Annie Bosler and Don Greene, TedED
- “Neuroplasticity: How the brain changes with learning” (2019) UNESCO
- “Neuroplasticity: Learning Physically Changes the Brain” (2010) Edutopia
- “Spaced Practice” UC San Diego