I Trained Like an Olympic Figure Skater for 30 Days (THE JOURNEY)

foreigner ok fast dramatic music hello internet people sorry it was overly dramatic music I found searching for intense cinematic dramatic music without copyright on youtube but since people have an attention span of three year olds on these

days

, you have To keep things interesting, some of you probably didn't even make it that far to hear this joke anyway, welcome to my channel, my name is Kathy, I'm a fashion, fitness and

figure

skating nerd who makes videos on this channel, but today I'm so excited to announce that I'm embarking on a 30-day

journey

to train like an elite Olympic

figure

skater

to see how far I can go and provide some background on my personal skating.

I started with no experience two years ago and I am qualified. As an adult figure

skater

because if you start past the age of six, seven or eight you are considered old, like in figure skating, I will train with three-time Olympic and world champion Todd Elbridge as well as Ukrainian national champion Dennis Petrov . In addition to working with off-ice specialist and edge specialist Kathleen Mcmillan, I'm really excited to see how much I can improve in 30

days

. I decided why not do this because I'm about to start working full time and I'm going to be sucked in as a corporate slave so I decided why not so let's jump right into this.

Hi, I'm Todd Eldridge, uh, 1996 world figure skating champion, six-time US champion, three-time Olympian, I've been training for probably about 20 years or so. Now it is also rewarding as a skater to be skating and rewarding as a coach to help other kids achieve their goals and dreams. Figure skating is a very difficult sport, it is very technical, there are many different techniques between both jumps, turns and all the different ones. facets of skating that make it a very intricate and difficult sport to master and that you will probably never master. Well, intensive course, there are four disciplines.

The first is the one I'm addressing, which is for single women, which consists of a skater and you doing spins. jumps and step sequences, also known as intermediate choreographic movements, as the legendary Unicom does here. The second is a men's singles, which is the same thing, but it's men showcased by two-time Olympic gold medalists, Yuzuru Hanyu. Wow, I sound like a sportscaster. Ice dancing is minor. Known and often confused with pears, the position requires that the two people skate very close together and that there are no jumps, but there are turns and lifts. The lips cannot be above the man's shoulders.

This is Tessa and Scott and basically Canada's sweethearts. They are also In my opinion, both extremely hot pears are the scariest and give off glory vibes, but they are made up of two people and there are shots where the girl is basically thrown on the ice, side by side, jumps, spins , where the girl is thrown to the ground. sequences of air and steps like in real life the women take all the elves the ladies consist of three categorical elements jumps masks and something I will refer to as skating skills throughout the video which consists of all turns spiral edges , etc. there are too many to explain all you know is that any sport when you train at the highest level it is very difficult, it is very demanding, the amount of hours you spend on the ice off the ice, you know, focused and oriented to what it takes to that your body is capable. to do all the hard things you ask him to do when you're on the ice and you're training to put together a 30-day training plan.

I consulted and interviewed the former Junior and two-time National Grand Prix competitor. Taiwanese Champion Emma Jang and former US Junior National Competitor Melinda, who I'll include our entire conversation in a separate podcast-style episode, um, but here's a continuation of some of the highlights from their conversation to tide me over to develop a training plan and then finish. Summer is when everyone trains so hard that you spend all day at the rink, like you're going to go to the ice house at least at 9 a.m. m. or something like that, then I'd like to skate for an hour and a half and then go to pilates or whatever it was called ultimate skill, it was like conditioning in the office and then stay another hour and a half, so yeah, that would be five days a week On the weekend, sometimes it might just be going to the local practice rates.

Instead of doing maxibility like my trainer ran office sessions like we just went out and practiced like jumping jacks, I remember after those sessions I was really sore and I once liked the maxibility thing, which is like upstairs in At home I was trying to walk down the stairs and I literally liked every step. I was shaking all the way to the cars, like sometimes they always say oh yeah, so if you wake up one day and you don't feel any pain. something is wrong four sessions like three hours five sessions on a difficult day one session would be just for choreography and skating usually one of the later sessions I think 30 minutes of a session doing turns two jumping sessions and then sessions running the program thank you You Emma and Melinda, my 30-day training plan consists of heavy on-ice and offline cardio and strength flexibility training, for a total of 37 hours of physical activity per week.

Shit, what did I sign up for? Hello, so today is the first day and You are driving to the training facility. I'm going to see a couple of new coaches today. I'm a little scared. Whenever you work with a new trainer, you don't really know what to expect from him or her or what. the training style is and for me I'm always very self-conscious because I know I'm not a super high level skater it's like, oh, what if they look at me and I look like I don't know a terrible one, but? You will see and compare how these three people train me and what their training style is and what it is like to train with these amazing and super elite people, so let's stop driving the bad feeling that this filming setup is going to go down and I drive us .

We're on our way okay guys so I'm here at the training facility and I have my mask on and we're going to take all the necessary safety precautions and we're going to see what I learned today, let's hope I don't fall. butt and die now I'm going to show you what I do to warm up before going on the ice because skating requires a lot of flexibility, so if you're not warmed up properly and you don't do a lot of dynamic stretching, you can get hurt easily. I'll walk you through my dynamic warm-up. Come on, one of the most unique jumps is the axis jump.

It is the only jump that takes off forward and lands backwards on the blade. There is a theme up front that you must hit. In order to do the jump in the air, the shaft comes forward, it's also much harder to generate the rotation, your shoulders and your hips, and things just don't work the same, okay, let's get going, let's do it. um here in the circle come back and then jump again okay oh first exercise don't be afraid to push a little bit harder see basically what happens you start to go deeper bend your knees and cross your feet oh , so I just finished four and a half.

The training hours today were good, sometimes it can be a little discouraging because the trainer tells you to do this and it's like you can't do it and you think: "Oh, my backspin is turning more to the right side" . I'm getting more used to the rotational force of the shaft. I hope the axle arrives soon. Well, I'll eat my banana because I'm hungry. I really enjoyed working with Todd and Dennis, but they are very different and you can definitely do it now. You tell the difference between the American style of training and the Russian or Ukrainian or anywhere in the Slavic region.

When you work with a Russian-Ukrainian coach, they have already pre-analyzed you and want you to learn the technique from them. They already know all the things that are wrong with you and they are very, very strict about technique, which is really good. The American trainer is generally more like you build your own skin, they teach you what you want to learn. I think a combination of both is very good, yes, let's see how it goes and, just and weekly, use your whole body. It's something that I correlate to if you took a ballet dancer and you took a gymnast and put them together, it would probably be like that. create a great figure skater, you know it's very athletic, but it's also an art form at the same time, so currently in this session I'm going to practice a lot of my aspects, that's really very important, what I learned is what makes Beautiful skating is not necessarily like triple jumps and spins and all the flashy things are all things that connect together, even if you can do those things and you can't have the skating skills, you still look really bad.

Hi guys. So we're currently at the halfway point or two weeks, so I just want to talk to you guys about how I'm feeling in terms of kind of training my axis, which is probably one of my biggest goals right now that I worked with. Todd on the pole reflects, so I've never actually been in a pole harness before and if you watch my video, it's like the trainers are pulling you so you get more height so you can spin longer, so I was really excited to that they put it on me. that and finally feeling what a rotation and a half feels like and I don't, it feels so fast like you're spitting so fast in the air and spinning so fast and your body is so tense.

My original goal was to simply write about concentrating on working the double salt, but Todd recommended that he start working on my double toe and my double swipe at the same time during my turns. I hate practicing my turns, not going to lie. uh, spinning is probably one of my least favorite things. I don't know why, but I feel like my position has been one where you lean back and twist and almost feel like you're about to die. I feel much more comfortable and the position looks much better. I'm leaning. backing away less and less afraid of falling backwards, which is good, my camel still needs a lot of work.

I feel like that one is very difficult for me for some strange reason. Recoil still feels a little iffy, but it's much more comfortable to stay upright. side uh doing a lot more revolution my skating skills are also improving a lot better and surprisingly a lot of my lessons with dennis um I worked with him again yesterday and I actually work on a lot of my skating skills with him because he's so adamant in refine that technique and really be able to get a good lead before attempting any of my jumps, so I told him my goal was the axel, but we never actually attempted an axle on ice, rather he was the one who broke it. and saying, "Okay, your front outside edge has to be very strong and you're behind the outside edge, so we did a lot of crossovers that I definitely need a lot of help with because I literally feel like I'm going to die every time I cross my feet um, that It's been a big help.

It's been really like pushing and turning my body mentally. It's been a bit of a hard workout. I feel very fatigued for a lot of hours because sometimes I feel like I'm making progress, but other times I'm not. It really feels good and you feel a little down, so I try not to let myself feel like that. This project is just about knowing how much I can improve personally. I'm not really trying to compare myself to anyone else, whether it's another adult skater. a regular skater, an Olympic skier, I just want to see how hard I can personally push myself and push my own body to see the things I can achieve.

What is off-ice training? So I had to do it too. I

trained

a lot on normal land, so I did a lot of my off-ice axis, which is just practicing the jump technique on land, I also did a lot of box jump exercises to train the strength of a length, yes, for flexibility, I stretched for an hour every day, dancer's pose. It's a classic thing to keep your legs up high, which is a spinning position on the ice, but I can't really go all the way up. My hamstrings, my inner thighs, my inner thighs are so bad that they are probably one of the least flexible areas of my body.

Stretching because I'm always super tight, hip flexors for those on ice, lunges, middle splits, my middle splits are horrendous, uh, I've been trying to get them down forever, but I literally can't get butterflies for a hip engagement and front splits, one of My sides are really bad because I pulled the rope from my left hand before, so that side is always much worse than the other side for cardio. I ran many days. I didn't try the ring and upload it, but I've been filming. because one looks like I'm dying and two more and today I'm here with my amazing friend lucy ma and lucy is a weightlifter and she's super amazing today we're going to learn some strength training tips from lucy hello everyone.

I'm very excited to be here. My name is Lucyand I am currently at Stanford studying medicine. My history in fitness is that I started out as a ping pong athlete and did a lot of cardio and resistance work. Yeah, so go ahead and get ready, you can basically have your feet planted shoulder width apart, so now you want to lower your hips and straighten your back, you almost want to have your back curled back a little bit. because right now you're a little bit arched so you want to back up a little bit and then yeah there you do it then you look up and then you flatten your back a little bit yeah there you do it amazing yeah so you basically move your hips. go down a little bit more and then yeah, there you go, you're doing great and then now just um, now lift with your legs, so really try to lift, drive up with your legs, there you go, it really shows you your posture.

Right now it's pretty good, so you don't want to roll your shoulders back, but lower them, you don't want to roll them back so your back arches, tilt your hips forward a little bit, try to go down, so bend your legs a little. bit and then go back down, go there. You do it really well and then you go back to squeezing really active, there you go, wow, that was really good, so I think there are things you need to keep in mind when you're squatting, so one is to really squeeze your lower back. , okay, so basically squeeze.

As you squeeze, squeezing your lower back, trapezius, and scapula together tilts your pelvis a little, almost as if you're squeezing your butt in, like you're trying to shrink your butt. There you take a deep breath and then you would hold it on your belly and then you would just bend down, yeah, there you go, good, there you go, and then you go up, okay, and then you drive up, there you go, that was great, yeah, Do you want to do something like table rock first there? you go so you're in the main plank position and the main thing you want to do is make sure your hips are neutral so your hips go down a little bit um from where you are there you go there you go a little more yeah perfect I love it I love it love it, yeah, and try it, and if you can, try to keep your legs straighter that way, it really focuses, kind of what contracts, what stabilizes you through all of this, is your core, go to your forearm.

You would just have your um you would be lying like on the outside of your foot um on the same side there you go and then you just lift it up and lift it up and yeah there you go you can just dip your hips down um yeah , there you do it, that's great, yeah, and then going up is a really great way to work the oblique on that side, so I've been working with Kathy for about a month or so, we usually do it once a week on that short. period of time helping her understand single axis jumping and what it takes and the techniques that will be needed for her to get that job.

We use what is called a traction harness that I can help her with. jump and help her feel what it's supposed to feel like to do that jump when you start a new activity, let's say skating or any activity as an older person, it can definitely make it more challenging, you know, if you start. a young age, obviously, the fear of falling and all that kind of stuff is a little different because falling from a very, very low distance doesn't hurt as much, you know, hopefully one day we'll see her land. Hmm, hey guys, today is a very bittersweet day.

Today is my last day of training for this project. Last week, in the third week, I injured my right hip flexors, so unfortunately for the entire last week I haven't been able to run. jumps I really really want the end of this project to be able to make a program for you to show the improvement in the last 30 days. Hopefully when I film the finale I'll be able to jump again, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed because I really really want to show you this show that I've been working really hard on for a while. I am very grateful to have the resources and opportunity to pursue this project and to be able to learn from such incredible professionals.

I have a safe facility to be able to practice and train, so for all of those things I'm very grateful and I think I feel like I've not only gotten stronger physically over the last 30 days, but also mentally stronger when you keep falling and falling and falling. but you just have to get up and keep trying and I felt like that's what I've learned the most and don't compare yourself to anyone but yourself. I always felt that my goal today on the track is to be better. "A version of myself than I was yesterday and I'll definitely keep skating for as long as this old lady body lets me, so I hope this gives some kind of motivation to people to try something new or challenge themselves with something new.

It doesn't have to be skating, but it can be anything you were afraid to do or never had the chance to do as a kid. Once I film my final show on the 30th, which is the final performance, I'll put it up on video. separate. I'll probably link it in the description below. Thank you all so much for being on this 30 day trip and we'll see where this old lady goes.