The visualization and motor planning involved in learning to figure skate is wonderful practice for my princess. Proprioception is the name for one of our senses, and proprioception has to do with knowing where your body is in space. Individuals with a poor sense of proprioception usually compensate for not sensing where they are in space by using their eyes, their vision, to provide that information. But, in skating, looking down, at one's feet, throws off balance, and certain skills must happen with the head up, eyes forward, while the skater uses proprioception, visualization, motor planning to make those movements.
Today, my mind wandered to an exercise we used to do as part of vision therapy, where we taped the outline of a head and torso to the wall, and with my daughter facing the outline, we would touch a spot on her back, and she was asked to touch the corresponding part of the torso drawn in front of her. Figure skating lessons provide more experience in this area.
Here are a few video clips from today's session.
Coach tells me that skating in a circle is more challenging:
Skating in a circle in the other direction:
"Can I try again???"
I missed capturing an earlier practice at lifting one foot, but caught this one on video:
1 comment:
I wish we could do something like skating lessons right now, that sound great! But we can do the torso thing, that's not something I'd heard of before and my little guy definitely has that same issue. I think it's why he likes water so much.
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