Usfsa Basic Skills: Fill & Download for Free

I will never say never and I like to believe anything is possible. But it would be very difficult and involve a tremendous amount of work (which is the same even if you had started skating at 5 years old). It depends on your natural ability, drive, determination, time constraints, financial constraints, parental support, etc. It also can depend on your discipline - ice dancers tend to have more longevity than singles skaters. But the Grand Prix is on par with the Olympics, extraordinarily high level of skill. Only a few in hundreds of elite skaters are at this level every year in the US.That being said, you should know that there are many, many levels of competition, starting from Basic Skills up to what you see in the Olympics. If you just want to compete for the fun of perhaps winning a medal, there will be many, many opportunities. Check with your local figure skating club. Depending on where you live or how far you are able to travel there will likely be competitions you could enter after a year or so. When you get older there is a USFSA sponsored US Figure Skating Adult Nationals, where USA adults over the age of 21 compete on a national level in their skill level and age categories. Skills range from waltz jumps to triple jumps in these different categories. There are also international adult figure skating competitions. You can represent your country in an international competition.Competing in the Olympics is not the only goal there is in figure skating. There are many ways to test yourself and skate in competitions at all levels. Skating is an awesome sport so have fun with it!

There really isn’t a level called basic/advanced novice, or at least not one that I’ve heard of. The levels that are most currently in use are the USFSA levels, which are:Snowplowsam 1–3, in which skaters learn basic skating skills like forwards marching and how to safely fall and get back upBasic 1–8, where skaters learn slightly more advanced moves, like backwards skating, two foot and one foot turns, and basic one foot spins.Freeskate 1–6, in which skaters learn advanced skating moves like difficult spins and jumps.Freeskate bronze-gold, where skaters learn double jumps and very advanced spins like flying spins.To compete any of these USFSA levels, whatever the last level you passed is, then that is the level that you will compete for the season. Most programs are 90 seconds.There is also a different category of freestyle tests, and these are all through US Figure Skating and your figure skating club. They arePre-Preliminary, which has half jumps, toe-loop, salchow, a forward scratch spin, and a sit spin.Preliminary, which has basic single jumps, a freestyle spin, and a spin with a change of position.Pre-Juvenile, which has more basic jumps, and more spins that are change of position.Juvenile contains the hardest single jumps, up to an axel. You also have to do two difficult spins in this program.Intermediate starts introducing double jumps that are needed to test, starting with the easier doubles like double salchow or double toe-loop. This also requires advanced spins.Novice moves on through the double jumps, and requires even more difficult spins.Junior is the second to last test, so it contains very difficult things, like advanced double jumps and flying spins.Senior is the final level, finishing off all of the double jumps and all of the base spins that you can have in competition.The competition in these levels is a bit more confusing, however. The requirements for regular competition are a lot higher than what you have to do to pass. For example, senior is the level competed in the Olympics, but to pass the test and qualify to compete you only need to do doubles and base level spins. They still want every skater to compete, so because you have to compete your most recently passed test there is a different track of competitions called well-balanced test track, which only contains the testing requirements in a program.It depends which of these levels you are at, but once you figure it out and pass the tests, then the only requirements are the moves that are in your level.

If you are right-handed: you spin to your left, and jump to your right. If you are left handed: you so in to your right, and jump to your left., generally and basically...and at least, initially. (There may be exceptions to this rule, once in a blue moon, or depending on the person, if you are performing mirror-image reflection of your learning source, or for whatever other reason which may have caused you to result in this unusual direction (maybe you were born naturally left-handed, and as a child, because of old superstitious outmoded schoolso of thought, your parents tried to force you to be right-handed; or maybe you’re naturally ambidextrous, or stronger on that side, for whatever reason. It is known in bio-mechanical circles that if you train the right side of the body to learn a skil, such as skating in a counter-clockwise direction, that the part of the brain that would function if you were skating clockwise would also partially learn that skill. So, logically, then skating in both directions will only improve your skills in your body and brain, and make it easier to learn new skills while improving existing ones. All of these factors working together will certainly make you a more interesting skater and sharper individual! Keep notes in your Daily Training Diary how differently it feels when spinning to the left and jumping right (again, if you are a “righty”/naturally right-hand dominant person…that is, you hold fork and spoon in right hand to eat, and you write holding pen or pencil in your right hand… and then feel how awkward or clumsy it seems to write as a “lefty”). Sure, it may be done, should you decide to put the extra time in required for practicing, or would you rather focus on simply being a “righty”. (I knew a surgeon once who told me he practiced holding a scalpel with both right and left hands, “just in case something ever happened to one of his hands”)! You will have to decide if you want to devote that much time to being ambidextrous; or simply be the very best right or left handed skater you can be. As a skating student, and ballet student, and in order to have equal muscle tone, you already know you must perform your skating moves both directions anyway: left forward crossovers, leaning out to your left forward outside edge (LFO), right forward crossovers (RFO), leaning out to your right outside edge, and backward, etc., et al, all your patch work, figures, through each level of the USFSA sanctioned tests. Let us know here how your experiment goes skating to both sides! Take care, and thanks for asking! Have fun and be safe!