The line, for sure, is the first figure which
should be taught to people who never skated in a team. This way
it’s easier to learn how to skate in unison with other
people executing the same steps. Moreover, the line is a good
"tool" for the skaters to understand that kind of
feeling every member of a team needs to make it as homogeneous as
possible. By definition, the line is a figure made by a number of
skaters, aligned on a straight line, skating the same steps in
perfect unison and at the same time travelling on a trajectory perpendicular to the same line. During the execution, every skater
must hold the next one using the same kind of hold as
every other one in the line, and the head movements must be
carefully studied by the coach to give the skaters the
possibility to keep checking the rest of the line and mantain it
as straight as possible. Even if the line is the first figure to
be taught, it shouldn’t be underestimated. Actually, the
when a skater tries to skate in a team for the first time, it'll
be very difficult for him/her to keep a line straight, expecially
when the skills of each skater of the team are different. Since
the line must be skated both forward and backward, it’s the
ideal tool a coach can use to identify the the skaters with more
technical problems, so to help them improving their skating
technique in a faster and more efficient way. The next step will
consist in start skating a line half forward and half backward
(or viceversa) to let the team practice steps like "three
turns", "rockers", "mohawks" and
"chocktaws" during the change of direction. It’s
better if a team starts skating using various types of holds
quite early, and not only the shoulder to shoulder hold.
This way a skater learns to be less dependent from the rest of
the team, because we must always remember that a member of a team
needs be able to skate by himself/herself too. When a team gets
quite good, another step forward will be the execution of other
kinds of straight lines, which can be more or less complicated
combinations of our still extremely useful simple line I’ve
decribed until now. I'll just mention, for instance, a kind of
line I call "file" or "follow the leader": the trajectory of the line isn’t
perpendicular but parallel to the line, just like "a
train." This kind of line doesn’t have a huge technical
value, still, it’s an important one to practice because
often used in the transitions between two different figures.
There are also many various models and combinations of lines
I’ll list here below:
Note: it’s very useful to also start
practicing the change of hold while the line is
travelling along the rink. This way your team won’t
encounter many problems when this becomes a required skill in the
Short Program.
