By: Maria Brown

Hello everyone, now as many of you know, I am a competitive figure skater.  But many people don’t know what that means. Some of the common questions I have been asked are, How many days a week do you train? And for how long? Do you love it? What’s your favorite part?  So throughout the year I am going to take you through the life of a competitive figure skater.

SUMMER!!!

While most teenagers are using their summer to catch up on Netflix, spend days at beaches with friends, and travel with family, figure skaters are using the extra time to train. Summer is intense for figure skaters.  It is the time in which we are working on every program that we have in order to compete the best program possible at our summer competitions. Many people think that ice skating is only a winter sport. But actually we train year round with no breaks.  Summer is the beginning of our season, in the spring we learn and train new programs to compete at the summer competitions. These summer competitions are what qualify us for international and (in the upper level) world competitions. * Here is a look at my summer schedule.

Weekly Schedule:

Monday

Edge class: 11:15-11:45

Skate: 11:45-2:30

Tuesday

Skate: 10:00-1:15

Conditioning: 2:30-3:15

Wednesday

Choreography class: 8:30-9

Skate: 10-1:15

Thursday

Skate: 10-12:15, 1:30-2:30

Off ice dance: 12:30-1:15

Conditioning: 2:30-3:15

Friday

Most Fridays I traveled to Detroit Michigan in order to train with some of the best coaches in the US.

When we attend competitions it isn’t like your normal vacation.  Although we are going to cool new places we are limited on what we can do during the competition.  We aren’t allowed to swim because it makes your legs really loose and wobbly. We also have to be at the rink constantly.  A competition may begin on Friday with a 6:00 AM practice. (meaning that I have to wake up at 4 to put on makeup, do hair, and get to the rink for an off ice warmup). Then I might go back to the hotel for a nap and return to the rink about 1 hour later for a 20-minute warmup.  Then depending on how much you have until the competition you will either eat lunch or breakfast and then go back to the rink one hour early in order to warm up off ice. If the competition is at 12:00 PM or earlier, you may just eat a bigger breakfast and wait to eat lunch after.  Then your event may last from 1-2 hours and then you have some time to relax and do some sight-seeing. Your next practice will either be later that night or the next morning. Then you go to bed a repeat the same thing.

*I also attended three summer competitions, I went to Laurel, MD, Lake Placid, NY, and Chicago, IL.