Category: Freestyle slalom

Freestyle slalom moves and levels

Bev

Freestyle slalom skating is interesting because it preserves some moves that have been lost in modern figure skating, like grapevines and the full range of pivots, and because it doesn’t try to be like ice skating. Instead, it takes advantage of the architecture of inline skates. It’s also still developing.

USA Roller Sports has set up a series of levels, or “grades,” in freestyle slalom skating. These parallel the tests figure skaters have worked at for over a century: passing one gives you a feeling of accomplishment and concrete evidence of your skating skill.

The slalom tests are structured like the ISI freestyle tests in figure skating: first you do each maneuver in isolation, then you skate a program (1:45-2:00 minutes) to music of your choosing that incorporates at least six of the tricks. General skating skills and transitions are considered in the program.

Here are the USARS freestyle slalom test requirements, with links to video tutorials. I’ve given preference to English-language tutorials. I am not affiliated with any of these videos or USARS. The tests are copied from the USARS site, and I found the videos by searching YouTube.

Grade I

Grade II

Grade III

Grade IV

Grade V

Grade VI

Grade VII

Grade VIII

There are many brief videos of tricks on the World Slalom Skaters Association YouTube Channel.

Grapevines

Bev

The grapevine is a move that goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century but has mostly been forgotten by figure skaters today. It still survives outside of figure skating.

On December 21, 1867, this move became known to the skaters of England through a diagram and brief description in The Field, the newspaper of choice for skaters of that time.

From M. A. C., “Club Figures—The Grapevine, &c.,” The Field, December 21, 1867, 511. Image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive.

A few years later, T. Maxwell Witham described his experience learning the grapevine from this diagram.

I learned the grape vine by simply taking a diagram that had been sent to me from Canada (unaccompanied by any description) … and forcing my feet to follow the turns and curves. By this means I acquired the action, and subsequent practice made it go.

T. Maxwell Witham, “The Grape Vine,” The Field, December 30, 1871, 581.

Other skaters were perplexed, and he tried to help them by appending a rather long and confusing explanation. A quarter-century later, he implied that grapevines were worthwhile even though they were not “pure skating.”

Although it will have become apparent to my readers that I am a great advocate for pure skating, as exemplified by long-sustained efforts on one or the other foot, yet it would be absurd to ignore the beauties of the two-foot figures which are known to most figure-skaters as “the grape-vines.”

T. Maxwell Witham, A System of Figure Skating, 5th ed. (London: Horace Cox, 1897), 182.

His attitude toward “pure skating” lingers in competitive figure skating. The Rulebook requires to skaters to minimize their two-footed skating (rules 6091 and 8072(A)(3)), so you won’t find grapevines in figure skating programs today. But you can find them elsewhere: in freestyle skating on inline skates. The technique is a bit different because the skates are, but you can see how nicely grapevines move.

Naomi Grigg explains how to do a grapevine on inline skates.

This was the first of many grapevines to perplex skaters. Because these moves were skated on two feet, they were difficult to explain in words and pictures. Today, videos make communicating tricks much easier.

References

The 2020 Official U.S. Figure Skating Rulebook. 2019. Colorado Springs: U.S. Figure Skating.

M. A. C. 1867. “Club Figures—The Grapevine, &c.” The Field, December 21, 1867, 511.

T. Maxwell Witham. 1871. “The Grape Vine.” The Field, December 30, 1871, 581.

T. Maxwell Witham. 1897. A System of Figure Skating, 5th ed. London: Horace Cox, 1897.

Pivots

Bev

Among the skills learned by today’s figure skaters are pivots, two-foot moves where the skater sticks the toe (or occasionally heel) of one blade into the ice while the other foot circles around it. Skaters generally learn four pivots in this order:

  1. Forward inside (at :20)
  2. Backward inside (at 0:34)
  3. Backward outside (at 0:19)
  4. Forward outside

The pivots are named after the edge the circling foot is on. The links are to the ISI test requirements. The forward outside pivot is considered an uncaptured move by the ISI and is rarely seen, but it is done in the same position as the backward outside pivot.

Back in the day, there were more pivots. The Skater’s Text Book (p. 59–60) lists six pivots! The two extra ones are:

  1. The outside edge toe-step forward, foot in front.—Start the same as in the last movement [forward outside pivot], but instead of crossing the foot over behind, cross it in front.
  2. The outside edge toe-step backward, foot in front.—Start on the outside edge backward, and cross the pivot-foot over in front, placing the pivot-toe on the ice, as far over as possible, and circle around it on the outside edge.

What happened to these extra pivots? Figure skaters don’t do them any more, perhaps because they are much harder than the pivots that do survive (even forward outside seems to be dying out) and aren’t as flashy as fancy jumps and spins. But they do survive in freestyle slalom skating. Here’s a video with the full set of freestyle slalom pivots.

The full set of pivots, on inline skates.

The video includes heel pivots, which are rarely done (but known) in figure skating today. The correspondences are:

  1. Forward inside pivot = forward uncrossed toe pivot
  2. Backward inside pivot = backward uncrossed toe pivot
  3. Backward outside pivot = backward crossed-behind toe pivot
  4. Forward outside pivot = forward crossed-behind toe pivot
  5. Extra forward outside pivot = forward crossed-in-front toe pivot
  6. Extra backward outside pivot = backward crossed-in-front toe pivot

These pivots aren’t just curiosities in freestyle slalom skating. They actually get used in programs, like this one:

Sofia Bogdanova does a backward crossed-in-front pivot at 1:41.

It’s fascinating to see how these moves have survived!

Reference

Frank Swift and Marvin R. Clark. 1868. The Skater’s Text Book. New York: John A. Gray & Green.

Freestyle slalom skating

Bev2 Comments
Image courtesy of Seongbin Im.

In this ice-free time, it seems appropriate to post about ways to keep skating off the ice. Skating on wheels—both quad and inline—has evolved in new directions that take advantage of the unique properties of these skates. I’m particularly interested in old skating moves that have survived on wheels, but not on ice.

Freestyle slalom skating consists of a series of tricks done around a line of cones. Skaters usually use inline skates, though quad roller skates are sometimes used, and occasionally people try slalom tricks on ice, generally in hockey skates. Here are a couple of example videos that will give you a sense of how it works.

I find freestyle slalom skating more interesting than artistic inline skating, sometimes called inline figure skating, because it doesn’t try to be ice figure skating. It clearly draws some inspiration from figure skating, but has gone native, taking advantage of things inline skates can do that figure skates can’t, like gliding on the front or back wheel alone.

Some relics of early twentieth-century figure skating survive here. Many slalom tricks seem to be based on grapevines, two-footed maneuvers that were banished from figure skating because they didn’t fit the increasingly narrow definition of what skating was. Skating on one foot was more highly prized than skating on two feet. Other moves, like extra pivots, have also been preserved. Watch for more about these in the coming days.