Good Side, Bad Side

You've got a clumsy foot. Guess what? We all have.
Tone it down and use it to improve both your legs' dexterity!

Lately I ran an agility class during the Team France Bootcamp following the Patin Français event. The subject was "stops" and we obviously worked on both sides. Several girls told me in confidence that they were very sorry and ashamed of having a clumsy leg. I decided to make a small speech on the normality of it. Here is a more developed version for everybody to enjoy.

LEGS ARE LIKE ARMS

Let's tone down disillusions right away: there is nothing less normal than having a leg clumsier than its sibling. Legs are like arms. Try to write with your bad hand. Disaster, right? Transpose it to your legs and you will realize that you're not doing that bad: at least you can walk on two legs!

Indeed specifics are trickier with your unnatural side, and WILL ALWAYS BE but you can reduce the gap between your two sides with work.

The idea is not to equalize the abilities of both legs, but to make sure that your body at least knows the move on both sides, so that if it has to do it, it will know how to get away with it.

Coping with both sides (add front and back to the list too) is a way to improve your agility as it opens your field of possibilities and your instinctive awareness. Once again, variety is the key!

COMMON PATTERNS

Except if you're a very gifted ambidextrous mofo, you will always have discrepancies between your two sides. Here are the three most common patterns I usually come across:

• You are [ right / left ] footed (delete as appropriate). Your [ right / left ] foot is active on most of your moves: it is the one that's plowing, stopping, crossing over, taking the run-up... it's your leaning foot when you're on one foot, and most of the time you'd rather spin* to the right (clockwise) than to the left.
• You are right footed when you skate frontwards, but left footed when you skate backwards (or conversely). Less frequent but quite common, which can be a pain in the neck for front-back switches and flips.
• Rarer, you are an average ambidextrous person. You randomly happen to feel better on one side or on the other side depending on the moves. Yet you have the advantage to pick up the other side quite fast, as it is just 'less natural', and not 'un-natural'.

* Spinning on yourself, not turning. Turning would almost universely be easier to the left for the simple reason that the heart being placed to the left of the chest, the left side weights heavier and consequently leans more easily towards the center than the right side, lighter (?!)


DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEARNERS

You usually pick up moves faster with your good side. Don't expect to integrate moves in the same lapse of time with your bad side. Yet don't use that fact as an excuse to neglect it!

The number one stage is to get the hang of the move. Start with your natural side. According to your way of learning, either you are a thinker, a feeler, a watcher or a doer, you will conceive it in different ways. You may need to:

• Think about the move, theoretically breaking down each and every part of it.
• Feel the move and know about the sensations you should get doing it.
• Watch closely the demo of the move in order to get a precise snapshot in your head.
• Copycat the move, most of the time following someone who already masters it.

Note to coaches: Those different types of learners are the reasons why you should always display as many different explanations of the move as possible, to speak to the widest audience. Hence the comparison of the new move to moves that are already known (feelers), the breaking down (thinkers) and the demo (watchers). And when you are in small work groups, you can also take the time to help copycats if there are any.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME. If you're not going through the same stages as your neighbor, don't worry. Whatever way you take, the result will be the same: the assimilation of the move. Find the way you like best and assume it.


BE YOUR OWN COACH

Once your natural side is on the good way and you're starting to feel it, don't wait longer to do a little introspection. ANALYSE the move on your good side and TRANSPOSE it to your bad side. Your body has the knowledge, break it down and teach yourself. Isolate one small element and focus on it while performing your bad side. Alternate both sides to compare. Build up, one element after the other.

The main details you should focus on: what you do with your head, shoulders, arms, hips and butts, body line, knee and ankles, edges, heels and toes, body weight, center of gravity, etc.


THE BENEFITS OF INTROSPECTION

Apart from the fact that the method has the obvious advantage of making you self-sufficient and autonomous, not only does this help you improve your bad side, but it also helps you improve your good side:

• In breaking down from your good side, you analyse and realize the mechanisms of what you are actually doing.
• In building up on your bad side, you add and mix the mechanisms you have previously isolated.

At the end of the auto-analysis, you have a better comprehension of the move just by having observed yourself. You can then BETTER YOURSELF thanks to that knowledge and PASS IT ON to others, exchange tips that you have observed, compare visions.

Moreover, working on your bad side will make your good side even easier to perform without really having to work on it. It seems that your body automatically analyses and updates the new info to your natural side. I don't really explain it, it just seems to work that way.


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