It’s hard to believe that another year is gone! 2015 flew by and it’s now a great time to reflect on the past 12 months and also where we want to go in the next year.
I am extremely proud of the continued growth within the club in all areas including Canskate, StarSkate, Jr Prep and HP, developmental competitive skaters including dance and pairs, and our elite athletes representing Calalta and training with the National Performance Center (NPC).
We are well on our way to reaching our goal of being the premier skating club in Western Canada!
With this growth, it is imperative that everyone in the club works together effectively.
A huge ‘thank you’ goes out to the many volunteers who make everything run so smoothly, to the Board of Directors who guide our club, to the amazing coaching staff that show up daily, motivated to teach, and to the office staff who make it all come together.
A special ‘thank you’ goes out to Diana Peters, our amazing President who spends countless hours working for the betterment of the club and skaters.
For all our skaters, the focus is to improve and to reach their goals set with their respective coaches. The club offers quality programming to assist in this process. In the Spring of 2015, the dry land program was reworked by Stephanie Davis to incorporate a more well-rounded approach to making all skaters ‘fit’ athletes first. What prompted this was we found that skaters were missing the balance, focus, concentration and basic skating quality, which used to be ‘taught’ through school figures.
Skate Canada published the Long Term Athlete Development model, which we used to create our programs including Jr Prep, HP and our Group Star and Jr Star programs. In order to improve, the time and energy has to be put into the training. Nothing can take the place of the hours that need to be spent on basic skating and technique. The table below shows a guideline for the number of hours minimum needed to see improvement.
As your skater progresses, more time and energy needs to be spent both on and off the ice. I can’t stress enough the importance of dry land training and seminars that will contribute to your skater’s overall fitness and mental training. For the senior and elite skaters, we offer sessions on nutrition and sports psychology as well as dry land training that includes meditation, dance, pilates, gymnastics and tai chi. With our children being increasingly stimulated with electronics and social media, we need to slow them down, get them to focus, and concentrate on the task at hand. Our meditation classes are becoming an extremely important tool being offered to our skaters and mindfulness training will benefit all skaters in any aspect of their lives.
Click here to see the latest information on children and meditation.
The New Year is a time to set a plan for the future and to execute on that plan. Work with your coach and identify your strengths and weaknesses and put in the time and effort to improve upon them.
I look forward to watching the continued improvement and growth in skating.
Happy Holidays!
Scott Davis
Director of Skating
[email protected]
