Working off-ice

How one physical therapist is helping young skaters reach their goals

Lauren Downes, MSPT, knows the kind of stress figure skating can put on a skater's body. As a 16-year-old competitive figure skater, she fell on the ice and injured her back. A junior-level skater (skaters must pass tests in order to be eligible to compete at each level), she had just mastered one of the sport's trickier jumps. "I fell on a triple Salchow," Downes says. "I landed my first triple one day, and the next day I fell so hard I was out for three months." While the injury effectively took her off the competitive ice, she didn't give up the sport. Now she makes a living helping young skaters as well as other athletes develop the strength and skills they need to reach their competitive goals.

The balance between core strength and art

"I had a pretty significant back injury," Downes says. "That is basically why I decided to become a physical therapist." In 1999, Downes earned her master's degree in physical therapy from Boston University. While she was in school, she had competed on the college's figure-skating team. Then, after graduating, she took a job working full-time with patients who had spinal injuries. It didn't take her long, though, to realize she missed the sport, and she set out to get involved in figure skating again. This time, she worked on the other side of the boards, performing evaluations of skaters' strengths, flexibility, balance, and coordination. Next she developed home programs for skaters tailored to each skater's level, ability, and schedule. "I ended up working with skaters six days a week," she says. "I think I have always needed to be involved in skating. If it wasn't a part of my life, I would definitely have a big void."

Today, Downes works three days a week with skaters at Champions Skating Center in Cromwell, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. "I have been going down there for six years now," she says. "It's a two-rink complex. I have a small off-ice rink room that I utilize to teach." Her off-ice programs incorporate exercises focusing on core stability, lower- and upper-body strengthening, plyometrics, and balance. "Figure skating," she says, "involves a greater amount of core stability and flexibility than most other sports do. I think a lot of other athletes don't realize the demands that figure skating puts on a person's body. They think of it more as an artistic sport, instead of being extremely athletic."

Several years ago, the International Skating Union came up with a new points-based scoring system. The new system—the international judging system (IJS)—was created in response to a judging scandal at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. It's based on a cumulative point scale rather than the older, more subjective 6.0 standard of marks and placement. Under the international judging system, points awarded for a technical score are combined with points awarded for five additional components. "With the demands of the new IJS," Downes says, "skaters are being asked to do so many different spin positions and variations, so they need even more core strength than what they had in the past."

Downes sees both pros and cons with the new system, and she also believes it is one of the reasons skaters are sustaining so many injuries. "The plus is that when skaters compete, they are all judged on a level playing field," she says. "The negative that I have seen is that a lot of skaters are quitting because they cannot handle the demands of the difficult footwork and the spin variations, and they do not have the time to put into it or they are just not flexible enough."

One example of the new level of difficulty is the Biellmann. This is a one-footed spin executed while the skater uses two hands to hold the free foot extended behind her back and over her head. "The demands of all the spin variations, positions, and the Biellmann are causing a lot of skater injuries," Downes says. "Their bodies are just not made to do that. If a skater pushes herself to do a Biellmann but doesn't have the flexibility for it, she can develop stress fractures. I think that is the most negative thing about the IJS."

For off-ice conditioning, Downes works with skaters between the ages of 9 and 18. "The only drawback is that at those ages they don't have as much body awareness," Downes says. "Getting them to use the correct movement patterns for core strengthening can be challenging. It's difficult for a younger person to teach her body to move in the correct way. The nervous system isn't developed enough to register the correct movement patterns." Repetitive instruction is a key in these situations. "I find things that they are able to do. I do not give them incredibly challenging exercises if they are not going to be moving in the correct pattern of motion," she says.

Creating the tools for safer skating

Along with her off-ice work in Connecticut, Downes also offers her services online. In August of 2008, she started Sk8Strong Inc. with Stephen F. Conca, MS, CSCS, NASM. The site is designed for the figure-skating community and provides information about strength and conditioning and off-ice training.

Sk8Strong offers several programs and services to assist figure skaters and coaches with off-ice training in the hope of preventing injuries. Downes says the main offerings at Sk8Strong are the DVDs and manuals they produce. The DVDs feature functional exercises, which incorporate the use of several muscle groups at one time. Functional exercises, Downes explains, train the body in planes of movement to mimic the motions performed in sports.

The site also aims to connect people within the skating community with professionals who specialize in off-ice training techniques for figure skaters. "My goal," Downes says, "is to develop a database of trainers around the country so parents and coaches can find a qualified professional in their area."

According to Downes, figure-skating coaches often work with their students in off-ice training sessions, but many don't have the education they need to formulate the workouts. "Therefore skaters can get hurt doing off-ice training because they are not working with a qualified professional," she says. "I want to make Sk8Strong a resource that the skating community can use, whether it be our database or the articles and reports that I have posted on my website."

Making the importance of off-ice work clear

Many parents and some coaches don't realize the benefits of an off-ice program, Downes says. She admits that she didn't fully realize the impact an off-ice program could have on her own skating until she was juggling work with skating. "After college, I experimented with a lot of off-ice programs. I was working full-time and didn't have a lot of time for myself and my own skating," she says. "I tried to balance that with an off-ice skating program. I actually became more consistent as an adult by doing the off-ice work than when I was skating five days a week as a teenager."

One of the challenges of her position is telling coaches what the skaters can and cannot do. "There are some coaches that are great to work with, and they will listen to all my recommendations," Downes says. "Then there are others who try to push their kids through injuries a little bit. You want to find a balance between what they are able to do and what they should not do in order to let their injury heal."

Downes also works part-time at Performance Rehabilitation in East Longmeadow, Mass. "It's a mixed population," she says. In addition to working with post-op patients, they see a large population of teenage athletes. The clinic gets very busy in September, about two weeks after the school sports season starts. "Their coaches are putting them through a rigorous training program, and they do not have the endurance or strength or flexibility to maintain that," Downes says. "We see a lot of football, soccer, basketball, and baseball players who don't have the tools for core strength, stability, and lower-extremity strength to do all the things they're required to do in sports."

The injured athletes Downes has worked with include figure skaters as young as 8, although most fall into the age-11-and-up category. Many of these skaters have lower back injuries from repetitive falling, while others are suffering from patellofemoral syndrome. "That [syndrome] is very common in girls between 11 and 18. But it can be seen in other ages as well," Downes says. The affliction can affect young athletes in jumping sports such as figure skating. "It deals with tracking of the knee cap and the alignment of the lower body and also flexibility, strength, and balance," she explains. "Because of the high demands of jumping in figure skating, it can be very common, especially if a skater has lower-extremity alignment issues. It can be very painful."

Downes hasn't completely given up on competitive skating. She has twice qualified and twice competed at the U.S. Adult National Figure Skating Championships at the championship masters level. Her youngest child was born in April 2008, and her goal is to make it back to adult nationals to compete in 2010.

While Downes is no longer competing regularly or collecting the medals that come with success in the sport, her current role has its own rewards. "I love seeing skaters meet their goals and achieve success," she says, "whether that be in passing their juvenile freestyle test or qualifying for junior nationals. All skaters have their own goals they wish to attain. And if I have been a small part of helping them attain them, then I have met my goals."

Susan Wessling is a freelance writer and editor in chief of International Figure Skating. She is a longtime contributor to On Call.