Musings on Karen Chen-Finding the Edge

Finding the Edge is a book by Karen Chen, a young American figure skater who won the championship in 2017. She is quite young and her story is pretty generic so I wouldn't really recommend the book to anyone but young figure skaters who want to read about their idols. The book does bring up some interesting points though.

Karen Chen starts skating when she is 5, a pretty typical age for most kids. What isn't typical but is becoming more and more typical is her mother demands private lessons after the first day which begins the start of her "training". While not much is said about this decision, Karen does make it clear that she was one of the better kids in the beginner class. Regardless of how good or bad she was, let me make this abundantly clear, kids do not need privates after the first time on the ice to become a champion. In any sport, at age 5 kids shouldn't be training they should be having fun and playing sports. This is somewhat demonstrated in the book where she attributes actually honing the skills that would lead her to success by herself at a rink in Taiwan doing her own thing without her coaches and mom around.

While off ice conditioning for hockey has probably become too popular, off ice conditioning for figure skaters is still vastly behind other sports and this book is a good example of this. The big emphasis for female skaters is on flexibility. Karen learns to stretch as a warmup at age 5 and also adopts an evening stretch routine where she learns to "embrace the pain". While her flexibility is evident in her programs, it's important to realize that flexibility can be achieved without pain.

While some degree of stretching is needed in sports like gymnastics, figure skating and dance, all too often this is overemphasized and strength training and injury prevention are overlooked. If any strength and conditioning coaches read this book they will probably cringe. Despite skating twice a day and stretching, she does no strength training and ignores chronic knee pain. It's not until she has a tibial fracture that she starts to do pilates and only after a back condition gets diagnosed that she seems to take it seriously. Pilates is one of the favorite off ice training methods for skaters but anybody skating at a high level should also be lifting to some extent.

Much of the book revolves around perfectionism and how this contributes to her success. A certain element of perfectionism is certainly needed in figure skating, dance and gymnastics but it's also something that parents and coaches need to watch out for in these sports. Perfectionism can easily lead to anxiety and eating disorders and kids leaving the sport. As skating gets harder and harder, perfection gets harder and harder to achieve until it becomes impossible.