Skating coach has holistic approach to teaching sport

WEST ORANGE, NJ, June 5, (AP): Rosie Tovi thinks she has a better idea.

The figure skating coach believes — and she has many supporters throughout the ice world — an emphasis on “happy and healthy” should take precedence over turning the sport into gymnastics in a rink. The longtime coach and choreographer calls it a holistic approach.

“Holistic is a perfect word, because it is the whole,” says Tovi, who will be launching her Championship Figure Skating Camp at the Essex County Codey Arena in West Orange on June 25. “I have specialists in all different fields talking about different topics.”

Those topics include much more than spending hours doing jumps and spins and footwork on the ice.

“We’ll cover a host of subjects,” she explains. “We’ll have a specialist on hormones to talk about to navigate when a body is changing. A specialist on eating — this is a big deal in skating today. Competitive skates must have the athleticism of football players and look like ballerinas. The fact is there are a lot of eating disorders in skating. So we bring someone who knows healthy eating so nobody is starving themselves to be on the ice.

“There’s off-ice training with a ballerina who is a skater.

“We do it all in a positive environment for all these kids, making sure we’re not adding more pressure to the pressure cooker. I think first and foremost as a coach, I have to do my best to get them where they want to go. But absolutely first, health and safety is the No. 1 priority; nothing will trump that. Being an Olympic champion and then your body is broken two years later, I don’t buy that.”

Tovi fears that’s pretty much what we have been seeing and might continue to see as long as there’s so much emphasis on jumping. The International Skating Union is dealing with the proliferation of quadruple jumps at its congress this week, with expectations that the number allowed in a free skate program will be capped.