Comparing Ice Skating V.S. Freestyle Skating

Ice skating is a very diverse sport with many different disciplines! You may have heard of some of the more common disciplines such as ice dance, pairs, or synchronized skating! But one that is not quite as common is freestyle skating.

This kind of figure skating is a bit more extreme (as if gliding around on slippery ice with knives on your feet wasn’t extreme enough)! So let’s dive in and compare ice skating v.s. freestyle skating!

At my second professional figure skating show, I had the privilege of meeting an amazing freestyle skater from France whose tricks were nothing short of incredible! Backflips and head slides were just a casual part of his everyday routine! Jeremie has competed in (and won!) multiple freestyle figure skating competitions! Some of his titles include International Champion of Acrobatic Skating 2023 and Champion of France in multiple categories!

Throughout the 3 months I skated with him, my world was opened up to a whole new side of ice skating! While exploring his amazing style of skating we thought it would be fun to compare our different styles of traditional ice skating v.s. freestyle skating as well as test out a few of each other’s tricks. In my recent YouTube video, we did just that! The video is more exciting of course but you can also continue reading for a brief overview of this exciting video!

Comparing our Styles:

To start we picked 3 categories and compared how we would perform tricks within each category.

#1 Spins

Spins are a big element of traditional figure skating, however, they are a bit different and of lesser value in freestyle skating.

My pick: Sit Spin Variation

Jeremie’s Pick: Pendulum Spin

#2 Sliding Movement:

This move is becoming much more popular throughout figure skating. In freestyle skating there is much more variation for sliding movements, incorporating some “ break dancing” type moves and even a head slide move!

My Pick: A knee slide on both knees

Jeremie’s Pick: Lots of fun varied knee slides along with a final knee slide on both knees

#3 Stops:

Of course, if you are going to learn to figure skate, you are going to have to learn how to stop!

My Pick: Front T-stop or tango stop.

Jeremie’s Pick: Knee stop

Trying Eachothers Tricks:

Next, we decided to pick out a few tricks from each discipline that we would both attempt. Some tricks are similar in both disciplines, so we added a few of those in there as well!

Figure Skating Elements:

Backspin
Russian Split Jump
Single Axel

Freestyle Elements:

Cheat Gainer
Headslide
Backflip

Elements in Both Disciplines:

Butterfly
Hitchkick

This challenge was super exciting to see the major differences between disciplines and I hope you learned something new! I think I have some new skills to practice haha! Check out some of the other fun videos we made together below!