How do champion ice skaters perform their amazing jumps and spins? Brain science discovers clues.
Pam Belluck is a neuroscience reporter and figure skating fan.
The recent World Figure Skating Championships produced exciting results, including: 19-year-old American landing a quad axel AND 40-year-old pairs skater who became the oldest woman to win the world figure skating championship. As a neuroscience reporter, I’ve wondered how the brain works when skaters jump, spin and move at whirlwind speeds across the ice. Here’s what scientists found:
When most of us step onto an ice rink, the feeling of slipping triggers a sequence of brain signals telling the body to lean forward to avoid falling. But repeated practice suppresses this reflex in skaters like Ilia Malinin, the American who was the first to land a quadruple axel in competition and whose rating at the 2024 World Skating Championships was highest ever. In top skaters, the brain accepts the feeling of slipping and reconnects the cerebellum, an area related to balance.
Brain scans of speed skaters have provided more clues about the cerebellum. Studies have shown that parts of the cerebellum are larger briefly track speed skaters than in non-skaters, especially on the right side. This is probably going because the right side is activated when the speed skater balances on the right foot to show left on the curves of the track.
Another brain network helps skaters perform complex tasks. The basal ganglia receive signals from the motor cortex as skaters jump and spin in the air. As skaters practice routines repeatedly, this network organizes the movements into chunks and sequences, facilitating faster memorization and muscle memory. This helps skaters proceed skating in competitions even after tripping or falling.
Activity on this brain network probably helps Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion in men’s figure skating, performs a quadruple lutz, certainly one of the most difficult jumps. He starts riding backwards, straightening his right leg. Pushing off together with his right leg, he crosses his feet, rising up, and then spins 4 times in the air. Landing on his right foot, he swings his left leg back to complete.
Figure skaters’ brains suppress the feeling of dizziness after lightning-fast turns. Centrifugation causes fluid to spread in the inner ear. For most individuals, after the spinning stops, it continues to squelch for some time, which causes dizziness because the brain falsely assumes that the spinning is continuous. Skaters’ brains learn to acknowledge when spinning has actually stopped, allowing them to keep up balance.
The way the brain adapts to rotational movement helps you perform unusual turns, corresponding to ice skating Michelle Kwan, a five-time world champion known for his ability to spin each ways without stopping. During one performance, she did a prone left spin, followed by a camel spin to the right together with her leg prolonged, and then one other left spin, a seated spin that changed into an upright Y spin.
Photos: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press, Mark R. Cristino/EPA-EFE, via Shutterstock and Tingshu Wang Tpx/Reuters.
