For many athletes, the offseason is a time to focus on rest and recuperation. It’s a time to catch up on missed time with family, work side hustle jobs to bolster depleted bank accounts, and to cross train different work outs, after months repeating the same actions their sport requires. But for the world’s top figure skaters, as soon as the competitive season comes to a close, many immediately join skating shows, touring across the nation and around the world, performing for fans with a rigorous schedule, but without the pressure of a judging panel.
For two-time national champion and Grand Prix Final champion, Amber Glenn, the hectic travel was worth performing with the prestigious Stars on Ice tour. “I remember going to watch Stars on Ice as a kid back in Dallas and thinking how incredible it was. To be doing it now is a dream come true,” Glenn said. She did both the Japanese and North American legs of the tour, along with 2024 world silver medalist, Isabeau Levito. And while there, the U.S. skaters explored the local regions and sampled local ramen — which Glenn said usually is impossible to make time for when she’s there to compete. While not exactly the recuperation many trainers advise, showlife allowed the skaters a chance to explore a different aspect of their sport.
“It gets very tiring when you go from location to location,” Levito said. “But performing so often is so helpful to me. It felt like exposure therapy of sorts; I was still training, even when I was on tour, because I was training performance.” After having her 2024-25 season shortened by a foot injury, Levito said the tour served to reinvigorate her. “I missed so much of last season that when I competed at worlds, it didn't feel like the end of a season,” she said. “Many of my friends on tour were like, ‘Oh, we're so tired,’ but I just felt like I was energized after missing so much.”
After taking two seasons away from the sport, Alysa Liu, who returned home last March as the surprise reigning world champion, was excited to join the U.S. tour, spend time with her friends — who double as her rivals while on competitive ice — and learn new routines. “I love the rehearsals, actually more than doing the shows themselves, just because it's fun learning the programs with everybody. It was really good. Tiring, but amazing,” Liu said.
This past offseason — which ran approximately from April to September — was particularly busy for the top three U.S. women’s figure skaters. Between shows and preparing new programs with choreographers, Glenn, Liu and Levito additionally had media obligations in the run-up to the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games. “It was pretty intense,” Glenn said. “One of the days we flew into the city in the morning, did a show, and then flew out that night to go do an NBC shoot.” The skaters then rejoined the tour just days later.
Glenn also took time between the tours to attend her grandmother’s memorial, a date chosen with her busy schedule in mind. “I was very appreciative that I got to be there, because she was a huge supporter of me and my skating,” Glenn said.
Each skater, likely (although not certain) with a chance to represent the United States in the Olympics next February, approached their time away from competitive ice after tour slightly differently.
“It was kind of bad. I really wasn't skating too much. I just had so many off-ice extracurriculars, I never found myself skating five days in a row over the summer,” Liu said. Looking through her phone’s camera roll to remind herself, Liu said she was invited to Nice, France, to speak at the Cannes Lions festival, and she went on vacation to the UK, where she visited relatives in Liverpool. The 20-year-old said she made time for her friends and siblings, going on hikes, spending days at the beach, and watching favorite TV shows.
But Liu said she was glad when it came time to train her stamina for competition again. “I love training. To be honest, that's one of my favorite things about skating. It's kind of why I'm back. I love the grind, and I just love challenging myself every day,” Liu said. “My first full week of training, it was so great, getting back to my workouts and a scheduled week.” Liu had her first competition in Italy at the Lombardia Trophy in early September, where she won the short program, coming in fourth overall.
Levito also took time to relax after tour, going to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic with a friend for a week. “Funny enough, Sarah Everhardt [2025 U.S. bronze medalist] was there during the exact same week. She saw on Snapchat that I was there — we share locations with each other — and apparently, we were 45 minutes from each other at just separate resorts for the exact same days,” Levito said. Both skaters then flew directly to Colorado Springs for a United States Figure Skating training camp.
But as much as she enjoyed the upheaval, like Liu, Levito also prefers routine and schedules. “I love eating the same thing every day, getting the exact amount of hours of sleep,” she said. “My body is so well trained, I go to sleep at a certain time, every day, weekend or not. And I have a problem where my body wakes up at 6:41am specifically, every day, I can't make it stop.”
As a “new adult,” Levito moved into her first apartment away from home over the summer, close to the rink where she trains. “I've always been very independent growing up,” she said. “I have always liked cooking, and I've always done my laundry since I was pretty young. So it wasn't very hard for me.” Much of her down time in the offseason was spent setting up her new place, and she’s excited that even if she leaves her apartment at the time she’s supposed to be at the rink, she’s still “basically not late.”
In the offseason, athletes often will spend hours listening to music and working on choreography ideas to find the mix that will help them compete to the best of their ability the following season. Levito said while she only will skate to music she loves, her lifelong coach, Yulia Kuznetsova, often will choose music for her, giving her the final say. “But they're always so good. I never say, ‘Oh, I'm actually not a fan of this.’ She just knows. She understands me,” Levito said. This season she will be skating to a Sophia Loren medley for her short program, and Cinema Paradiso for her free skate. At her first competition, the Cranberry Cup in Lake Placid in August, both programs showed early signs of success, landing her in first place overall.
Liu has a different process. “All the music I skate to comes from me. So, this summer, I had tons of music picked out,” she said. “I made a whole playlist of music that I could potentially see myself skating to, and I showed everybody, to get their input. I'll ask my friends, my siblings — people that don't know skating at all, because I think that's really important, too.” Her short program this season currently is to music by Laufey (which she currently is in the process of changing) and Lady Gaga.
Glenn’s approach somewhere is between her teammates, and this year, she’ll be skating to Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer,’ for her short program, and working to repeat the success she had with last season’s free skate to music by Audiomachine and Clann. She’s next to dip her toes into the competitive season at the Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany, and despite only taking a few days break this offseason, she feels better than ever. “I just had a couple of the best weeks of training, for as long as I can remember,” she said. “Things have been going really well and I've been trying to take care of myself mentally and physically.” For Glenn, that means keeping her body strong, making sure she recovers after training, taking epsom salt baths, getting enough protein, spending time with her dog and enjoying her hobbies.
As the Olympic season gets under way, all three skaters expressed excitement for the competitions ahead. Both Liu and Glenn have suffered through the painstaking journey of breaking in new boots that both fit and support them — a delicate process that easily can go wrong. “My old pair just broke down, but my new ones — we just can't get them right,” said Liu. Glenn is a few steps ahead, and while her previous skates bent in half after tour, she’s finally in a pair that feel right, “after trying a different pair that were just off.”
Each athlete is ready to compete this season, hoping to rack up titles on the road to a coveted ticket to the Olympics. “I'm really glad to have all this excitement and motivation for this year,” Levito said. “If you would have asked me about the Olympics three years ago, I would have been on the brink of hyperventilating. Now that I'm in it. I'm just excited.”