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SkatingOnClouds
03-12-2006, 05:06 PM
Now that I'm jumping again regularly, my coach is wanting to correct some of my faults.

Toe-loops and flips used to be my best jumps, however my coach tells me that instead of using the toe-pick to pull me up I am tending to jump off the skating leg, using the picking foot as a sort of pivot, resulting in a bent leg sort of hop off the toe-pick. (I'm sure I didn't do it that way before, my old coach wouldn't have let me get away with that, so I put it down to trying to do things "safely" since returning to skating).

How do I correct this, and teach myself to get my skating leg neatly crossed in front of the picking foot at take-off?

Salchows were the second jump I was taught (after waltz) 20+ years ago, and I always struggled with them.
I was taught to swing my free leg through, bending at the knee as it passed my skating leg, swing it across my body, jumping out of the circle, with no pre-rotation. The free leg on landing swung naturally from front to behind for the landing position.

My current coach wants me to swing the free leg through straight, pre-rotate, and take off virtually forwards with a straight free-leg, landing with my left leg straight and in front of me before swinging it back into landing position.

With either technique I inevitably scrape almost to a stand-still on my toe-picks before the take-off - any ideas why I do that, how to stop doing that?

My old coach would have learned to skate at least 40 years ago. She skated in ice shows with Sonjia Heinie (sp?), for heaven's sake. My current coach reads and thinks about skating technique, and she knows what she is talking about.

It's just that the two techniques are so very different, that I am thoroughly confused. Has salchow technique changed this radically in 20 years?

Joan
03-12-2006, 06:05 PM
My coach recently started me and other students on some on-ice jump exercises designed to get your body in the correct position for each portion of each jump. These exercises include getting your free leg in the correct position during the jump. The exercises have helped my jumps a lot, I think. I asked him where he found these exercises, and it turns out it is a DVD (or VHS tape; both available) from a PSA conference given by Tom Zakrajsek, called "Basic Jumps with Emphasis on the Lutz"
http://www.skatepsa.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=41_47&products_id=193

Anyone can order it - you don't have to be a PSA member. I am not a PSA member and I just got it.