Hello, today I managed to do some forward cross overs in both directions, I thought that like my books say, that you have to put the outer foot in front and to the side of the inside foot right?

Well most people who turn in circles including some of the really fast skaters I have seen don't quite put their feet over and across, but just in front of less, just a little forward.

Is there a reason crossovers have to go over and to the side of the other foot, is this a better technique, because thats the way I am learning it, and a smart arsed kid showed me his method for turning with speed, by not crossovering, but putting the foot forward, and he seemed to be generating as much speed, but it didn't look very good,and he told me that was a crossover.

I think next I might try backwards crossovers but I cna' tget my head around that yet.

I found by crossovering you can push with both feet at the same time, you can't do that without crossovering? it confusing!

Thanks!!!!!

You're learning one method--sometimes thought of as a 'preliminary' method. This involves picking up the outer foot and actually crossing OVER the inner foot, and when you set the foot down, your legs are crossed.

The advanced way of doing crossovers can more accurately be thought of as a 'crossunder'--when you set your outer foot down, it's not necessarily completely crossed over. HOWEVER, your inner foot 'pushes' the ice to the outside, underneath you, so at the end of the stroke, your legs are indeed crossed. It's just a different way to achieve the same end result.

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Yes, as Flippet said, there's a beginning way to do crossovers and an advanced way. You need to first learn it the way you are doing it now, in order to develop the control you will need to do it the advanced way. The main difference is that in the advanced method, you hardly pick your feet up off the ice, especially the foot that crosses over. However, you can only do it that way if you have deeply bent knees and are really leaning on the edges of your blades. That takes awhile to master.

Once you learn cross-overs properly, you'll find that it is a technique for allowing you to skate around in a circle but at the same time lets you generate pushing power *alternately* with both skates....one at a time that is...not push with both skates at the same time.

The idea is like this........ imagine that your body is tilted towards the left like this: \\

The two lines represent your legs...left leg and right leg. Now, if your body is tilted towards the left as shown, and suppose both your knees are actually bent at that time. Now, what will happen if you suddenly unbend your left knee? A force will be developed so that your left-leg will push your body to the left! The same thing would apply if you were to suddenly unbend your right knee. The right-leg would push your body to the left as well, because your whole body is tilted over to the left already, like this: \\

This principle applies in the cross-over. For example, if you're skating in an anti-clockwise circle, your outter edge of your left-skate can be used to push against the outside of the circle while your right-skate is in the process of crossing over to the left. This push generates power for you to maintain speed or even increase speed around the circle. And then the next stage is to bring your left skate back to the normal position again.......and while you're bringing your left skate back to the normal position, it's possible to use the inside edge of the right-skate to push against the outside of the circle (this is basically just a normal skating stroke I guess). So this generates power for you as well.

Anyhow, if you're good at doing very stable 1 foot glides and good at using your outter edges of your skates, it will make it easier for you to do nicely controlled cross-overs.

If you can't yet do nicely controlled cross-overs, then I wouldn't worry too much about it, because the more ice time you get, sooner or later you'll get the hang of it.

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And as for doing sharp turns using cross-overs. I think the key to doing sharp turns is to try keeping your upper torso roughly vertical as you're going around the turn (ie don't lean into the circle), and bend the knees real good. And most of the weight (eg 80 percent of it) will be on the INSIDE skate. That is, if you're going to turn left very sharply, you want 80 percent of your weight to be on the outter edge of your LEFT-skate. As for balancing and body positioning, your body will eventually work out how it should feel. But the trick is.... most of the weight into the turn is on the inside skate when going into the turn. A lot of beginners think that most of the weight should be on the inside edge of the right-hand skate for sharp turns.

hi

thanks for the descriptions! I got the basic thing going...

Wow its all very complicated, all I know is that when I was doing them, i sometimes catch the toepick on the inside leg as I push with it.. whats going on there?

try pushing more with your heel...that should help! Been there, done that.

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Bend your knees.

__________________
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

Careful with that...heel pushing is a bad habit to get into. Ideally you want your weight slightly forward, over the ball of the foot. To avoid hitting your picks, think of lifting your big toe.

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Ideally, you want to lean into the circle and bend your knees a lot more to not catch the toe pick

I can see that; my coach had me push more with my heel because my pushes were all toe and pushing with more heel sort of evened it out (and telling me to lift my toe wasn't sinking in). But lifting the toe does what it should....gets more clearance under those darn toe claws!!!

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Thanks for mentioning this -- I was going to say something myslef, as I am having to relearn tons of stuff because of the bad habit of skating towards the back of my blade (bad icedancer2, bad icedancer2) -- now I completely understand why I've never had the problem of scraping up onto my picks -- I am just too far back!!!

Arrrgghhh.

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hi, just came back from a session, i am catching the toepick less, i think i have kinda got the hang of crossunders, only sometimes I lost the grip with the inside leg and went skidding a long way and got REALLY soaked, the puddles were real bad today.

almost everybody who does crossovers/unders don't bother putting their arms out like they are hugging the circle they are turning into. I do, it helps but maybe I don't have to do this? I htink it looks good too, because al th ehockey players are a lot betetr than me, bu they don't skate elegantly.

You have to know the rules to be able to break them.

Learn with your body in the proper position first. Only when you have that down can you change it up.

Keeping your arms hugging the circle helps keep your shoulders and upper body in the proper position. If you look closely at other skaters, they may not have their arms up, but I'll bet their shoulders and upper body are still more or less in the right place.

__________________
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

You'll get better at keeping staying on the outside edge of the inside skate once your body figures out what's a good position for staying on that outside edge. Having sharp enough blades helps too.