What would you suggest to get myself balanced, and to be able to hold the position longer? I've been having a hard time holding the position, and i keep tripping on my toepick!!!

Practice the position off-ice. Hold onto something with one hand (to help your balance) and be aware of keeping your weight centred on your skating foot - if you feel you weight shifted toward your toes, make a conscious effort to hold more toward the heel. Also practice getting your trunk/head LOWER than required and your free leg higher than required while keeping your weight centred. Being able to hold "the dying swan" (head WAY low, free foot WAY up) off ice you will find the Spiral easier on-ice. (It's one of the few moves I do well - LOL!)

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

The problem is ... you can't think of a skating spiral as a ballet arabesque. Where you put your weight is VERY different. In a spiral, you have to get your weight further back on your foot -- right behind the ball of your foot. to force yourself to do this, think of sticking your skating foot out in front of you. Sometimes just thinking that can produce a subtle change in where your weight is.

The key to being able to hold the position longer is to hold the position. No, I'm not being a smarty pants. The way to build up muscle strength and control is to do something repetitively. You just need to do spirals a million times. Before you know it, you'll have a better spiral!

It helps to do them on a wobble board. Of course after you can do it on the floor! And, I agree that you have to have your weight almost on the middle to back portion of the blade. You will feel a deep stretch in the hamstring area!

While doing spirals, focus on your toes:
- LIFT the toes of the foot that's on the ice
- POINT the toes of the foot that's in the air

If you lift the toes of your skating foot, that will make it practically impossible to trip on your toepick. Also, lock out the knee of the skating leg and push forward with your heel, pulling back with your hips at the same time so that your skating leg is at this angle / not this angle |
Backward spirals are less dangerous as far as tripping on the toepicks (it just doesn't happen, since you aren't traveling forwards), but they are more dangerous on crowded sessions because you can't see where you're going.
The rest is stretching off ice for flexibility and doing a lot of spirals (even just holding the position while holding onto the boards) for strength. You need to develop the glute and lower back muscles that are responsible for lifting that leg behind you.
Also, make sure you arch your back like a banana. Your chin must be UP, your eyes must be up and your shoulder blades should be squeezing together in the middle of your back.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

I'm not sure if your problem is with your balance, or with the strength of your legs. If it's the latter, why don't you watch this for some tips for how to practice them off ice.

If it's a balance thing.. well it's hard when you first learn them. I'm pretty sure you have to be sort of near the back of the middle of your blade, not that that makes sense at all.

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The following is taking from a reply I wrote for a previous spiral thread:
One of the things I have my skaters work on off-ice is sprials (flexibility, turn out of free leg/hip/toe, extension, etc.) One of the things I have them do is stand in front of a mirror holding on to a chair, table, whatever, or just try to balance without assistance. I tell them to slowly turn out their leg/hip/toe and go into a sprial position, which they must hold. This helps a lot with position and with flexibility and turn out. I've also had them do the same exercise with ankle weights on, which helps build the muscles needed for a higher sprial and good position. I've definitely seen an improvement in their spirals thanks to these exercises.

Splits (on and off-ice) also help, if you're up for tackling that. For on-ice sprials, use the boards to help you get up...it'll come with time!

Tripping:
As for tripping on your toe, you can prevent that from happening by making sure that your back is arched, head up - no hunching! I also tell my skaters to imagine a tiny ball, like a superball or a marble, on their skating hip that they must squeeze in place by pressing the imaginary ball between their hip and upper thigh (if you get what I'm saying...).

In fact, there's been times when I've literally had my skaters do the following, which helps dramatically with the whole tripping issue by getting you in perfect spiral position:
1. Take a glove and while bent deeply, place the glove between their skating leg and hip (in the crease). It should rest very easily in the crease of your hip and leg. You will need to get your back low and arched like in a regular spiral...
2. With the glove in place, take only one stroke forward using the leg not holding the glove while staying bent so that it is still relatively easy to keep the glove in the crease...
3. After gliding for a few seconds on deeply bent knees in the previous position (lowered/arched back, deep bend, free leg extended behind from your stroke), slowly rise up and try to keep the glove in place*. You should not be holding the glove in place with your hand or simply sticking it to yourself via fabric-to-fabric contact. That defeats the purpose of this exercise!

*This is the key to this exercise as it forces you to press back in your skating hip and get off your toepick to the ball (or slightly behind the ball rather) of your skating foot. If you are in the correct position, the crease between your hip and skating leg should be maintained and you should avoid any possibility of tripping forward. Just watch out the first few times you try this exercise because you may not be able to hold the glove there until after a few practices and you wouldn't want to have it fall and you trip over it...

Let me know if you need any clarification!

Good luck & happy spiraling!

thanks for the tips guys!

i came from the rink this morning and with your tips, was finally able to work it out! yey!

now one more hurdle to overcome... informing my parents i need new skates since the heel's about to come off my present ones

oh help.

Maybe your coach could help out with the whole 'telling your parents you need new skates thing' !Sounds dangerous with the heel falling off.

Hah, good luck with your parents. One girl at our rink skates in shoes that are too small and whole heel is glued on with that silverish duct tape stuff. I told her mom that if she doesn't get her daughter new skates, her daughter will end up with bumps on her feet which will never go away and make it impossible for her to wear normal pretty lady shoes. Now she's finally convinced.

Arabesque/spiral is also well practiced off ice just to get the balance feel.

haha sessy. maybe you should do that to my parents, too. I'm kidding

And I have to get new skates as soon as i can, seeing that i'll be competing this august, and heaven knows how long it's going to take me to break them in