I have been trying to perfect my forward scratch spin for almost 2 years now. It is finally to a point where I can get it hooked and centered 50% of the time, so my coach started to introduce the sit, back, and camel. I have been playing with all three for about a month no with no major improvements (I am definately NOT a natural spinner!)

Part of the reason why my spins fail (even my forward scratch) is because I keep dropping my hip of the free leg. I try so hard to hold it up but it is not happening!

Is there some mental technique anyone might know to get me to keep the hip up? Or are there some exercises I can do to strengthen the muscles around my hip? The sit and camel are the worst when it comes to this.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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And when you figure it out, teach me. I've been trying to learn to spin for nearly three years, and I drop my free hip too. I also have problems bringing my free leg in front.

I don't know if this technically 'works' or not, but it helped me psychologically at least. (Only for the scratch....I have no other spin. )

1) I made sure to keep my free leg and arm vertically 'together' through the 'snap' and until I got centered, and

2) I would think about lifting my free hip 'up' as I turned out my leg from the hip (also thinking 'up' with the skating leg, so I wasn't sinking down into that hip either).

I considered myself a non-spinner until I got those two things working relatively consistently. (I'm still not great, but at least the spin spins, and doesn't travel all the way to China.)

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Me too! I can camel spin better than scratch spin. (and my camel is crappy BTW. only 1 rotation, nice position I have heard my coach say, but no rotation whatsoever) I dunno what it is...

I did this for the longest time with the sit spin, and I didn't really feel it dropping...so the coach told me to purposely hold it so high that it would seem it was ridiculously high and couldn't be right, and that would probably be correct. It worked!

I don't spin anymore so take my advice with a very large grain of salt:

Are you totally committed to skating with your weight over your skating hip (the foot you spin on)? If you are putting your weight between your hips, then I can understand dropping that free hip. If you are totally comitted to the skating leg, then keeping the other hip up might be easier.

Again, just my 2 cents from the sidelines of the spin-machine.

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