Are these toeloops or toe-waltzes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-oD3NrIDQ#GU5U2spHI_4

Toe waltzes. You can see how you are rotating a full 1/2 rotation on the toe pick and then jumping once you're facing forward.

http://skateclass.ru/movies/tulup.avi
that's a real toeloop.

Here is a youtube video explanation of a toe-loop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgDOGlFIzKU

and an explanation (no video):
http://www.sk8stuff.com/f_recog/recog_j_toeloop.htm

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

Yes it is definitely a toe waltz jump. Don't let yourself keep doing them - it's a hard habit to break! You want your right foot to draw across the picking foot and kick through.

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- Ashley

Those are really great videos; I just wish they had a SINGLE jump version - it would be so much better for beginners to study. I know they were made to explain skating to the audience watching triples...just wishing.

ETA: This one's cute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8fCfz9Z2nc

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That is a cute clip. I like how the written description beside the video calls it a "fun and exciting ice skating jump."

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The one from some crosscuts towards the end of the video was the most toeloop-ish, and as you get some speed you'll get off the toepick faster and won't turn forward.

Nice crosscuts by the way.

I didn't watch the whole video, but what I saw was definetly a toe waltz jump. As another poster suggested it's better to learn it right in the beginning because it's usually tougher to unlearn something.

BTW I noticed you were wearing glasses. It's usually not a good idea as they will come flying off your face eventually. You don't need glasses to skate. I'm practically blind without my glasses and it doesn't hold me back. The only problem is I can't read the clock or identify anybody further than a few feet away.

Kevin

I posted a good single toeloop above!
took me a year to find a good single toeloop on video but there it is. The same site also has a 1sal.

Ha, you do when your club puts about 30 people on 2/3rds of the ice arena during lessons, and when you train on public sessions for lack of anything else. I just don't see what the coach demonstrates without glasses, not even from a few feet away (strong cilinder, everything is blurry no matter how close-by). Plus, if I can't see where I am in the ice arena, how would I skate a programme?

Nice vid, I dont think I need to add anymore, but what time did you have to get up to get such lovely clean ice all to yourself?

It's far safer to wear glasses - attach them to your head with sports straps if necessary - than to crash into other skaters because you can neither see them coming nor judge how far away they are without them.

I have contact lenses now for skating (and the occasional party), but my husband still skates in his spectacles and even doing a camel spin doesn't have a problem. If he didn't we'd get him safety straps for them.

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

If your glasses are adjusted to fit you correctly, then they are far safer than skating blind. I wear mine all the time unless I'm in a show or competition. Then I wear my contacts. But, I have my glasses standing by for backup.

When I get back to jumping on the ice I'll take some vids of my single-toe & salchow (as if I have any other???) AND my way long overdue stretching video (thanks to my dead video camera I never had a chance to make one the video on my cell phone is cr*p). My husband got me a neat little device that can take up to 30 minutes of video-it's more like a toy but the video is pretty good-better than my phone.

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

The way im doing it is the way my coach taught it to me (2 1/2 months ago), on thursday she said it was good and she was pleased with it. So i dont know anyother way to do it, can anyone tell me what i need to do differently than what i am doing now to make it correct?

I have a sportsband to put on my glasses so they dont fall off. I have difficulty wearing contact lenses because i have astigmatism. I would not be comfortable skating without my glasses on because i cant see more than 1 foot in front of me, and since we have some pretty fast skaters on Patch, it could end up getting pretty messy! lol.

I think it was 7am. I didnt have the ice to myself, there were 2 other skaters there and 1 coach but they were at the other end of the rink so it was as good as having it to myself!

I wear glasses when I'm skating, they have never come off or moved at all when i've been doing very fast spins and doubles, and I wouldnt say I'm a slow skater.

My coach told me to try contacts, but I cant stand the things...I dont like sticking my fingers in my eyes!!

Regarding the jump, it is cheated, wait until you leave the ice before you rotate.

I remember being told by one of the GB squad coaches to cheat a double toe loop by rotating 1/2 rotation on the pick, then doing an axel. I can't jump at slow speeds so i found this more difficult than doing it the correct way, but doubles are different to singles!

You need not to stop, it needs to be one continuous motion. Let the gliding foot approach your picking foot, push your right shoulder and arm to the right to keep it checked, take off the picking foot, kick the knee of the non-picking foot up into the rotation, on the take off face backwards in the skating direction instead of forwards as you do now, and jump UP, not forward. Pull your arms in sharp to get the rotation needed as fast as possible, so you don't need much airtime. Keep your back arched (don't hunch forward) and your belly muscles tight.

But, on the other hand, everything is relative. Your coach could be just trying to teach it to you this way so you learn to go into the air, and correct the mistakes later. Gotta say though, I found it extremely hard to kick the pre-rotation habit later on, *extremely* hard, as in, I keep pre-rotating in the ccw direction no matter what. It's a little less extreme in the cw direction.

Can you do a back pivot? If not then learn it to help with this jump and if you can do one then practice the picking in, while keeping the front foot in the back pivot position on the outside edge of the blade with your heel pointing to your left. Keeping it in that position, bring it round (heel leading) til it's close to your picking foot while keeping your body facing away from jump direction. It will feel really awkward at first but it's the position in which your body should be when leaving the ice. Keep left arm in front of you (right arm checked behind) and then when the front foot is close to the picking foot you bring the right arm through and kick through, leading with the heel of the right foot. But just practice the back pivot bit til you feel more comfortable with it as it's not easy.

It helps to stop the toe-waltzing.

I think lots of coaches don't bother to correct the toe-waltzing in the early stages as they are more concerned that people get confident jumping and then if people continue skating they will work on getting the techniques correct.

OK another point - you also need to bring your weight back on to your picking foot before you jump. If you look at your vids in slo-mo you will see that before you leave the ice, your body has already turned to facing forward (like a waltz jump) instead of staying backward (for a proper toe-loop) and your weight is on your right leg instead of on your picking leg. You should be jumping off the picking foot, not the right foot for a toe-loop and to do that you need to bring your weight back on to it - again practicing back pivots will help. Try picking in and keep front foot in back pivot position, then bring your weight back on to the picking foot while bringing front foot, heel first, closer to picking foot (but not past it), then jump straight up (off the picking foot) and back down in place to landing position while still facing backward. Don't do the rotation at all yet. If you can do that, then you can get into the correct position for a toe-loop take-off. If you find you have turned to face forward then you are about to do a toe-waltz.

These are the exercises my coach gave me to correct my toe-loop but if your coach is happy with what you are doing then maybe that is all she wants for the level you are at. Practice those exercises though and you should get a proper toe-loop quicker.

I think you're in the UK aren't you so it may be that at the level you are at they just want you to get the 3 turn entrance and jump rather than worrying about it being correct - you will come back to it once you get to NISA level 1.

Anyway it looks like you are doing well for such a short time skating. Good Luck.

With apologies for being over-analytical but you did ask!

As long as you have the sportsband to keep them on it's OK. My glasses wouldn't last 1 minute before flying halfway accross the rink.

Kevin

I have astigmatism, too, but find the toric lenses do help; I can see well enough to skate in them and drive in them. I don't see as well as I do with my glasses, but a very great deal better than without! Of course, my glasses, these days, are bifocals (most people come to them by their fifties!), so if I am wearing my lenses I also need reading-glasses, but they can stay in my skate bag when I am actually on the ice!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

I can't watch the video because I'm on my parents ancient computer, but as far as glasses go, wear them if you need them. I can't see without them, and I can't judge distances either, so if I see a blur that I know is a person, I wouldn't know if htey were 5 feet in front of me or 15 feet. Kinda dangerous if there are other people around. I try to skate in contacts but I can't wear them when my allergies are bad, so I will skate in glasses if I have to. I'll only take them off if I'm the only one on the ice since I hate the feeling of skating in them and would rather not, but I would rather see than crash into anybody.

I have it too, but apart from the lenses costing a fortune (over 700 euro for a year) because they needed to be special ordered, they also simply didn't stabilise enough. Every time I blinked, or moved my head, they moved just the slightest and for me every degree they're off-center is about -15% in sight. Even sitting in a chair at the doc's office the max I got was 65% with lenses and you need min. 70 to drive a car. I was dancing at the time, and sometimes they'd move by two, maybe three degrees and everything went fuzzy all around me, with skating, that effect would only be much worse. Tried hard, soft, and air-permeable ones, and they kept giving me eye infections to top things off, too. I'm not a candidate for laser either, so I'm gonna be skating in glasses myself, even at competitions.

It is a beginning drill for a toe-loop. All tloops are t-waltzes. If you take
the best one in the world .. MKwan has one, and slow it down frame by
frame, you will see clearly that it is a toe-waltz. Most professionals do
it even worse ... off the back inside edge, rather than off the toe pick.
Yours is a good drill and it will come up to speed in time. Let it come up
to where you enjoy it, and leave it there.

Also, just for fun and debate ... the waltz jump itself is done much further
around than your tloop drill. A waltz jump can only go off the toe pick
after the toe pick has turned backwards. Many skaters think they go
off the inside edge. That technique slips badly, and the best waltz jumps
go off the rotated toe pick. Watch carefully and you will see that the
waltz jump is done on a turning circle ... and the tloop is not. That is
the only real difference. To really see what I mean, try doing both in
sequence.

johns

One of my adult skating friends is also in that situation...so she got the GLITZIEST glasses she could get for skating!!! They are very glam and pretty!!!

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