Ok I'm feeling very for still being confused about this, but...

Going in for a toe jump (any of them) leg is locked, foot flexed. After you set the pick do you keep the leg locked and use it like a pole in a pole-vault, or let the leg bend and when the skating foot catches up to it jump with both feet?

__________________
It's all about the dress!

I never lock my knees when I picking- it might be because I am hyperextended when I'm locked that my coach asked me not to though. But I definetly bend my "picked" foot as my other foot comes in towards it and take off from bent knees.

Don't know if I'm doing it right though

__________________
-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

my coaches have both been trying to remind me to keep the leg straight, I tend to go in with it bent. Looking at my practice video the other day I see what they mean --yuk!

__________________
It's all about the dress!

Don't bend, that's where you loose all the energy. It's like a scissorish motion. Like a cat striking a ball she's playing with. She taps it only briefly but it's enough to transfer all the strength. I can't really describe it. At some point our group lessons coach pulled me over cuz I was bending with picking, and then she called over Marisol and asked her to do a flip and told me to PICK LIKE SHE DOES and I instantly got the feeling somehow.
But it helps for my flip to think like, of tensing all the muscles in the leg while keeping the knee straight. Keeps me from bending it after picking. And you gotta pick low (don't swing the leg up first) if you wanna pick straight and do the pulling thing. Of course all that went down the drain when I fractured the ankle and couldn't pick normally anymore but that's how I did it before that.

Well I am no expert (for sure!) but I have VERY strong legs and pick with the knee flexed. Straightening that knee helps extend the height I get from the takeoff jump.

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

I can't imagine jumping off a completely locked leg! I'm also having trouble imagining how you pick if your toe is flexed instead of pointed...

I go into all my toe jumps with a straight but slack leg, and bend it slightly more to jump when my feet are a little closer -- thus getting the benefit of the "pole vaulting" of the toe pick and the actual jumping of the skating leg itself. I would think that going into a flip or lutz with a completely locked leg would tip you backward as you pulled up into the jump.

My picking knee is definitely very bent for all my toe jumps. It doesn't look pretty, but I'm not sure how you could keep your picking leg perfectly straight. Doesn't it have to bend even just a tiny bit so you can get some height with the jump (to make the jump spring up)?

what my coach said is my foot should be flexed just enough to pick with the whole rake, not just the first pick like I was doing. Straight but slack is probably right, I just need to not let slack turn into totally bent.

__________________
It's all about the dress!

I'm not sure it's completely locked. It feels all straight and all muscle tensed, but we all know what you FEEL is not neccesarily what you GET. And I do (did) tense it all with a pointed toe actually, I don't think either that a flexed one would work... I don't have video's from when I was doing it right and when everybody was saying it looked really good and had a really nice rotation, because I ended up getting that ankle fracture very soon afterward and I couldn't jump off the (right) picking leg anymore at all. So I'm not sure if what it felt like was actually what it looked like. But it felt like just tensing everything while straightening the knee through. It's just when I discovered you had to tense apart from straightening that I got the full rotation... I dunno why.

But you know we do group lessons so as soon as you get the jump, they kinda stop paying attention to you until everybody in the group got the jump so I might be doing it wrong... I hope not. LOL

With the toeloop I jump off a slightly bent leg but it's not getting any height that way.