I'm new here .. or at least I haven't posted here in years, so I re-registered.
I know many of you from Usenet, and years of yakking online about rec
skating. My question / observation is this:

I'm getting too old for big jumps. My knees won't take the landings anymore.
So I quit jumping until I met a young girl at the rink here who has developed
what I call a small jump style. Thing is, she has some of the cleanest jumps
I have ever seen. They are effortless, and she can do them anywhere on
the ice from any position, and she mixes them freely with all kinds of foot
work. I asked her to show me how to do them .. not teach me, but just
show me so I could copy them. What she does is very much over-rotates
into her toe-pick, and the jump comes as she rocks up to the toe-pick.
I changed my waltz, tloop, and sal to her style, and I was instantly jumping
again ... HAPPY I was. I have always done "edged" jumps in the past, and
they were big, but not reliable. Now, these toe-pick jumps are very reliable,
and I can freely mix them in with moves and even ice dance, and they
never fail to land cleanly. I think I could do 20 waltz jumps in a row this
way. I can do 5 easily, and there is no reason to stop other than ??
Now, I'm working on loop and flip trying to develop her style, and I'm
very close to both. Her loop comes off the toe-pick. Hard to believe, but
true. She does the 180 turn into it, and rocks up to the pick, and the
loop just does itself the rest of the way. It pops, and looks effortless.
Her flip is spiked out to the side, and she drags the free skate edge
around her to the 180 position, and then easily rises off the toepick.
Again it is effortless. Any of you working recreational jumps this way ?

johns ( Howdy Ms Redboots .. It is me in Idaho )

Howdy, johns! How cool to see you posting here: I am also a refugee from the good (?) old days at rssir. I have particularly missed your and Sling Skate's contributions . . . you two old curmudgeons, you (said with love).

Sad to say, I can offer nothing helpful re: your question about jumping -- big, small or otherwise -- as I rarely skate, let alone jump, anymore. A broken wrist in 2005, followed by a badly broken ankle/foot in 2006, plus the normal exigencies of getting older (and having an even older parent to deal with ) have all conspired to keep me away from the ice. I hope to start back with baby steps -- i.e., figures -- this spring, if I can find a coach willing to teach me.

But it heartens me to hear that you're still out there in Idaho, with the frou frou dancing ladies and all. Are you still raising rabbits?

Well the way I did the loop at first was from a 3-turn, holding my arms very wide (the key here is to have the arms perfectly parallel and at the same height, you might wanna practice on socks before a mirror/dark window and on ice while looking at your reflection in the boardings). I went into the inside 3-turn with the arms open wide, I pre-rotated the jump on the outside edge to the point where it felt like my blade was almost flipping forward, then made a tiny jump up and pulled my arms in hard. The momentum of the arms from the 3turn brings up about 180 degrees and then you can land the loop just a little underrotated. Also I cheated the flip back then by doing it form a mohawk entrance and pre-rotating a quarter on the edge, then landing a quarter underrotated.

Hope that helps any.

Well hello johns.

I believe you are talking about a toe-waltz. That's the only kind of toe-loop I can do and probably ever will. It will be met with disapproval but if it makes you happy and you aren't going to try to pass a test with it, I say, have fun.

j

Heh, I've got a small axel this way - I call it my "Pixel". It could be criticized any number of ways (jumping around, etc.) but it still looks nifty with the 1-1/2 revs. It's badly pre-rotated on the ice, and I wish I could get into the air faster before the rotation, but as a fellow old guy, I'll take it.

After all, it's about the fun anyway.

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Bill Schneider

We are up to 33 Flemish Giants now. Got a doe out of Canada, and
she is over 22 pounds. Rabbit "herd" is applicable now.

johns

I think I've begun to see the wider arms. My pre-rotation in both loop
and flip has me right to the edge of having the jump again without
having to spike or edge either one ... just the roll up is all I want.
Timing is tricky because I want to go back to the old jump style, and
I have to fight that. I would have some pretty sore knees if I did.
Girl here has an axel done with a roll up too. She barely leaves the ice
at all, and yet the axel looks fine. She does the roll up at 180, and
kicks easily into the last 360 from the tip of her toe-pick. She says
her new coach calls it a "Sal-axel". Fine with me.

johns

Yep. Girl here has her "Sal-axel" that way. I say stop there, and
enjoy the sport too. She has a clean Sal alone from a mohawk
entry, and she can ride that thing 30 feet across the ice, and then
do the jump as the mohawk naturally turns forward by merely
pressing her toepick into the ice, and rising smoothly off of it.
I'm going to change my Sal to a mohawk entry.

johns

If I'm understanding your description of the technique, I'm gonna take a pass on that. I'd prefer to have a clean (as in, "given credit by a qualified judge") jump, myself. But as jskater49 says, if you're happy with a cheated jump, go for it.

Yeah, I couldn't do one pre-rotated because I would get dinged in competitions (and a 46, so far my knees are ok) but if you can live with it and it makes you happy then go for it! I bet most people don't care, most can't do half the stuff we do at our age so the heck with them anyway!

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

How many refugees from the good old days at RSSIR do we have here now? Mrs R and Jazzpants of course, but who else.

JohnF

I'm one.

I've seen quite a few others here too, although often their names have been changed from the RSSIR days.

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Bill Schneider

me. I used to post about preliminary dances but that's quite a few years bock.
Lyle is around here somewhere too.

edited: actually I used to discuss homemade spinners with sling quite a bit.

Revjoelle here

j

Oh lord :-)

Girl at ticket booth wrote, "Geezer Pass" on
my season ticket after scratching through the
word "Child". I'm still starving to death in Idaho.
Going to have to make a trip back to Wisconsin
for a decent meal, and an Old Style. Watch 'em
race their pickups across Lake Mendota at 2 in
the AM.

johns

WOW!!! No Sling Skate??? Hope he's okay. I haven't heard a peep outta him. The last I've heard he changed his handle to "AdultSkater" on RSSIR but has slowly dropped off since.

I haven't seen Lyle (aka Team Arthritis) in a while. I hope he's okay... W Letendre also has joined this group but I haven't seen him post here in quite a while.

Johns: Don't recognize me eh? If you don't know who I am already, I'm not gonna tell 'ya... (Yes, I *was* a regular there.) How's Peggy Sue?

And trust me, you CAN get a nice easy HIGH jump with a nice soft landing with the right technique. (I say that b/c I have going thru that and lived to tell about it.) Problem is... you need to get a good coach to teach 'ya the stuff and we know how you are about coaches. Speaking of coaches, I've met the skating director at your seasonal rink in Moscow a couple of years back (Brenda.) Nice lady... skates pretty well...

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

To protect the innocent?

I'm another, but not much of a name change.

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Hello Fellow Skaters,

I've been lurking here for a while, and after reading this thread I decided it's about time I registered and started posting! I'm also from the oldd rssir newsgroup. I was Mainiac159. Last spring we moved from Maine to northern NY State, thus the new screen name. Some of you may remember me from the Lake Placid Adult Skating Camp last June. That experience was the highlight of my skating life. I hope you all can attend some time during your skating career.

My new Freestyle Coach has taught me a new way to do a toe loop. Along a circle, first do a left outside 3-turn, then short back right glide. Pick your left skate into the ice, do a short pivot , then jump. Clearly not a full rotation, but it looks very pretty. Some day I may master it! But not too soon because I broke my left wrist last week. : ( And that leads to an injury thread I'll start another day.

Pat

I was on rssir for years. I forget what my login was. You might remember me as the technical skating web page guy. I have a new web page at

www.techskate.com/skate

Kevin

Welcome to the new group and DON'T BREAK ANYTHING ELSE!

I hope your recovery is fast and you're back to normal soon.

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Bill Schneider

Me, too. I started yapping about skating on rssir and rssif.

Welcome to SkatingForums, Pat. I also attended the Lake Placid Adult Skating Camp. I was there in Aug, 2001, and broke my right wrist there, making it the nadir of my skating life . Hope your fracture isn't too bad and you can get back on the ice soon.

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This sounds a bit like an axel, but with half a rotation? Still pretty good though.

Well I am 58 and just started jumping "the hard way" but so far so good. I wrecked my knees and quit skating at 19 but they seem to be holding up fine so far. When/if they start giving me trouble and I have to give up Freeskate, I'll try these almost-jumps!

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

Husband used to get really sore knees when he first tried to learn the flip jump, although I have a feeling that was as much because he was still cycling regularly then as because of poor technique. These days, his knee tells him if he overdoes jumping practice, but if he is sensible he's okay. I used to not be able to do any up-down-up exercises like power pulls or similar or my knees told me all about it next day, but just lately they've been much better - I think the relevant tendons have got stronger.

**Waves at JohnS**

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