Look Ma, No Hands!
My coach has been racking his brain on a method to help me successfully rotate a double salchow. It’s been over a year since I landed a clean one. He’s used just about every trick in his book, but nothing is helping.
The good news is, that we’ve fixed just about every part of the jump – from the setup, to the entry, to the axis, to the landing. My problem is putting everything together. Plus, I tend to open up on the landing. Is it from fear? Maybe. Neither air time nor height are the issue, so we’re trying to isolate the problem area.
One exercise my coach gave me was to execute all my single jumps without the use of arms. I know many skaters have attempted this exercise utilizing “arms in frames” or the “I Dream of Jeannie” position. What I haven’t tried is having arms completely pulled into rotating position. The purpose of this is to eliminate the arms and hands as a source of error or variation in the jump:
Of course, after I did these, he asked me to try axels with no arms. Surprisingly, I was able to pull this off!
Here’s to hoping that this new exercise works!
Eva, I am so impressed! Those look really good–it seems like such a mind game to not use your arms.
Author
It definitely is a mind game. I have to learn not to rely on the arms as much!