Skating Fridays

Headless Spin

Last week, I had a fun spin lesson. When my coach asked me what I wanted to work on, I mentioned trying some new things so that I could potentially add them to my repertoire. Specifically, I mentioned the layback spin and one other thing.

My coach had me demonstrate my layback and was pretty blunt with me. “Hmm. It looks like you lost a lot of flexibility in your back. Your flexibility improved when you were off the ice in the spring, but it appears that you’ve gotten stiffer.” She’s right.

Work has been crazy busy lately, so I haven’t had as much time to stretch throughout the day and work on my layback position. Lame excuse, I know.

One thing my coach had me try was a headless spin. She taught me the mechanics and said that this position should help me in the layback. I have a tendency of keeping my head upright after than tilting it back. So, doing headless spins should assist me in getting comfortable tilting my head completely backwards.

Surprisingly, I was actually able to do them pretty easily and successfully did not crack my head open. I’d seen headless spins before and they freaked me out. However, after learning the proper technique, they actually weren’t too bad. We tried these on a forward upright spin first, and then we tried it on a backspin.

Take a look!

I’m hopeful that this exercise will help with my layback. Now I just need to make some time to properly stretch my back so that the rest of the layback will be in the proper alignment.