The Progression of My Spiral
The spiral is one of the quintessential elements in ladies’ figure skating. When you think of gorgeous spirals, you may think of ones from Sasha Cohen, Michelle Kwan and Nancy Kerrigan.
I used to think that I had a nice spiral but then I went back to my previous videos to see what they looked like. And I’ve gotta say that they were pretty ugly. My free leg was parallel to the ice at best, and even though it felt like a beautiful, gorgeous position, the video proof tells me otherwise.
I went back to my old skating videos and took screen shots to see the difference in this element over a time period of 4 years to see my spiral journey. These were all done on the same leg, but I’ve flipped them so they all look like they are from the same camera angle (that’s why some may appear like they are on different legs, but I assure you that they were all done on my “good” leg).
You can clearly see the improvement from 2014 – when my free leg was parallel to my hips and the ice and how it’s evolved to where it is today.
So what changed? Well, my stretching habits for one. I stretch almost on a daily basis and work on my front splits pretty regularly. Ballet has also helped. I’m hoping to achieve an iconic-like spiral one day so that it becomes one of my signature moves. One can dream, right?
