Skating Fridays

Finally, Some Progress!

I’ve lost track of how many years I’ve been working on the double salchow. There have been a handful of occasions where I’ve landed them cleanly, but it’s been inconsistent over the years. Sometimes it will take YEARS between clean jumps, and that gets extremely frustrating.

Just two weeks ago, I started having a lightbulb moment. I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize this, but I finally figured out that I need to jump up as high as I can in order for me to land this cleanly. You’re probably thinking, “Duh!” and I would be smacking my own head and agreeing with you.

In the previous months/years, I have been focusing on the rotation, since I tend to land this jump short of clean. But if I go back and think about the jumps that were clean, I distinctly remember that the jumps felt big. Subconsciously, I was thinking about getting as high as I could into the air, and the rotation would take care of itself.

Since I am a naturally slow rotator, the only way I can make up for that is by gaining more air time/height.

Once I finally came to this conclusion and started purposely jumping bigger, I started landing these almost cleanly. When I shared this revelation with my coach, he said, “That’s it? All you needed to do was jump higher?” (cue head smack from Coach). Granted, all of the prep exercises we’ve been doing has helped. I’ve learned the proper rotation position, the correct takeoff, and everything in between. But if I lack air time, there is no way I’m rotating all the way around.

Let’s hope that this is the solve for my jump. I’m soooo ready to move onto another element!

And here is another:

Cook this on