Two-Footed Double Salchow Exercise
For those of you who have been following my journey, you all know that I’ve been working really hard to land a correct double salchow. I made a declaration to myself and to my coach that this would be the year that it would happen.
You’ll notice from previous videos that I have the air time and height needed for the jump, but I am landing forward, which is a 1/4 revolution short of an IJS “clean” landing (a fully clean landing would be landed fully backwards).
My coach gave me a new exercise to try. We worked on all single jumps and landed them on two feet. The purpose was to align my body in the landing position so that my shoulders, feet, and legs were all on the same line. Theoretically, if I could land a double salchow attempt in this alignment position, then that meant that I would have the rotation needed to get all the way around.
If you watch the video closely, you’ll notice that I land in almost a tango stop. My upper body and free side keep rotating, while my landing leg and foot stop completely. It’s interesting that my landing side is the one that is preventing me from completing this jump.
This exercise helped me isolate the problem area for this jump. While I knew that my landing side needed to continue rotating internally, it was eye opening to see it happen on the 2-foot attempt. And it’s comforting to know that my upper body and free side are doing the correct thing.
Coach had me do a two-footed Axel and that one went fine. My landing side did not stop rotation, so for whatever reason, it’s only a problem on this jump.
