Congratulations and a Double Salchow Update
First of all, I need to congratulate one of the skaters at my rink. She recently won her event at regionals. What does that mean exactly? It means that out of the ~120 girls that competed in her event, she got 1st place. How amazing is that?
The top 4 girls move on to Sectionals, which is happening in November. She is by far the most talented skater at our rink and has the most potential to do well nationally. I’ll be keeping an eye on her to see how she does at Sectionals (I believe the top 4 move on to Nationals).
When I’m not staring at this girls’ amazing jumps and spins, I try improving my own elements. You all know I’ve been on the struggle bus with the double salchow lately. I landed (an ugly but IJS ‘clean’) double salchow almost a year ago. It’s improved since then, but I haven’t landed a beautiful or a fully clean one this year. At least not to my knowledge.
Here is a video from last week to show what progress I am making. The first exercise you see me doing in the video is what Coach B calls a ‘double hop.” Essentially it means that I doing one full revolution and landing forward on two feet. After that, I am attempting a double salchow. If you watch it in slow motion, you’ll see that I am still landing forwards so I’m 1/4 revolutions shy of an IJS-clean jump.
My takeoff and air positions are improving, so that makes me happy. I really want to get this jump fully correct and clean this year. Fingers crossed that I can do it!
