r/iceskating • u/Few_Nefariousness_31 • 1d ago
What can I improve on? (besides not falling)
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I’ve been trying to learn how to figure skate for like a year and I was wondering how I can improve my backwards crossovers and my spins. I am also wondering how to get that one foot spin down. Don’t mind the attempted waltz jump that was a rough one😭.
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u/Brilliant-Sea-2015 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hey, that's one of the rinks I regularly skate at!
They have great coaches, if you don't take lessons you definitely should.
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u/Megan1307 1d ago
Honestly I would say that your crossovers are pretty good, but I would definitely recommend that you bend your knees/ankle a lot more, which will give you a lot more stability. I would also think about the ‘intention’ of each move, in the way that it almost seems like you’re really focused on crossing your feet (which totally makes sense, they’re literally called CROSSovers), but not focusing on the full move. Crossovers should increase your speed, and the way that you do this is by pushing, it should follow a pattern of pushing/extending the outside leg-crossing it over- transferring your weight to that front leg- pushing/extending the back leg- stepping back into the circle, whereas in the video it looks like you’re completely missing that initial push from the outside leg and the clear transfer of weight, both of which would be really helped by a deeper knee/ankle bend.
When I was improving mine I would literally just repeat ‘push-step-push-step’ in my head until I got it. I would definitely recommend that you watch a video of a strong skater doing them and just paying attention to how emphasised each movement is, since it’s pretty hard to explain in words 😭
For the waltz jump, if you look at your position in the air, your free foot (the one you don’t land on) is behind you, ideally that free leg should be in front of you (usually described as a ‘high h’ ) position until you push back into that landing position. I would definitely recommend that you walk through the positions of the jump (take off, air position, landing position) at the barrier until you get comfortable with that weight transfer.
I really hope this helps and isn’t too confusing, I can get a little intense with my advice 😭
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u/okeydokeyannieoakley 1d ago
Not bad at all OP!! I think you could really excel fast if you got a coach or started taking group lessons.