World and Olympic coach Audrey Weisiger gives a jump lesson at a seminar. The skater had a double axel at one time in the past and lost it, and the goal of this lesson is to try to get it back. However, most of the lesson is spent finding weaknesses and performing drills and most of these drills are valuable tools for all jumps, not just for double axel development.
To begin, Audrey has the skater do a double loop “from a standstill,” primarily to observe air position and landing. Audrey is concerned about this skater’s air position tightness, and also the “strength” of the air position. She refers to this as “locking out more in the air.” For a skater at or near minimum air times for any jump, air position must be optimized.
On the double loop, this skater tends to lean outside the circle, and Audrey refers to this as a “dog chasing it’s tail.” To address this, she has the skater place her non-axis arm on her axis hip. This tends to lock the shoulders more to the hips, preventing excessive shoulder and head movement. This drill can be enhanced by speeding up or “driving” the axis side through the take-off, although this requires good timing (which this skater has).
Audrey brings the skater to the wall to feel the desired air position, with a locked axis knee and a flexed axis foot, with the thighs tight together and an overall tension or tightness to the position. The wall is helpful here since the skater is balancing only on the non-axis bottom toe pick. To work on the strength of this position, she has the skater try to hold this position at the wall while trying to pull the feet apart.
Most of the rest of the video is spent on improving the landing, especially the alignment and control. Audrey has the skater land the jump with the free leg back as usual, but then reposition the free leg in front and in a strong d-position. She has the skater do this with a single loop. Then she adds another piece to the drill, finishing by standing on the crossed non-axis foot and flexing the axis foot while gliding backward. This she does first with a simple landing position, then a single loop, and finally the double loop. This exit improves the landing but also provides and opportunity to continuously work the tightness of the air position during and after the jump.
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