Figure skating spin specialist Charyl Brusch continues her lesson working with a skater on a relatively new camel spin. See the initial part of this camel spin lesson here. In this video, the initial focus is on the camel catch foot, but throughout the lesson Charyl corrects the issue with the skater’s left arm on the entry edge. Charyl wants the skater to leave that arm in front and ride the edge, but the skater moves it or “swims” with it too soon which kills some of the rotational energy from the edge.
To work on the catch foot concept, Charyl has the skater stand at the wall facing an open doorway in a camel spin position. To make this work, it is necessary to “press on the front of the blade” so the bottom toe pick grabs and the overall position is stable. Using a very high free leg position, Charyl watches the free knee movement carefully as the skater bends that leg. The knee should not drop inside the circle but remain behind the hips while the skater bends the knee (“pull that knee behind you more”) to prepare for the catch. A good tip is to pull the free foot toward the skating (opposite) shoulder. It’s also important not to raise the upper body to perform the catch. Instead Charyl wants the body to remain down during the catch and focus instead on pulling the free leg up more after the catch. It’s also important to remain balanced correctly on the blade and to “keep spinning” while performing the catch, and Charyl describes it as “staying in the same spot on the blade” throughout the spin.
As noted above, much of the rest of the lesson is Charyl trying to get the skater to make a simple change to the left arm position on the entry edge. In frustration, but also clever coaching, Charyl threatens the skater (with a smile) to get a significant improvement on the spin entry (at 2:42 in the video). Charyl tells the skater she doesn’t even care if the spin itself it terrible, as long as the arm is held correctly during the entry edge. This is the concept of “giving the skater permission to make a mistake” in order to shift more focus to something specific that is being worked on.
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