World and Olympic coach Tom Zakrajsek continues his presentation of some on-ice exercises he uses with his skaters as a warm-up for jumping. In Part 1 he introduced the concept and shared exercises such as “heel clicks,” “edge ups,” and “air brackets.” He begins this video by combining edge ups with air brackets, and he says, “You may think of this as power pulls into air brackets.” With this exercise, the skater does alternating pulls down the long axis of the rink on one foot, alternating back inside brackets and back outside brackets with pulls in between. The skater then performs the same exercise on the other foot.
The last exercise Tom shares in this warmup is the “one rotation jump on the diagonal” which has the skater jumping off two feet and landing on two feet with one rotation. Tom says, “I really believe that if a skater thinks of always jumping off of two feet… even though we know that one foot always goes into the air before the other, that sensation of two feet helps them feel stacked from the ankles through the knees through the hips and the shoulders. And that feeling helps them go straight up and it can also help them turn as an entire unit.” In practice, Tom has the skater do backward crossovers around the end of the rink and set up backwards on the diagonal before repeatedly doing these two foot turns off two feet. All three demonstrators do the exercise so you can see how it looks for various skating levels.
Next Tom discusses posture and alignment with “chest over knee over toe” where the overall alignment is vertical. Tom says, “The more vertical you are, the easier it is to be quick on a take-off.” He also explains that these repeating jumps should remain flowing in a straight line down the diagonal of the rink rather than curving or “tightening” which is caused by pushing off one foot more than the otter. Tom explains the need to “check the arms” during the landing phase of each jump to prepare for the release into the next jump take-off. This ensures the exercise can maintain flow and quickness. Tom says, “I want them to feel like they’re on hot coals and they’ve got to go up up up, quick, quick, quick.”
To perform this exercise correctly, the rotation isn’t coming from edge pressure (i.e. blades and hips) but instead from shoulder and arm movements. Tom says, “They’re activating their posterior chain first, and they’re using their right arm, I always call that the ‘rotator creator,’ their right arm is providing that torque for the rotation.”
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