World and Olympic coach Robert Tebby continues his discussion of single axel development. Part 1 offered a ton of detail, from the overall process Robert uses to the specifics of that process. In this video, he begins by noting some common errors. He explains that because we’re asking skaters to create rotational energy (which Robert calls momentum), there are many potential errors associated with this. One is swinging the free arm around wide, another is dramatic head turns in the rotational direction, and yet another is swinging the free leg around aggressively. To counter these errors, Robert says, “I really try to stick to the basics of let’s make sure we’re watching where we’re going, that the free leg is bent behind (on the initial part of the take-off edge), and we’re getting the arms to touch (in front), and then we jump.” This focus minimizes excessive rotation.
Robert goes on to describe another important aspect of a good axel. He says, “After we make this contact (arms touch), as we’re hitting our toe our core is turning towards our left arm [non-axis arm in the direction of jump rotation], and that helps initiate the rotation.” Some skaters get this feeling “right away, some take a little longer.” It takes patience and encouragement as skaters work “towards stability on the take-off, stability on the landing, then add in the backspin.” Robert explains that in his experience skaters learning an axel typically have a medium to poor backspin, and he says, “I don’t get too caught up in whether the backspin is perfect or not.”
Next Robert explains the need to practice and work on the landing, because skaters don’t automatically know how to “stop all that rotation that you’ve created.” He recommends his “inside hop” exercise which focuses on “land, balance, exit” in a simple and repeatable way. He also wants his skaters to hit a strong landing position regardless of what actually happens on the landing of the jump attempt. In other words, even if a skater falls he wants them to get up and push back into a landing.
Axel is a difficult jump to teach, and requires good coaching knowledge and methods. Robert notes, “You have to judge what you get. You’re going to get a multitude of different things (errors) thrown at you (as a coach) and you need to be able to pick what is the biggest thing I can fix because you can’t fix 5 things. You can fix one thing. And when you get that one thing fixed then you can possibly move on to something else. Pick your battles.”
To end this video, Robert shares a recent axel development story for a local skater he works with. To help correct the free side arm swinging around, he had her work on the jump from forward edge rolls, where the skater’s arms were in front on the preparation edge roll prior to the step onto the take-off edge. He says, “Just the stability of the arms gave her that balance that she landed it.” He also used the entry he explained in the previous video for the bell jump as a way to take advantage of something that already felt comfortable for the skater. He cautions about putting the axel on a big pattern too soon and says, “I do it on the line (from an edge roll) and then like the bell jump (down the line) and when we’re landing more of them then I add it on to a circle with cross cuts (crossovers).”
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