Lay Back Spin In Ice Skating: Part 2 (Charyl Brusch)

Spin specialist Charyl Brusch continues her discussion of the layback spin. See how she initially introduces the layback in the first part of this series. In the first part, Charyl simply had the skater do various attitude spins without laying back.

In this video, Charyl adds the discussion of actually laying back. At first Charyl asks the skater to “lay back” without dropping the head back. Charyl wants the head square and right over the skating knee. Charyl offers a nice summary and review of her approach in this video as well. The last feature she adds is the head.

One of the biggest keys to the layback is HOW the skater lays back. Charyl says, “I try not to teach them to think of them arching their back as much as I do pushing their hips under.” Next, Charyl offers an excellent wall exercise in the hockey box door. This exercise is novel because most coaches teach a wall exercise for layback not using the door so the skater cannot press the hips far enough forward. Here’s how Charyl describes it: “I’m going to have her push her hips through the door. So her belly button is behind her hips.” She continues, “I don’t even have them think of leaning back. I have them think of bending from their hips.” She also focuses a lot on keeping pressure on the “bottom toe” (meaning keeping the pressure forward on the blade near the bottom toe pick).

Charyl continues the wall/door exercise with details about free foot position. She wants the knee higher than the foot and she wants the free foot on the skating side. Notice how high she wants the free leg in order to create “tension in the body.” Then she adds the arms to the wall exercise. In the demo Charyl wants the skater to take the head straight back and she uses the concept of taking the nostrils up and back. (Charyl says, “I use nostrils a lot because I think you can tell where they are.”)

Great video!