Ice Skating – Toe Loop Myths (Audrey Weisiger)

Olympic coach Audrey Weisiger continues her discussion of toe-loop combination jumps with some basic clarifications of proper toe loop technique. This is a short video but the two main ideas that Audrey shares are incredibly important.

1. A good toe loop has a strong reach straight back but the legs start coming together in a scissoring motion before the toe pick enters the ice. Audrey says, “You want to feel like you’re reaching back behind your head. But you don’t put the toe in the ice back here .” Audrey notes that many coaches teach the skater to put the toe in the ice as far back as possible, but that’s not what actually happens.

2. The tapping toe is placed in the ice slightly sideways and not “square” as many coaches teach. Audrey describes it as “slight T-position” and notes this is necessary to facilitate the pivoting to forward that happens on a toe loop. To clarify this further, she draws the desired imprint of the toe on the ice. She compares it to the “checkmark” on the end of a salchow take-off.

Audrey also emphasizes that only the bottom toe pick is used on the toe loop. She describes it as “squashing a bug.” The details of this short video are very important as there is a great deal of misunderstanding about these issues in the sport today.