Coach Amy Brolsma continues a series of videos on brackets. In Part 1 she introduced the fundamentals of position and balance and posture as well as two foot bracket turns. In this video she offers step by step advice for teaching brackets. She uses backward outside brackets for her demonstrations.
Amy begins by having the skater prove that they can comfortably glide on a circle with good posture and proper blade usage. She says, “We really want to be sure we’re standing tall over the skating hip.” By asking them to hold the edge for a very long time, it shows this control.
After a skater can ride that edge in the correct position, Amy adds edge pressure, which is simply adding some ankle and knee bend without having any posture breaks. Typically a skater will be in the same spot on the blade as in the tall gliding position discussed previously.
To perform the turn, the skater initiates the turn with the shoulders. Amy says, “Shoulders, knees, and toes” which comes from a children’s song but also a offers reminder of turn movements. The turn itself is very quick, and briefly uses the back part of the blade. Amy notes, “If you have a slow turn, you’re going to have too much turn” which results in skids and undesirable edge changes. She describes it as downward edge pressure on the entrance, then a quick hiccup for the turn, and back to downward edge pressure on the exit.
Next Amy goes into more detail about proper free hip position while “standing tall” over the skating side. She then describes the knee action of the free leg (scissor action) which can be helpful to release from the entrance edge for the turn. The knee action remains in a plane with respect to the body (“keep those thighs side by side”), but the knee actually hits it’s high point roughly when the free leg is pointed into the circle. It is very important not to allow the hips to open for a good bracket.
As a hint of things to come, Amy notes that the bracket entry is essentially the same as the counter entry, and both need to stay on the correct edge right up until the “top of the turn.”
