Sit Spin In Ice Skating Tips – Part 2 (Charyl Brusch)

Spin specialist Charyl Brusch continues her discussion of the sit spin. In the previous sit spin video, Charyl explained her philosophy on sit spin and how she teaches it. In this video, Charyl shares some drills for developing proper balance and position.

In the first drill, she has the skater basically doing a backward gliding dip on two feet in the sit spin position. She wants the skater to get their weight on the front of the blade in this drill. Next, she has the skater do the same drill but on one foot.

In the second drill, Charyl has the skaters on two feet in the sit position at the wall and lean gently on the wall. She then has them keep leaning against the wall and stand up, thus simulating getting up out of the sit spin with the forward pressure she described in the previous video.

In the third drill, Charyl does some hands on coaching where she forces the skater into the position she wants by pressing against their hip. You can tell by the demonstrations that Charyl has a lot of experience doing this kind of manipulation of her skaters. During one of the demonstrations, Charyl notes that it’s very important that the skating knee bends out directly over the middle of their toe pick (over their skating foot/toes).

Charyl also addresses the concept of the “spin sit” where the skater starts in a full upright spin and then drops down into the sit. Sometimes she uses this when a skater is just learning a sit spin as a way to get them to spin and then feel the proper final position. But Charyl wants the skater to enter the spin with a bent skating knee and keep the skating knee bent without coming up. She says, “I want them to go in on a knee bend. I just keep them on the knee bend. Their (free) leg is coming around while they’re on their knee bend and then they drop. But I don’t actually want them to come up and then go down. I like it to stay down.” She then clarifies her comments made in the previous video regarding not dropping the free leg until the leg comes in front.