World and Olympic coach Audrey Weisiger gives a lesson where she focuses primarily on fixing one bad jump habit. The bad habit for this skater is dropping the body or wiggling with the upper body on landing. This is a very common problem, especially for skaters who lack confidence or awareness. For this skater, however, it’s merely a bad habit as she clearly shows throughout the video that she can nail solid landings if she remains focused on it.
The advice that Audrey gives this skater is to pretend she’s landing with her favorite book balanced on her head (this skater likes to read) while she tries to land as softly as a feather. After the skater does some very nice landings, Audrey asks what it feels like and the skater uses terms like “taller” and “more secure.” Notice that to get a change, Audrey simply asks for it. But to maintain that change throughout the lesson, Audrey is patient and persistently reminds the skater of this focus. She also spends time convincing the skater to make the change permanent to receive better scores from judges in competition.
At the very end of the video, Audrey mentions another common (almost universal) habit of jumping very close to the wall. This again is simply a choice for most skaters, and most coaches as well. Coaches that don’t tolerate jumping close to the wall simply don’t have skaters that jump close to the wall. Audrey notes that anyone watching a skater set up and jump very close to the wall will likely have some discomfort wondering if the skater will actually hit the wall. This is obviously not good for competition scores.
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