Spin specialist Charyl Brusch continues a spin lesson with a young skater. In the previous part of the lesson, Charyl focused on the upright forward and back spins. In this part of the lesson, Charyl starts with the sit spin. This skater really struggles with sit spins. It’s not always clear why skaters like this struggle, although those with particularly long legs often have more problems. This skater does have long legs relative to the length of the upper body, which means the skater needs to have pretty extreme forward posture to properly balance the position.
To help this skater get down low enough for the position to count as a sit spin, Charyl has resorted to asking for a sit position that is very similar to a cannonball sit spin position (upper body slightly up). In the position work at the boards, Charyl asks for more ankle bend (“press from the front of your ankles”) and a strongly arched back. She acknowledges that some skaters struggle because of “bad knees” or a lack of leg strength.
When working on the back sit spin, this skater initially seems more comfortable simply stepping into the back sit, rather than going to a back sit from the front sit position. Charyl spends some time working on the transition between the spins, getting clear on the balance point on the blade for back sit, and working on alignment over the skating foot. Another focus point is getting the knees together in both spins. Charyl guides the skater into several attempts as a way to increase spin speed and force correct centering of the initial spin.
At the end of the video, Charyl simply asks for a forward sit that sits all the way down, even if it results in a fall. This produces the best sit spin this skater had ever done up to that point. Sometimes simply giving the skater permission to fail is all it takes to get a significant change.
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