Spin specialist Kim Ryan continues her presentation on opposite direction spins. In Part 1 she explained the concept of spin gateways in IJS and worked with the class on basic spinning technique, and in Part 2 she taught an exercise that allows skaters to repeatedly perform opposite direction upright spins without stopping. In this video, she has the class do repeating opposite direction sit spins. Much of the value in this video is the individual instruction and feedback based on common errors by each of the skaters she focuses on.
Kim explains that the point isn’t to get a lot of revolutions in each spin, but to focus instead on balance initially. If a full sit is not possible yet, a “halfie sit” is acceptable. She reviews the overall exercise again as described in Part 2, with the added note that the skaters should come up from the sit to the skinny V before passing the leg back to prepare for the next spin. Many skaters instead try to re-balance themselves by opening the legs and arms without returning to the skinny V, but this is actually harder. Just like when learning a sit spin for the first time, skaters will typically struggle with getting the hands and legs together on the sit spin in the direction they are not used to so Kim focuses a lot on this throughout the video (this is the “balance” she was talking about before).
Kim also says, “The more you stretch your (free) leg out as you stand up (while rising from the sit spin into the skinny V), the more balance you’ll have and it’s easier to come out on the back inside edge.” Another error that Kim corrects is the tendency to “twist” the shoulders too soon while rising up from the sit spin to the skinny V to prepare for the back inside edge. Basically she does not want the skaters to “get ready for the new circle before they’re finished with the old one.” At the end of the video, Kim reminds the class to trust the building blocks and the process and to use the skinny V upright spin position that they already worked on before beginning the transition to the next spin.
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