World and Olympic coach Denise Myers shares more jump exercises. She begins with a jump air position exercise intended to teach “the flex” or the locking of the axis leg and flexing the axis foot upward. She places her mitten on the base of the hockey door and has the skater stand on the mitten with the non-axis skate and hold the desired lower body air position before stepping back down to the ice and holding a landing position. She then has the skater hold the flex or air position while gliding backward on the non-axis foot, while she pokes and prods the skater in an attempt to improve the strength of the position.
Next, Denise switches to an exercise for improving toe loop combination jumps, consisting of a waltz jump, loop jump, double toe loop combo. To work on patience and timing she then has the skater do push back and then push back immediately into double toe. She further complicates this by doing two of these in a row (push back, push back double toe, push back, push back double toe). Another exercise is a push back followed by an edge pull and then a push back double toe.
In terms of head position, Denise notes that some skaters “need to spot outside their body and some people need to feel it inside their body.” It depends on the skater.
As a way to help keep a double or triple loop organized (keep legs and feet relatively close to the body), Denise recommends a “traveling three loop.” Notice the free leg/foot position on the traveling three turns where the non-axis leg is held in reserve and beside the axis leg. A skater can use 2 threes or 4 threes for this exercise and must place the free foot in front after the last three turn from forward to backward to prepare for the jump.
Denise ends the video with another valuable suggestion. She likes to have her skaters do a spin after a jump, and this can typically be a program section. In other words, during jump practice, the skater performs the jump and then the connecting steps and transitions into the next element (typically a spin). Her final words of wisdom are, “It’s really good to practice in sections and do your full run-throughs and be the best you can be.”
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