Michelle Leigh talks about one of the most important concepts of successful multi-rotational jumping. In this video Michelle discusses the importance of foot contact in the air and she gives an extremely helpful drill for your skaters.
Michelle mentions that we can use a pretty wide variety of take-off technique, but successful triples nearly all have foot contact in the air. Note that she says foot contact and she allows for space between the knees. One of the most common misconceptions in jumping is the belief that the legs should be tight together at all points. This is not true. Because the free hip must stay up and lack of foot contact creates a lot of drag on rotation (large moment of intertia), it is much better to have the feet together and the knees apart. (For further confirmation, see Page Lipe’s discussion of air position.)
Notice in the drill that Michelle recommends pointing the toe on the non-landing foot while flexing the toe of the landing foot. This causes the feet to “lock together” and virtually guarantees that the landing leg will straighten completely in the air (knee locks). Audrey Weisiger and her team of G2C coaches refer to this as “floxing” (flexing the landing foot up and locking the knee). Michelle adds to the drill by including a pivot.
This is a very important video and we should all try to understand why this is so effective and use it with our skaters.
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2 responses to “Ice Skating Jumps: Air Position Of Feet (Michelle Leigh)”
Great idea!! I love the exercise and will start using it right away! Thanks SO much Michelle for all of your input on this site!
We used to learn these positions in figures. Try a forward outside 8 with the free foot directly over the tracing of the circle. It makes the knee turn in slightly and one can feel the muscles that squeeze the legs at the top, not at the knees. I still teach the outside 8 to my skaters as a traditional figure. It really gives them a sense of center and body position.