Axel Jump Figure Skating Tip (Page Lipe)

Page Lipe shows how she develops the axel.  In this video she focuses mainly on the half axel (also known as a “once around” or sometimes a “bell jump”).  There are some pearls of wisdom here that Page takes for granted in her discussion.

For example, she mentions in passing that the hips initiate the rotation.  This is important to understand and it’s often overlooked by many coaches.   To make it happen she has the skater take-off with their head over their thigh and although she doesn’t mention it in the video, her hands are also over the thigh.

She also casually mentions that the take-off foot turns and she provides an exercise to help a skater develop the proper feeling.  This motion of the foot is critical to the development of the rotational energy.  This concept is often overlooked as many coaches teach an axel take-off the same as a straight through waltz jump take-off, but just on a deeper edge.  Page teaches the technique used by nearly all top coaches.  In fact, a double axel is nearly impossible without this technique, unless the skater can jump very high.

She also discusses “the skid”.  Her attitude matches that of most top coaches.  The exercise she shows for getting a skater to shift their weight is very effective (and difficult).

There’s a lot of great information in this video.

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