figure skater for 2 years?

Question

hi. i need help on my axel. i am an advance skater who my coaches are teaching me the axel. i need help on getting myslef up in the air.

Answer 1

Some axel tips:
You need to get the height in your jump before you rotate. Remember the higher your jump, the more time you will have to rotate in the air to make your landing. Eventually speed will help with height and rotation when you have better control of the technique.

Off ice: Stand on 2 feet. Keep your arms out and apart. Jump up and bring your arms up and in as you would with ice jumping. The next jump, arms apart, really bend without breaking your upper body and jump high quickly, bringing your arms in. The next jump, do the quick jump again, but this time thing about hanging in the air at the highest point of your jump. Later you do this concentrating on pushing off the foot you jump with on ice. This high, hang/floating feeling is what you want to feel on all your jumps - including axel.

On ice: Make sure your shoulders/hips are level . . . bend that take off knee in your entrance. Make sure the shoulder on your take off side doesn't creep back, otherwise your hip will follow and cause you to prerotate. Do not prerotate - besides the fact it would be cheated, you'd be jumping sideways and won't get the height.

Jump UP - not around. Use your arms to help you lift up. Kick your free leg straight through and think of putting your knee up (not out like a waltz jump). Last thing to leave the ice is that toe pick. At the height of your jump, bring your arms in and cross your legs into your back spin position (essentially a loop) . . . stand tall in the air and not break at the waist.

Practice axel entrance / back spins. Same thing to say waltz jump/ back spin, but if you say axel entrance, that will get your knee up (unlike a true waltz jump). When you jump, think to cross your legs and be in back spin position before you land. Try to stop your back spin with a check out at the right time as you would for axel. You can do this off ice as well ... do a couple side hops for momentum before you step to jump.

If you haven't already, try it on the harness with your coach. It may give you that little bit of confidence, if that is an issue, to land that jump!

You can practice axels off ice too. Make sure you jump UP! On the rotation, jump up and think to cross your legs before you land. Do a half rotation . . . then a whole . . . then the one and half for the axel. And when you land an off ice axel, obviously you cannot glide backwards . . . hop backwards upon landing for less chance of twisting your ankle.

Happy axeling!

Answer 2

Shoulders squared. Jump forward and not around. Take off on your toe, NOT YOUR HEEL. Do some "walk through" on-ice before doing the actually jump. Stand on both of your feet like a T. Do a waltz jump and remember to push hard off your toe and land into a back spin and then check out. Do that a couple of times, and then do your axel.

Or you can try this. Before getting speed into an axel like crossovers then axel, try to do the axels from standing still on-ice first, like how you would do axels off-ice. Once you can land those axels from just standing, add the speed to it with crossovers. Good luck =)

Answer 3

well you must be one of those people that doesn't get very high when you jump so either you dont try to get alot higher and make yourself rotate faster or you could probably use like a harness to help you build confidence when using the harness try to work on jumping up higher trust me i always jump high and it makes things sooooo much easier to land or you can just work on jumping nice and high and getting a good fast rotation make sure your practicing axels off ice that normally helps you build confidence to jump when your on the ice is you have a perfect axel off ice normally your almost perfect on ice

Answer 4

Axel's take a lot of practice, and getting off the ground can be one of the hardest parts :) I would suggest practicing off of the ice, it can be very helpful, and when you are doing them on the ice, make sure you have plenty of knee bend and you are taking off on your toe. Good luck!

Answer 5

practice ur waltz jumps and make sure u jump.

Answer 6

well you don't need to listen to this "tripple bunny hop" girl's long messege, all you need to do is apply just the right amount of force on your toe pick! good luck!