HOW TO DO A ONE-FOOT SPIN - FIGURE SKATING (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Hi guys! So in my last video I went over how to do a two foot spin and I was requested to make a video about a one foot spin so let's get into that. If you haven't watched that video make sure you go back and watch it because you will need to know how to do a two foot spin before you start working on your one foot. So there are two ways you can get into your one foot spin. The first is very similar to our two foot spin and the second one is the traditional back crossover entrance. First we're going to start with our pivot entrance because it is the closest to how you would get into your two foot spin and is a great transition into your one foot. Just like our two foot spin you can choose to do a pivot with a toe pick or without. You are going to start with a two foot spin to stabilize yourself and make sure that you are centered. Once you feel like you are centered in one spot gradually pick up your foot. The two foot spin will help you keep yourself in one place and it will also remind you to spin on your rocker and not your toe pick. When lifting up your foot make sure you keep it close to your other leg and you don't leave too much room in between it or else it will be hard to control the spin. You also don't want to lift it up too high or try and whip it around. You want to keep it fairly centered and low to the ground. This will just make your one foot spin a lot easier to control which will give it more longevity. If you find that you're having issues holding this position I highly recommend just practicing a very long one foot glide from one end of the rink to the other end. You just want to make sure that you can strengthen your core muscles and your leg muscles so this will be a lot easier to hold. The other entrance that is more advanced and traditionally seen in all of our spin entrances is the backwards crossover into our one foot spin. If you are still struggling with the two foot spin entrance I highly recommend avoiding this one until you can at least get two to three revolutions in that spin position before you move on to this one. There's just more variables and more things that are harder to control. For this entrance you will at least need to know how to do one back crossover. For the first initial pump of our back crossover you want to make sure that your arms are hugging the circle. As I complete my crossover I am slowly going to twist my body to face the outside of the circle and bring my left arm in front. This is something often referred to as the wind up for our spin. You want to make sure while you're doing the second push of your crossover that you are leaning into the circle while keeping your body facing the outside as your left arm is in front of you and your right arm is going to be out to the side. Now if you spin the other direction this is going to be reversed. The next part of the spin entrance is probably the hardest and the one that skaters struggle with the most which is stepping into your spin. When you step into the spin you want to make sure you come around instead of going straight into it and I'll explain what I mean because I know that sounds completely confusing. As we can see in this clip when I step into my spin I'm making another circle coming around before I go up into the spin. Now this is arguably not my best camel spin because of the bent leg but I think this clip demonstrates a really great way of how you come back around to your entrance. Same thing with the sit spin you can see I make almost a half circle as I come into my spin. Instead of going right into the spin I kind of loop back around to where I started. This is going to help make your spin faster and stronger and also make sure that you don't fall over when you immediately get into the spin. When you step into your spin you want to make sure you're on a nice outside edge. When doing this you want to try your best to avoid rolling up onto your toe pick and instead finish out that entrance and make sure you go onto your rocker. The other thing we have to think about with this entrance is what we do with our free leg and this is going to help make our spin a lot faster. As I'm coming around this entrance I'm going to make sure I keep my free leg out to the side instead of bringing it in right away. I'm going to keep my free leg out to the side till I feel like I have centered the spin or some people call it hooked the spin and then I will gradually bring it in to increase my speed. Doing this not only helps us increase our speed but it also makes this spin a lot easier because if you find that you're having troubles where you're pulling your leg in right away you're most likely going to fall out of the spin quickly because you are losing control. This helps give us the control of our spin and make it easier to brace ourselves when we pull our leg in and go a lot faster. Don't forget the very important last step which is making sure you have a nice strong exit. Once you start getting really comfortable with your one foot spin you can add fun arms like both arms above your head, you can do one arm, you can trade off what arm you're using, you can just kind of have fun and play around with it. Well hopefully you found this video helpful. Let me know what you'd like to see next. Make sure you like and subscribe to stay up to date. I post new videos every week and I will see you in the next one.