BEGINNER FORWARD + BACKWARD CROSSOVER TUTORIAL (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Hi guys and welcome back to my channel. Today's video has been highly requested. I know I covered forward crossovers in the adult four video and I covered backward crossovers in the adult five video, but I've gotten a few requests just to make a designated video for forward and backward crossovers, breaking them down in those same small steps that I talked about in the adult four and adult five videos. And I've broken each step down into something super easy that basically takes our foundational skills we learn in the basic one through six levels, hopefully making it a little less intimidating. We're going to start with our forward crossovers. There are a few things that you're going to need to know before you start these. So you're going to want to make sure that you know the forward inside and outside edges around the circle from adult four. You also want to make sure that you can do the forward half swizzle pumps that we talked about, I believe in adult three. Once you comfortably have those down, you can start working on your forward crossovers. We're going to start off our forward crossovers with a really simple exercise. This is called the grapevine, and it's basically crossovers in a line, just getting you used to feeling of picking your foot up and crossing it over the other one. It is perfect for beginners who are just learning the concept of crossovers. For this, you're going to want to find a line somewhere in the rink, and you're going to want to make sure that your feet are standing together parallel. You are then going to take one foot, lift it up into an H position and cross it over the other foot. And then when that foot is placed on the ground, you are just going to pick up the foot that is left, and you're just going to bring it back around. So both of your feet are parallel again, and you are just going to repeat this process going down the line. Make sure you practice going both directions. So go to the right, go to the left. I do go over this in great detail on the adult four video. So if you want to go check that out to get a little bit more information on how the grapevine method works, I also break it down a little bit more detail, but since I've already covered that in that video, I'm just going to kind of speed through it and move on to our next step. So now we're going to move our basic grapevine pattern onto our circle where we will do our crossovers. This is the exact same thing we were doing on the straight line, except now we're going to be adding it to a curve, and this will mimic how our crossovers are going to feel. So we want to make sure our body is facing the direction that we want to go. We want to make sure our arms are hugging the inside of the circle, and they're up in that nice T position that I've talked about a lot throughout the Learn to Skate series. You are then going to do your grapevine pattern going around the circle at the angle, making sure that your body is still facing the inside of the circle while you do this. So you're going to take the foot that is outside the red circle and bring it towards the inside. Then you're going to bring that foot that we haven't crossed yet and bring it right around so it's parallel. Same thing that we were just doing on the line, except this time it's at a bit of a curve. This is what I consider the very, very beginner forward crossover. This is for the person who just wants to get comfortable with the motion, doesn't want to start going into detail on the two pushes you need, doesn't want to add too much speed. They just want to practice walking around the circle. This is great. So before we move on to our forward swizzle pump method, just practice this a few times both on the straight line and on the circle and make sure that you're doing it both directions. So first, let's just start off by doing a couple forward half swizzle pumps around the circle just to get our body warmed up and get our legs used to this motion of the up-down knee bend that I talk about a lot in the adult 136 series. And you want to make sure that you practice this both clockwise and counterclockwise around the circle. Maybe do one or two circles just to get comfortable with this. Adding to our forward half swizzle pumps we have going around the circle, in between each pump when your feet come together to that two foot glide, you're now going to pick up the outside foot and hold it in a one foot glide just for a few seconds. From the one foot glide, you're going to want to take your knee and make sure it goes up into that H position so you can nicely cross that free leg over the other one to the inside of the circle. Then we're going to take the foot that we haven't moved yet and we're going to bring it around so it comes back parallel with the other foot towards the inside of the circle, just like I'm showing in the video here. Just like our grapevine method, you're going to want to practice this a few times going both directions around the circle till you feel comfortable. Don't forget when you are crossing that foot on the outside of the circle towards the inside, you want to lift your knee into that H position so you have enough clearance to cross your foot over and you make sure that you don't hit your other foot and possibly trip. This is just going to make it a smoother process. This is still what I would consider a very beginner forward crossover except now we're adding in some of the elements that you will see when you do the two pushes of the full crossover later on. So just practice this and make sure that you can do it without stopping in between this so you have that nice continual flow just like with our forward half swizzle pumps. All right, so now we're going to move on to a more advanced version of what we had just talked about and this time we're going to eliminate that H position we make with our knee and instead of picking it up up and down like that, we're actually going to go straight from our half swizzle pump, bring it in front and smoothly cross over and I know that sounds kind of weird but if you watch the video I will hopefully explain a little bit better with that visual. You are going to start with that forward half swizzle pump but instead of bringing our feet together for the two foot glide in between our pumps like we normally do, this time when your foot is coming around to meet the other one on the ice, you're actually gently going to lift it up and cross it over the toe of the foot that is skating on the ice and you're going to want to think about this as kind of an airplane taking off for liftoff on a runway if that makes sense. That visualization might sound really cheesy but it's something I used to say to all of my younger students and it seemed to click with them really well so hopefully that helps. There are a few things you want to avoid when you're doing this just to make sure that you don't fall. So when you're bringing that foot to cross over doing that airplane takeoff that I talked about, you don't want to kick it super high up. You don't want to put too much force on it. This is where you want to start to transfer your weight from the outside foot and leave everything as a one foot glide onto that inside foot kind of like we had just talked about where we picked our foot up for the one foot glide except we're skipping the one foot glide with this and we're just picking our foot up and crossing it over as one smooth motion. And this is basically getting you comfortable with that first push in the crossover. Right now we're not going to focus on that second one. You just want to make sure that you can do a smooth transition from your forward swizzle pump and all the way into the crossover. So no stopping in between for that H position, no stopping for the one foot glide. You just want it to be one smooth motion. Another common mistake to avoid with this and this is something that every skater wants to do is when you're pushing your foot from that forward half swizzle pump straight into that crossover with that takeoff that I keep, I'm going to keep talking about it. A lot of people will put too much of their weight on the back of their blade. And what happens when you put all of that force on the back of your blade, when you're trying to go in the forward directions, you're actually going to fall backwards. So make sure that your knees are nice and bent just like I've talked about throughout the adult one through six series. And you want to make sure that that foot is ready to shift your weight from the outside to the inside. All right, so now we're going to take that last step that we just learned and we're going to take it up a notch just a teeny bit. Before we start this next step, the one thing you want to work on, and you don't have to have this perfect before you start this step, but something that you do want to work on that's going to make this so much easier is continually practicing that smooth transition of crossing your foot over around the circle in both directions. And each time try and get a stronger push, try and get a longer push and try and increase your speed. Trust me, this is going to start to really mimic what that forward crossover is going to feel like. But anyways, now we're going to start to add that second push. And one thing you are always going to hear your coach or your instructor talk about is how crossovers have two pushes, regardless if you're going forward, backwards, clockwise, counterclockwise, they will always have two pushes. And this is the most important part about crossovers, which means we are getting closer to fully doing a crossover. So after you cross your foot over with that beautiful, smooth transition that we've been working on, instead of just picking up the foot that is still following the circle and bringing it around parallel, you're actually going to take it. And I like to say flick it. Some people, this doesn't visually register with them, but hopefully the video here will explain it. You're going to take it and kind of point it out to the side before you bring it around. You're going to start to add in a smooth transition for that part of the crossover. So again, we're keeping that last step we worked on. So you're going to go into the forward half swizzle pump. You're going to do that smooth crossover transition. We're going to take away our one foot glide in the H position. You're just going to cross it right over. And now, instead of bringing that foot just around casually, like we always have been, you're actually going to push it out to the side, point your toe, make it nice and pretty, and then bring it around. And obviously we're not doing the full crossover yet. We're kind of doing it in chunks. So this push is going to feel awkward and it's not going to look the best, but the more you can work on getting that feeling, this next and slightly final step we're going to work on will be so much easier. All right. Now we've reached the moment that I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting for, or some of you may have been dreading, which is our full crossover. Yet, I am going to kind of put a little asterisk around this and say, it is not technically going to be a full crossover. This is going to be a full beginner crossover. My goal with this video is just to get you as comfortable with what a traditional crossover is going to feel like as possible. I don't expect you to have this down looking pretty and fancy, like something you'd see in the adult gold moves test. No, I am just going to hopefully try and get you used to those two pushes. And again, this is just something that you can work on. You don't have to be perfect at something right away. And I think that is something that is not touched on a lot in these YouTube videos as people just gloss over and go, okay, by the end of this video, you should have it. No, I am not saying by the end of this video, you should have it. I'm saying, use this video as a starting point to kind of get comfortable with each different step that we covered anyways, moving on to the two pushes of the crossover. So we've worked our way up to this point where you shouldn't have to be stepping over. You're going to have that nice, smooth transition. I'm going to keep saying it so you can cross your foot over to the inside without kind of having that stepping motion. And now we're going to take that little bit of that push under that second push that I had just talked about, and we're going to merge the two together and we're hopefully going to make it a seamless transition. So now instead of our forward half swivel pump that I've been talking about this whole video, we're going to take that away. And instead we're going to start on the red circle and we're going to do a forward T push. And I think I may have covered this in one of my other videos, but basically we're going to push into that forward, outside one foot glide, the ones that I talked about in adult four, where you go around the circle. And instead of bringing your foot close to the other one, that's following the red circle, you're actually going to push it out to the side and do a nice extension. And I will freeze a picture on frame to show you what your legs should look like. And this is something, by the way, I should say you can practice at the board. So you can practice this position by having one hand on the boards, one hand out to the side, and just practice kicking your foot out to the side in this position. It's going to help a lot. Now from that beautiful extension out to the side, we're going to take something that we've already learned, which is that smooth transition crossing our foot over. So we're going to take our nice extended leg and we're going to seamlessly cross it over the foot that is following the red circle. And we're going to bring it to the inside. Now, this is where we're going to focus on that second push that we have briefly talked about, except now with this version of the crossover, it's going to be much easier to get more extension with that foot. So make sure that you try and stretch it out as much as you can to the side there, point your toe if you can. But again, these are things that you really don't have to focus on too much. Now, if you find yourself saying, wait, I'm a little bit confused, or you find yourself struggling with this part, I'm going to add in a little bit of information here that hopefully is going to help this. So I am going to talk about our weight transfer. I briefly talked about this when I went over the other steps, but this is very important for your full crossover. So when you make that first T push, you want to push into the circle. You want to lean your weight into the circle. And when you are crossing that foot over the other one, you're going to want to lean again to the inside of the circle because you're taking your weight from the foot that's following the circle to the foot that came into the circle. If that makes sense. Throughout this entire process, we're always going to be leaning towards the inside of our circle. Our weight is just going to be shifting from the foot that is following the red line initially to the foot that came into the circle, the one that came from the outside and crossed over that foot that is following the red circle. My best advice for crossovers, regardless of where you are in this process is just to keep practicing over and over again. So whenever you get a chance to go to the rink, just make sure you set aside five to 10 minutes every day to work on your crossovers, get more comfortable with it because the more you do it, the better it's going to feel. Now I'm going to leave the forward crossovers here as is. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. I'm going to move on to the backward crossover portion of the video, but I will probably end up making a more advanced crossover tutorial in the future. But if you have any questions, like I said, just feel free to leave them in the comment section below. All right, so next is backward crossovers. And this one, I'm probably going to go over a little bit quicker than the forward crossovers because most of these steps are very similar, except we're going backwards. So there's really no need for me to reiterate everything that I've covered in the With our forward crossovers, your foot is going to be leaving the ice to cross over the one that is following the red circle. Backward crossovers don't do this. It's actually one motion where your foot stays on the ice and crosses in front of the other one. And I know at first that's a little bit confusing. So the very beginner steps of backward crossovers, we actually are going to pick up that outside foot and leave the ice crossing it over the one following the circle. But eventually when we get to the full backward crossover, we will not be doing that. So first we're going to start with that backward half swizzle pump. So when your feet come together for that two foot glide, this time you are going to pick up the foot that is outside the circle and do a one foot glide. You are then going to bring it up into that nice H position and you're going to cross it over the foot that is following the red circle, bringing it to the inside. You are then going to pick up the foot that we haven't touched yet and you're just going to bring it around so your feet are parallel again. Practice this a few times around the circle going both directions. Make sure that when you're doing this, your arms are hugging the circle and you're leaning your weight towards the inside. A common mistake a lot of skaters make with this beginner backward crossover is being on their toe picks too much. So I had talked about in the adult learn to skate series that a lot of the things when you go backwards, you don't want to be riding your toe pick. Same thing with this backward crossover. You want to make sure that when you are lifting your foot up, your other foot following the circle is not digging into the ice with the toe pick. That is just going to stop your momentum and possibly cause you to trip and fall. When you cross it over and bring it down into the ice, you don't want to dig your toe pick into the ice when you do this. So just make sure that you're standing up nice and tall. You're leaning your weight towards the inside of the circle the entire time and also make sure that you're staying on the ball of your foot when you do this. My best advice is just to practice this over and over again until you feel completely confident and you don't have to think too much about this process. When you can get to the point where you're not even thinking about what you're doing, then you're ready to move on to the next step. So our next step is going to be taking away that lifting the foot off the ice part and crossing it towards the inside. And now we're kind of going to go back to that backward half swizzle pump and focus on it a little bit more. We're going to do our backward half swizzle pump and this time you're going to put a little bit more power into your push and you're going to have your foot extended out to the side. I'll show it here in the video. You're slowly going to bring it and cross it in front of the foot that is following the circle. The most important part of this is when you are crossing it in front, you are then going to do the second push with your foot that is following the circle and push it out to the side with that little flick that I talked about from the forward crossovers. You don't have to point it, but just make sure that it sweeps off the ice. And I say sweeping motion for this because this is something that you'll probably hear your coach or instructor say a few times about backward crossovers is that sweeping motion. That is often a great visualization for this second push. The hardest part about back crossovers is making sure that you do the two pushes almost at the same time. When our backward half swizzle pump is coming around and crossing in front of the toe of our other foot, this is when you're going to want to start that second push and you're going to want to lean your weight from the foot that was following the circle to the foot that came into the circle. It's basically the same process we've been talking about for crossovers throughout the entire video, except this time we're just not picking our foot up off the ice for this motion. And once you're done making that second push, you're just going to take the foot that we flicked out to the side with the sweeping motion and you're going to bring it back into our circle. And you can start as a beginner doing a two foot glide. So bringing it back parallel as you progress towards the full crossover, you're actually going to want to make sure that you're not doing a two foot glide in between. You're going to want to be doing this alternating pattern of bringing your foot into the circle, flicking it out to the side, and then starting the process over again. And I'll show this in the video here because I know explaining it sometimes doesn't make sense, but seeing it does. So hopefully that helps a little bit. Anyways, that is going to be it for this video. If you have any additional questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. I post new skating related videos and tutorials every week, so make sure you subscribe to stay up to date and I will see you in my next video. Goodbye.