BEGINNER FRIENDLY BACKSPIN TUTORIAL (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Hi guys! I'm finally back with another beginner-friendly skating tutorial. This video is going to be a beginner-friendly backspin tutorial. I also have a beginner-friendly two-foot and one-foot spin tutorial already on my channel, so I will leave those linked in the description box below, but let's get right into today's video. Before you start working on your backspin, I think it's important to have a very solid two-foot spin as well as a somewhat solid one-foot spin because a backwards one-foot spin is quite different from the forwards one, and you want to make sure that you are able to center your spins at least a little bit. It will definitely make learning your backspin a lot easier. The first step I recommend is just focusing on a walkthrough of our backspin. This is going to help us mentally prepare and visualize how the spin is going to go, so I like to start the backspin walkthrough by having our free leg a little bit more in front than out to the side compared to our scratch spin. We're going to have our arms out to the side, or you can bring them in front of you, whatever feels more comfortable. From here, we're going to bring our free leg from the side to directly in front of us. We're also going to bring our arms from the side to in front of us if they're not there already. Now that we have everything in front of us, we're going to bring our leg in and we're going to push it down, and while we're bringing our leg in and pushing it down, we're going to bring our arms close to our chest like we're hugging our heart. To replicate the exit of our backspin in the walkthrough, we're going to do everything we just did but in reverse. When you exit on the walkthrough, you're going to want to make sure that instead of bringing it out to the side in a loose position like we did when we started, you're actually going to push it out into an aggressive landing position. The reason why I say aggressive landing position is that this is something your coach is probably going to talk about when you start seriously working on backspins for axles and double jumps. You are going to need to have that aggressive push out or check out as it will be called to make sure that you can exit your spin at the speed you are going because the faster it gets, the harder it is to exit your backspin. Now that we've completed a walkthrough of our backspin, we are going to start working on it from a back pivot entrance. This is one of the easiest and most beginner-friendly ways to enter into your backspin. I should mention I rotate counterclockwise so all of the information I'm going to be giving is for a counterclockwise rotating skater. If you go the opposite direction, just reverse what I'm saying. We are going to start by putting our right toe pick in the ice. We're going to have our right arm out to the side, our left arm in front, and our left leg slightly out to the side. We are then going to push with our left leg and bend our right knee as we are doing this back pivot. As we are doing our back pivot, you want to make sure that your weight is leaning towards your right side and you are slowly starting to bring your arms in front just like we did in our walkthrough. You also want to make sure that your right knee is staying bent up until you are ready to lift the left leg. When you are ready to lift your left leg off of the ground, then you want to make sure that you pop up into a more upright or straight position with your knee. The pivot is to help us get around and to lift our leg off the ground. So once we have our left leg off the ground, you want to make sure that it's slightly in front like we had talked about in our walkthrough. You want to make sure that your hands are in front. They can either be touching or left open at this point, whatever feels more comfortable for you, but making sure that that left leg is directly in front of us. The important part with this is to make sure that we are still leaning over our right side. So you're going to want to make sure that even if your foot isn't fully crossed over yet, you want to make sure it's over the right side so it doesn't have to be in a tight cross position yet. We can still be hanging open, but you want to make sure that you just pick up that left hip a little bit and tilt towards the right so that you can have your foot slightly over your right foot. A super common mistake to make while you're working on your backspin, whether you're a beginner or you're advanced, is either dropping your left hip falling to the left side or just not crossing your left foot over your right foot fast enough getting into that snap of the backspin position. It happens to everybody. My best tip to try and avoid this is to make sure that when you are ready to lift your left foot off of the ground, you also want to lift up your left hip. Anyways, now we're ready to move into the next position. So once we have our left leg in front, we are starting to spin on one foot going backwards. We have our arms in front of us. You want to make sure that your arms are now touching and you're ready to bring them in. And while you're going to bring them in, you want to make sure that that left leg is now curling over and going down our right leg. So we're in that crossed position. While we are doing this, it's super important that we make sure our upper body is turning to the right as well. Having completely squared shoulders and not turning towards the right can be another reason why you are not getting as many revs on your backspin. You're having trouble getting into the backspin or you're falling out of your backspin. The last important part of this is making sure that your left shoulder comes in front. So just like we're lifting our left hip in our backspin, we want to make sure that our left shoulder is also coming more over to the right side, lifting it up and over to the right side. So instead of truly hugging your heart, you kind of want to make sure that you hug the right side of your chest and you want to make sure that you are doing this while you are pushing your leg down into that tight position and you're going to keep everything over your right side while you are in the tight position. A great way to practice this is to find a line on the ice and just keep your arms over your right side with your left arm kind of curving in front and practicing picking up your left leg while it's crossed over and pushing it down into the tight position, back up, down into the tight position. This is really going to help with that coordination and also the balance that you will need for this. When you're first learning your backspin, a lot of this is going to be challenging and struggling and feel impossible, but if you work on these every day for just a little bit, do some of these exercises, practice your walkthroughs, and just most importantly, practice staying over that right side. It will become easier over time, but yes, as a beginner, nothing is going to look perfect at first. Alright, so at this point, we've gone over most of the important basic skills that you will need for building your backspin. Now, we're going to move on to the slightly more advanced entrance we're going to do on the line and it's going to be from a forward inside edge. I prefer to do this on a line somewhere on the ice so I can visualize my entrance. However, you can kind of do this wherever. We are going to start by pushing into a left forward inside edge and once we reach the line, we are then going to switch off to a forward right inside edge, which is going to be the entrance into our backspin. The most important part of this entrance is making sure that when we are doing the right forward inside edge into the backspin, we are actually dragging our left foot ever so slightly on the ice. For the most part, this is going to act as a counterbalance, but it's also going to help us snap into that backspin right away. This entrance is immediately going to provide you with more speed going into the spin, so you want to make sure that all of the motions we had been going through in our walkthrough and our back pivot happen really quickly. A common mistake for this is just traveling on your entrance and turning it into a three turn before you can snap into the backspin. It's not impossible to save your backspin from this. It's just going to make it a little bit more challenging because you're fighting all of the momentum that you have. A good way to avoid this is to make sure that when you are going into that right forward inside edge, you are actually going to drag and hold that edge for as long as you can because this dragging motion will help the snap into the backspin. Again, with this entrance, we're doing the exact same thing we've always been doing with our arms, which making sure they're in front. We're bringing them to our chest and then we are pushing them out when we exit. The very last thing I am going to talk about is the exit of our backspin. Like I had mentioned earlier, you want to make sure that your checkout of this spin is aggressive because it's going to help you when exiting your backspin. You want to make sure it's not a delayed reaction. It's not too slow. You want to make sure it's nice and quick. The best way to think about this is pulling our leg back up into an H position and quickly pushing it out behind us. I like to keep my arms in front while I'm doing this, but this is just a personal preference for me. Anyways, that is my full beginner tutorial for the backspin. Hopefully you found some of these tips and tricks helpful, whether you are just starting to learn your backspin or you're a beginner looking for a little bit of extra advice. Just remember that nothing is going to start out absolutely perfect. It's going to take hours and hours of work, but if you set aside at least five to 10 minutes every day that you skate to work on this backspin, you are going to see a lot of a noticeable improvement. That is it for this video. If you like my tutorials, I will link all of my other ones down in the description box below. If you'd like to keep up with me on a more regular basis, I highly recommend following me on Instagram or TikTok where I post almost daily. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.