How to Do a Single Axel Figure Skating (jounreybacktotheice) 5 MINUTE FRIDAYS

Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode of my 5 Minute Friday series here on my YouTube channel. If you are new or have missed any of the previous episodes, I will leave them linked here on screen and I will also leave the playlist linked in the description box below. My 5 Minute Friday series is a 5 minute or less tutorial going over the single jumps in figure skating, including the bunny hop, which is not a single jump, but I did add it in there for fun. And now this bonus episode for the single axle. So with all that being said, let's get right into today's video. The single axle is considered to be the last single jump you will learn, but it is actually one and a half rotations, making it a segue between your single jumps and your double jumps. Our waltz jump and our axle, or any kind of axle, is classified as an axle type jump because this is the only jump in figure skating that will take off completely forward. These are a few things you will need to know before starting your axle. You must know how to do a confident and strong single waltz jump, a backspin, a loop jump, and preferably know how to do all of your single jumps proficiently. It is also important to make sure that you discuss with your coach whether or not you are ready to start working on your axle. I do plan on making a more in-depth tutorial on the single axle in the future, but today's video is just going to be going over the very basics of what goes into this jump. There are several ways you can enter your axle, but for today's video, we'll only be talking about entering our axle from a standstill and from backward crossovers, which are two of the most popular options when you are first working on this jump. Starting a waltz jump from a standstill or from a side toe hop are great options to start working on your axle at very slow speeds. For our standstill axle, we are going to stand in a T position. I like to use one of the lines on the ice because this is going to help me visualize where I need to be taking off and landing for my jump. For our axle, we are going to want to make sure that we are standing nice and tall in that T position, and then we are going to want to make sure that our arms and our hands are up by our chest. From here, we are going to push onto a forward outside edge and making sure that it is curving towards our line, just like I am showing here in the video. As you can see, while I am pushing forward, my arms are coming down from my chest, going in front. As I continue curving, my arms are now going to pull back behind me, and this is going to become the wind-up for my jump. As you can see in the video, now that my arms are pulling back behind me, my knee, the skating leg that is on the ice, is starting to bend. Bending your skating leg that is on the ice is crucial for getting a really strong take-off or lift into your single axle. Bending is going to help with that acceleration into our push off of the toe pick, which is going to come next. The last part of this push from the T position is going to be my back leg, which is going to be our free leg into the jump. So once I have pushed off of my T position, my arms have gone from my chest to in front, and now they are pulling back, and my skating leg on the ice is bending into the curve that I'm making on the ice. My back leg is going to pull back so it can swing through just like you do with your waltz jump. Another important tip for this, especially when you are starting from a standstill, is making sure that your shoulders and your head are aligned in the correct direction so you can get into the jump without having any issues. An important thing to note before I talk about the next step is the fact that the single axle does have a little bit of rotation that starts on the ice, so you're not technically doing one and a half rotations while you are in the air. However, regardless of that little bit of rotation that happens on the ice before we take off into the air, the axle is still considered a one and a half rotation jump. So now I am here in this position, I have completed my push from the standstill in the T position, and I am getting ready to launch myself up into the air. This next part can be the hardest part when you are first learning the axle, and that is the acceleration into the takeoff, especially making sure the takeoff is correct and you're not rotating too much on the takeoff. Any axle type jump is considered an edge jump, so we're using this outside edge to accelerate into our jump, and the toe pick is something that we're going to go from our outside edge and we're going to roll up onto our toe pick because the toe pick is going to launch us into the air. However, axle or axle type jumps are still considered an edge jump. So now that I'm here in my axle jump, I am going to press into my forward outside edge. My arms are going to come from my back and they're going to follow through going forward up into that position like we're holding a beach ball, and my free leg behind me is going to kick through like I am jumping up onto a set of stairs or I'm kicking a soccer ball. And as you can see here in the video, I am pressing into my edge and rolling up onto my toe pick because my toe pick is helping me launch into the air. That's going to give me my height. If you just jump from a flat edge or anything like that, you're going to have a really hard time getting your axle. This is why it's super important to make sure that you have a strong confident waltz jump and you are doing your waltz jump correctly. From here, I am going to step up into that H position and then quickly snap into a backspin position. This part of the jump is also very hard for skaters when they're first learning their axle and even some double jumps. It's really hard to get comfortable with that snap. So once you launch right off of your toe pick into the air going into the H position, do not let this process become delayed. This should be a quick snap and rotate your shoulders into that backspin position so you're automatically rotating once you are in the air. Your arms should be nice and tight next to your chest once you reach this backspin position. We want to make sure that our free leg goes up into the H position then immediately snaps down so we can fold into that backspin position, making sure that the leg that was on the ice is now crossed over our free leg in the backspin position while we are rotating in the air. As you can see from the video I'm using here, this is from when I first started landing my axle and my legs were not crossed in the air. The number one misconception and myth I see spread around social media a lot is that you can't land an axle unless you cross your legs or pull your legs in. This is completely false. You can land an axle, for sure a single axle, without pulling your arms in and without properly crossing your legs at first. This is something you want to work on as you progress with this jump so you want to make sure that that technique gets a lot better. But when you first start working on it, it's not going to look like the picture-perfect axle and your legs probably won't be crossed on your first couple tries. Now that we have gone up into the air, we are rotating in our backspin position, we are ready to check out and into our landing position. And this is one of the other hard parts for skaters when they first land the jump is making sure that you stay in long enough to complete that last little bit of rotation. So my best advice for this part is making sure that your stomach muscles are squeezed nice and tight. We're still staying in that backspin position or over our right side as much as we can and keeping our arms in nice and tight. And the other part is making sure that our shoulders are properly checked and ready for our checkout or our landing. For our landing of the single axle, you want to make sure that your leg goes from the backspin position up into an H position and then from there you want to make sure you punch out nice and strong into a landing position. Our arms are also going to come from our chest and they're going to punch out into a landing position. And sometimes when you're first working on your single axle, it is best to make sure that you land with your arms in front and then you punch them out to the side rather than trying to break them out as quick as possible because this can throw you off balance. And that is how you do a single axle in figure skating. Once you get comfortable doing your axle from a standstill or from a no speed position, you can then take it to backward crossovers or add a little bit more speed. I can make another video talking about the backward crossover entrance but I'm going to end the video here today because it is definitely longer than a five minute tutorial video. But hopefully that helped if you are working on your single axle. Just know that when you're first working on it, nothing is going to be perfect at first and you're definitely going to be scared of this. But just working on over and over again and building up confidence and especially starting with a little speed rather than a lot of speed is going to help. So let me know what questions you have down in the comment section below. Make sure you subscribe to stay up to date and check out all of my other five minute Friday tutorial videos. I'll have them linked on screen and in the description box below. I will see you in the next video.