HOW TO DO A TOE LOOP JUMP || OFF-ICE TRAINING | Coach Michelle Hong

Hi everyone! Welcome back to my channel. It's Coach Michelle Hong. Thank you so much for tuning in for today's episode of Escape with Michelle. We are going to be working on the toe loop. If you haven't done so already, please check out the Axel video so you can understand certain terminology that I'm going to be using throughout the series. So, with that being said, let's get to my favorite jump. And if you want to prepare and solidify your toe loop for your double and your triple, then let's get started. So the first thing that I want to acknowledge is that there are different entrances that people do for their toe loop. But I'm going to do the standard one today. It's going to be consisting of a forward inside edge. So I'm going to do a T position with my skating leg in front and my free leg behind me. I'm going to create an L shape with my arms. With my free arm in front of me and my skating arm to the side. L. Now we're going to push the stroke into an inside edge, stretch, and now I'm going to keep my eyes forward while I rotate up, down, then for my return. And as you can see, my shoulders are still stacked on top of my hips. And I'm using them all for support for those of you who need support. And my left arm is still maintained in the front. Now I'm going to tap my foot as so. And remember, all these exercises that we're doing are adaptive, right? So I'm just trying to break down what we're going to do on the ice and then I'll give you some adaptive exercises that will help you practice it on the ground. So on the ice, what we're going to be doing is we're going to bend our back, free leg, and now we're going to pull and draw our heel close to have the idea of meeting our toe. Okay? So we're going to practice this drill a couple of times. We're going to put our feet together, tap, bend, and drag our heel towards our toe. Feet together, tap, drag our heel towards our toe. All while maintaining a square alignment with our shoulders and our hips. For right now. Keep our feet together, tap, drag our heel towards the toe. Two more times. A little shake with the arms, tap, drag that heel towards our toe. Tap, drag the heel towards the toe. Awesome. Okay. So for the ice, what we're going to do is we're going to try to understand what to do with this free arm, right? So as your heel draws towards your toe, your skating arm also has a job. Your job is to draw your arm up to meet your left, right? So the skating arm is going to draw to meet the free arm in this position as I'm facing forward. So we're going to think about the toe loop as a minor pivot, right? The toe is in the ice and we're doing a minor back outside pivot to come knee facing forward as so. So over here, you can see my side profile and now I'm going to draw on my arm to come forward. And from this point, I consider this my driving station. I'm going to be lifting my heel off the ice. So you want to be able to take off without turning your foot on the ice, right? You want to make sure that you're lifting your skating leg from a back outside edge, right? So from that point, like the ice, we're going to draw our skating side. We're going to be in our driving station right here. We're going to lift up our skating leg so that we make sure that we're lifting it up before it turns forward and we're going to jump over as so. Let's do that one more time. This is how it is on the ice. You're going to do an inside three turn, tap, draw your skating side to meet the left and now we're going to lift up our skating leg to ensure that it does not turn forward on the ice. If it turns forward onto the ice, then you're going to end up doing a toe axle, right? You want to make sure that you're taking off from an outside edge. One, two, three, lift, boom. Okay, so that's the breakdown of how to do the toe loop on the ice. So in order for us to kind of practice and drill toe loops on the ground, it's going to be difficult to continue doing that draw action. You're skating and you're stopping and your hips are back. So a more adaptable way to do the toe loop is to actually turn your tapping foot forward. So this is what I mean by that. My jump was so big I hit the closet. One more time. Inside three turn, boom. And so what I'm doing here is I'm actually turning out my toe tap in order for me to be able to launch forward. Because if you're on the ice, you notice that when you tap, you get to pivot and it naturally goes forward. But since we don't have a toe and we're not able to pivot, we have to modify and create this adaption. Okay, so let's slow that down for you. I'm going to do inside three turn, hold. And instead of tapping and trying to turn, what I'm going to do is step forward. And we are not really able to drag either. So I'm going to step forward and try my very best to think about pulling my inner thighs close together so that I can lift my hip up. Right? So as I'm facing my tap leg forward towards that direction of the jump, I'm thinking about bringing my thighs close together so I can lift up for the jump. Okay? So let's put that all together. Inside three turn, forward, up. Awesome. So one more thing that I want to discuss is the checkout, right? You do not want to let your hip drop whenever you're landing the jump and you want to guarantee that you're lifting up and checking out. So we have to practice some exercises. I'll show you an incorrect way of doing the toe loop with that hip opening. So we're going to go one, two. I see that all too often where your lower body is not in connection with your upper body. So what do I mean by that? We're going to stand on two feet. We're going to have our chin up, chest out. Now I'm going to lift my leg in high H and then I draw back, check out. Now we're going to incorporate the arms. High H, check out. High H, check out. High H, check out. My shoulders are level. They're stacked on top of my hips. My hip is over my knee. My knee is over my toe. I'm going to lift up and check out. So let's try to do that toe loop two more times with that same precise accent, okay? We're going to do inside three turn, up and out. I'm afraid I'm going to hit my quads and smash through. Small spaces, right? Last time. Inside three turn, up and out. Fantastic. Well there you have it guys. I broke down the toe loop for you regardless of our circumstances. These are little details that will help you get it strong on the ice for that double See you guys in the next episode of Sleep With Michelle.