HP #25 - Starting the Salchow
Usual disclaimer applies: this is an old event I'm recounting. See my first HP post for the full notes on these.
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"Have we started the Salchow yet?" the Tammasaurus asked towards the end of my latest lesson.
"Not yet, no," I replied. I tried to sound nonchalant, but inside I was jumping up and down, the Salchow! My first of the six standard rotation jumps! This was one of the skating moments I'd been waiting for since I started!
Off ice, I had secretly done some preparatory reading on the Salchow to prepare me for the magical day when we started it. A lot of descriptions talked about doing an outside 3 turn then holding the resulting backwards inside edge on the skating leg while doing a scooping motion with the free leg to twirl you round as you jumped off the ice. I had tried giving it a go off ice with no idea of what it was meant to look or feel like and it seemed both insane and fiddly, but this didn't diminish my desire to learn it anyway!
"Well, we should change that," the Tammasaurus continued.
WE HAD BEGUN!
Seven minutes later, as is often the case with new elements in skating, I had no idea what I was meant to be doing. We had run through two exercises that involved doing an outside 3 turn that you were meant to clunkily over-rotate until you're facing forwards again, (something you spend ages deliberately trying not to do when learning 3 turns), before doing a little hop off your toe pick, much like a 3 jump.
I could just about do the exercises, but I didn't really understand what they were building towards. I thought about it and realised that I didn't really know what the Salchow was meant to look like, I'd watched all these videos but I'd been focusing so much on the specific elements of where which leg went and how the arms moved that I'd lost track of actually seeing the move for what it was. Something I was sure of though was that Ulrich Salchow must've been seriously dicking around when he invented the jump; the manner of execution just seemed so contrived!
So, overall, the Salchow wasn't much less of a mystery than it was before, but I've always been fairly patient and trusting in the strange ways of skating to reveal themselves at some point, so I resolved to just wait and see how things panned out.
-------------------------
"Have we started the Salchow yet?" the Tammasaurus asked towards the end of my latest lesson.
"Not yet, no," I replied. I tried to sound nonchalant, but inside I was jumping up and down, the Salchow! My first of the six standard rotation jumps! This was one of the skating moments I'd been waiting for since I started!
Off ice, I had secretly done some preparatory reading on the Salchow to prepare me for the magical day when we started it. A lot of descriptions talked about doing an outside 3 turn then holding the resulting backwards inside edge on the skating leg while doing a scooping motion with the free leg to twirl you round as you jumped off the ice. I had tried giving it a go off ice with no idea of what it was meant to look or feel like and it seemed both insane and fiddly, but this didn't diminish my desire to learn it anyway!
"Well, we should change that," the Tammasaurus continued.
WE HAD BEGUN!
Seven minutes later, as is often the case with new elements in skating, I had no idea what I was meant to be doing. We had run through two exercises that involved doing an outside 3 turn that you were meant to clunkily over-rotate until you're facing forwards again, (something you spend ages deliberately trying not to do when learning 3 turns), before doing a little hop off your toe pick, much like a 3 jump.
I could just about do the exercises, but I didn't really understand what they were building towards. I thought about it and realised that I didn't really know what the Salchow was meant to look like, I'd watched all these videos but I'd been focusing so much on the specific elements of where which leg went and how the arms moved that I'd lost track of actually seeing the move for what it was. Something I was sure of though was that Ulrich Salchow must've been seriously dicking around when he invented the jump; the manner of execution just seemed so contrived!
So, overall, the Salchow wasn't much less of a mystery than it was before, but I've always been fairly patient and trusting in the strange ways of skating to reveal themselves at some point, so I resolved to just wait and see how things panned out.
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