We Don't Just Excel, We Axel

I'm shortly going to be writing a series of posts describing the six free skating jumps that are used in free skating. These descriptions will be via the medium of absurdly silly "real life" situation comparisons that will hopefully at least give you a laugh even if you don't learn anything about the jump executions. Before that though, we need to talk a bit about the general bits and bobs of jumping on ice. This will no doubt be nothing new for regular skaters, but I write for family and friends as well and they appreciate the explanations where I remember to do them. A bit of history Most of the standard jumps that are used in competitive skating today were invented between 1880 and 1930 (though it's not entirely clear exactly when for some), but why do we jump on the ice at all? Honestly, I thought about researching this to get to the origins of jumping in ice skating, but I strongly suspect that the actual answer boils down to "because we can."

My quest for the Axel jump has officially begun! Strictly speaking, it unofficially began a month or so back when I started practising 3 jump + loop jump combination as prep work into the Axel, but as of a week or so ago I'm officially into the territory of "I throw myself forward and hope I make it round the necessary rotations for the Axel." For the uninitiated, the Axel is the hardest jump at any given amount of rotation because you have to sneak in an extra half rotation alongside the standard number at the level you're doing (so a single Axel is 1.5 rotations, compared to just 1 for any of the other single jumps). You're still landing backwards, like all the jumps, but it's the only jump you take off facing forwards in order to get that extra half rotation in. Ironically, despite its difficulty, the Axel has perhaps the simplest looking opening of all the jumps, you pull both arms and your non-skating leg back while gliding on your skating leg and

I like to think I'm a friendly person, the rink is pretty good for this kind of personality as well because people are usually pretty happy to approach others and chat about skating, so you can make friends pretty fast if you're a regular at your rink. Despite my friendly interior, I'm fairly certain that I look somewhat aloof and distant when I'm just skating around on the ice. If only I could actually have this much poise on the ice! However, even with this icy facade, I do still occasionally get approached by members of the public that are persistently attempting to learn some ice skating move. Maybe I don't actually look all that aloof and I'm just super unthreatening, but either way they must've decided that I've demonstrated sufficient skill to be "the right guy to ask", which is obviously immensely flattering. "Moi?" This process always goes fairly similarly: Them: " Hey, you look like you know what you&#