The Importance of “Off-Ice Jumps”
Lorna Brown
Over the years it has become more and more apparent that learning how to rotate quickly off the ice is very important. To progress in our art, sport, we must always be open to newer, better ways of developing our technique, to reach our goals with as little ease and risk of injury as possible. When doing off-ice jumps we must simulate as closely as possible, the kind of positions you are attempting when on the ice. An actual jump only takes a split second! We can improve the amount of rotations by training how to be aware in the air and by knowing each part of the jump from beginning to end, in every detail. It is all down to aerodynamics and physics together with fitness and psychology. We need to learn about the correct stance positions, developing the distribution of weight. focus, direction, rhythm and the angles of the body.
Acute concentration is needed as the actions are very fast. Have you ever considered the speed of thought? It is mind boggling to think how your body is able to differentiate from one end of itself to the other in a split second and to realize just how much complexity is going on within your brain during a jump rotation of up to 4 revolutions. 100,000 different chemical reactions occur normally, each second in the brain. It takes more or less 1/2 sec to do a double axel (air time. So we have to learn how to rotate faster and to get in on the way up, if we are going to have the air time to do triples or quads. It all depends on the skater's height, weight, speed and of course good technique and you need to develop those fast twitch fibers in the muscles!
Our body weight is tough to maneuver in such a short space of time in the air. A skater has to be in control of how much force to apply at every stage of the jump, leading up to it, through it and after it for the landing itself. If there is one piece of the puzzle missing, it doesn't work! Gravity pulls us into the center of the earth at 9.81 meters per second per second. Skating is more complex than most other sports because it involves other forces owing to the speed involved, not only across the ice, but also the G-force and centrifugal during jump and spin rotation. Another extremely important skill is mastering exactly how to "brake" or "resist" the rotation into a beautiful elegant arabesque position, which you can miss by the blink of the eye. The actual opening of the rotation which starts to happen while still up in the air on the last part of the jump. This you have to practice holding and sustaining, to strengthen this yielding/braking action which is followed by the actual landing when the free leg swings in a controlled manner to the side and then eventually behind into the arabesque position. I say this because a lot of us believe the free leg goes straight back from the crossed position in the air, but it does not. It goes from the front to the side and then to the back which you can see if you watch it frame by frame on a video.
angles, to be able to spot where our problems are. Off the ice it is easier to focus and study where we are without tearing around at speed. We can then take these feelings and use them when we get back on the ice. There are also many “on ice exercises” for jump preparations, which compliment and correspond directly to all those off-ice exercises! The Russian trainer e.g. Rafael Aritunian is