Here’s the link to The Jump Manual. Remember, this is totally free and you can pass this report on to anyone you like. Feel free to print it out and take it to the rink. Or send it as an attachment on an email. Or just share the link with your friends.
Left click to open the manual in your browser. Right click to save a copy to your computer.
–> The Jump Manual <–
Download Link
After you’ve read it, please come back here and leave a comment below. Here’s the early feedback from one of my reviewers:
“Loved it, loved it, loved it. Did I tell you that I loved it? Congratulations on this terrific manual! This is what I was looking for 5 years ago when trying to make a comeback into this sport that I love. Thank you for making it available to me and all my fellow coaches and skaters. Yay Trevor!” K.B.
The jump manual is great I can’t wait to register for the site!
I found the jump manual very interesting but do not agree with all the definitions of a jump according to the IJS system. Jumps are defined by the take off not the landing therefore to define a jump by the take off and landing foot and edge is incorrect. In principle a skater could do a double salchow setting up on a left back inside edge but land on a left back inside edge and it would still be considered a double salchow. This opens up many interesting possibilities for example a skater could perform a double salchow double salchow combination jump landing the first one on the left back inside edge and the second one on the right back outside edge. Some of these types of jump combinations may be rewarded with a higher GOE because of the difficult nature of the combination. There is a big difference between when a jump is considered to be a double jump or not and when it is considered to be a poor quality double jump. This is when the technical panel and the judges have separate roles to play the technical panel make the decision as to whether a jump meets the requirments of a double jump but the judges reflect in their GOE if it is performed well or not. I am enjoying the information you have found on jump techniques and the research into the double axel for girls it has been most imformative.
As a skater who is just starting to learn jumps this information is great! It’d be good to have any extra information you can provide on how to learn these jumps, how you teach them to your students and training methods. I love how you use the video camera to analyze jumps. Perhaps you could show some common mistakes in these kind of jumps to help us those who are just learning?
ummmmm it wasssssssss ok but not perfect and the show is ok but just email me back
As a interested spectator, I have always wanted to be able to understand Jump mechanics. This is wonderful! Thank you so much. It will add a lot to my enjoyment of the sport.
Good work! I would like to share with you a quote from Carol Shulman’s book, “The Complete Book of Figure Skating”. “With understanding gained from sport scientists, we have learned our technique is good. Our methods are correct and our results are proven by the number of successful U.S. skaters who stand on the olympic podium. But most coaches don’t understand why they teach what they do. They just know it works. For hundreds of years coaches have taught biomechanics without knowing the meaning of the word.” Thankyou for thinking deeper into this sport and selflessly contributing to the success of other skaters!
Very Interesting and informative. I can hardly wait for moreo!
Yes, let’s keep our eye on the ball. Please Trevor, continue your efforts toward standardizing our lists of elements. We cannot really move forward until all of that is hashed out. I have been skating for 38 of my 40 years. I have been coaching for 22 years, and I am happy to see so many open-minded skaters around these days.
As Monica pointed out (6/24) if a salchow gets credit as a full revolution jump when landed backward on either foot, (as does an axel) then I ask why doesn’t a loop jump get the same benefit. A half loop, according to book definition, is really a loop jump landed backward on the other foot. It carries relatively the same amount of rotation as the loop. It is even more challenging in the fact that it does not tolerate under-rotation very well at all.
Don’t “half-jumps” by definition involve a forward landing? A falling-leaf jump then should have been named the half-loop.
Knowing that all single revolution jumps are barely half a rotation in reality, you can see that an actual “half- jump” is really either a bunny hop or a ballet jump from various entrances.
In Kathy’s perfect world it is viewed this way…
BUNNY HOP varieties: feet always alternate
1. The mazurka is useful as a “half toe-loop”/ or “half toe-walley (to encourage proper take-off)
2. A half axel takes off like an axel and lands like the mazurka.
3. The half flip that works like a bunny hop is CALLED a “beginner split jump”
BALLET JUMP varieties: Take-off and land on the same toe-pick then glide forward on other foot.
The half flip and half lutz are less confusing to the skater if taught to take off and land on the landing foot. (i.e. right toe take-off, right toe landing, left glide)
***I completely support the idea of making the flip and lutz interchangeable for credit at the take-off edge. I would recommend however giving extra credit to the style of the lutz take-off. If a skater glides a certain distance on the either back edge before picking in, it is more challenging than using turns to set up the momentum of rotation.
***How about the walley and the loop? Does a difference really exist?
As with any element, there needs to be a basic version learned first before adding variations. But some of our elements are simply miss-named. Children are more accepting of this, but the adult population in skating tends to want a more logical approach. When coaching them, I find myself more often than not making excuses for those who originally named our elements. We need to restructure and reevaluate our basics. This will be a huge undertaking, and we haven’t even discussed THE REST OF THE SKATING ELEMENTS!!
Thank you Trevor for this space to share…
:)kat
Very Interesting
You`ve done a great job!!! Thank you for all this information. That must know each skater. I can`t say all that i want because my English language is not too strong to express it)) I like so much that you spend so much time for analyze figure skating elements. Thank you.
AMAZING! I can’t wait to get on the ice and use these tips!
Manual is helpfull towards beginners. Need to start to get more technical if there are ” secrets to be revealed ” , like pressing on the edge for the loop take off , jumping out over the toe pick on the axel , passing the freeleg across the takeoff leg for the salchow , etc , etc.
i think the jump manual is very helpful and usefull and gives skaters a big advantage.
I got a copy of this while I was visiting the Israeli Ice Skating Federation offices in Metulla this week. I read it on the bus ride home. On the one hand, it felt great to have some of my teaching methods validated by your descriptions in the manual. On the other hand, there were a lot of new things that I am looking forward to incorporating into my coaching next week! I can’t wait to get back on the ice with my skaters.
Hello TREVAR!
THANK YOU for the great work you do on the Internet! You seem to be very dedicated to find out more about our sport, and I wished I would have met people like you 25 years ago. I am a former German skating champion from 1962 and 1965 (take a look at Wikipedia), a son of a professional coach, have worked as a full time employee in the Institute for Biomechanics of the “Deutsche Sporthochschule Cologne” for many years and – after that job ended – I later became a sport journalist (I make the inside Eissport-Magazin about figure skating for 16 years now). I guess I have done more research on skating jumps than anybody else using high resolution 16mm- and 35mm-films from 1-2 (synchronized) free moving cameras in 1978-1984. I am a doctor of biomechanics and have educated many European skating coaches and others.
A colleague from Switzerland gave me a hint with your address. So I looked, and I am surprised about the quality of those videos and of your comments, Trevor LAAK. I think I already met you some years ago, maybe during my lectures about biomechanics for the PSA in Orlando, USA, but I am not sure. Somehow your face seems familiar to me.
You Americans not only have a very good feeling of how to present even a difficult subject, but also yourself as a person (technically and psychologically). In my eyes you are right in many basic points but naturally the comments have to be limited because of a short presentation (if they would be longer,it wouldn’t serve the purpose either). But this always is a basic problem in subjects like this, and you solved it in a very good way. This also is the reason, why your questions seem to contain some thinking mistakes. There are other right answers to your basic questions, if you get closer into it, but basically you are right. For example it is not good enough to only look at the landing blade. The main job is not to move the blade, but the complete body, which ends up in techniques and generating mistakes. You probably know that – I guess, but you want to make it short and simple, and you do a good job anyway.
Actually I have made some remarks to Ottavio CINQUANTA (ISU) during the press conference in Helsinki (Europeans 2009), that almost had the same meaning like what you say – about the ISU rules. I told him that the rules make skaters do impossible things (rotations) and finally can cause more injuries. He was furious and threw me into a 10 minutes discussion with the complete ISU Technical Committee. Time wasn’t enough for me to make them understand what I am talking about. I’ll be working on this soon, when the end of the season leaves more time to me, and I’ll publish it afterwards in the Eissport-Magazin.
In fact all your comments have been part of the basic education that I have given to many Coaches in Germany and abroad, and we have already been discussing this during a SELV (Swiss Coaching Association) coaching seminar in Switzerland about 30 years ago and again during the EPSA/SEV/ISU-Seminar 2008 in Winterthur – and in many other places.
You make one pedagogic mistake (if this is not part of and caused by the simplifying for readers/watchers of your videos): When you tell skaters to take off from forward instead of backwards, this will cause mistakes, that are as bad or even worse than those, that they have made before. But to understand what I say, we would have to go into details much deeper (for example by thinking about when and how the necessary vertical and rotating impulses are done). This is where the real teaching of jumps starts. I use to tell my biomechanic pupils, never to follow simple recipes without understanding what they really do in detail, which is difficult! But as you know, this is limited by the deepness of the education. As the interest of to many coaches to invest into learning and discussions is generally small, the standard of knowledge tends to stay small too. It is a pity, that so many young people seem to know almost everything instead of being crazy to keep learning. You yourself seem to be crazy for more knowledge – am I right? That makes me very interested in discussions with you.
I hope that you get this Mail as I don’t know, if this was a computer generated mail without an answering option.
Best wishes, and keep up your good work!
SEPP
PS: I really wondered, how difficult it was to quickly answer those simple questions entering the game on your homepage. In some of them I thought, “Oh, how can he ask something like that and leave only 2-3 answers?” Then – as you may see, I probably gave “wrong” answers (sideways instead of backwards, etc.) from your viewpoint… This was quite funny!
Sorry, I have certain problems to express myself correct in English.
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Dr. Sepp Schoenmetzler (Eissport-Magazin)
redaktion@eissport-magazin.de, http://www.eissport-magazin.de
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I support your work on jump mechanics and your attempts to arrive at a common understanding of techniquie. However, I would suggest that most trained coaches know full well that by the nature of the contact between the skate and the ice it is necessary that the blade deviate somewhat from the flight path of the jump on the take off to afford the skater some degree of “purchase” or traction and again on the landing to provide a suitable edge. Never-the-less, many would probably respond to a survey with the text book definitions and refer to a loop as a one-rotation jump. Sufficient disagreement on jump technique likely exists to merit your work without suggesting that so many are so uninformed.
Briefly put,I believe that you are too quick to bless the techniques that are accepted by judges as “proper” and “efficient”. I would argue, for example, that while jumping solidly from the toe pick might make a salchow easier than jumping from more blade and less pressure on the toe pick, that does not equate to efficiency. I agree entirely that the extentsion of the leg involved in a powerful jump dictates that the ball of the foot leaves the surface last and that the placement of the pick requires that it touch the surface in the final stages of lifting a jump. That is not a reason to rely on the pick as a prime element in a traditional edge jump.
I would find your considerable skills put to better use in developing a mechanism to help judges determine when the integrity of a jump is being undermined by excessive rotation on the surface rather than in the air. The tweaking of technique and the relaxation of integrity to allow a greater number of skaters to present jumps of a higher degree of difficulty may not be the best thing for the sport. We see similar tendencies across a wide range of activities in contemporary society with results that are not universally applauded.
Dear Trevor, I would like to say thank you for your efforts and I applaud you for bringing consistent successful jump techniques to the many which can be so fervently guarded by the few. This was my experience in the past and it is so good that coaches can be encouraged to help each other. I’m sure we all happen upon some good techniques ourselves which are developed through our own experience in teaching that are improvements on the ways we ourselves have been taught. Hence your use of the word ‘secrets’ as they certainly can be if we choose not to disclose this information. I agree with you that some of us are using outdated techniques. I learnt my skating back in the late 1960s and only managed to accomplish the jumps after many, many attempts and lots of falling with concentration on things such as knee bend, strong kick through and spring off the skating knee (no mention of the flexing of ankle and toe pointing)and pulling in for rotation (and believe me, that was it) – to name just a few. I found out the hard way that off – ice strengthening can greatly improve height and balance and now it is commonplace for youngsters to learn off-ice technique. I have been away from skating for many years, raising and supporting a family and have recently returned to my first love and I really do appreciate your valuable insight into biomechanics. Anything that I can learn which will give my skaters a better understanding of technique or a different method to try can only add value to my existing knowledge, skating and teaching experience. I believe all of this is of invaluable assistance to the skater and will only give them more encouragement to grow and progress. To enhance that experience is a duty to all professionals and your work towards this is commendable.
Good work!!
Dear Trevor,
You have made great effort. I think your approach, where you use modern technology is very acceptable to the general public. However, I would also agree with the opinion of Dr. Sepp Schoenmetzler, where he says that understanding of the biomechanics is limited by the deepness of the education.
Education of figure skating coaches is not very often connected to the system of the university studies. Try to search for any pHd thesis connected to figure skating, and you will find that formal research in the field is very small. That might be some of the reasons of low awareness of the biomechanics knowledge importance.
However, there is, for example a book by well known figure skating coach Mr. Alexei Mishin,(published 1981) (in Russian): “Biomechanics of figure scaters’ moves”, published by Fizkultura i sport, dealing (among other things) with the biomechanics of the jumps.
You can peek at the link: http://www.tulup.ru/articles/294/analiz_tehniki_pryzhkov.html
and you will notice that the take-of for Salchow is forward outside toe-pick.
So, some the knowledge does exist – but maybe it is not widely available (for any reasons) or nobody is searching, or researching (also, because of any or many reasons).
Best regards,
Vojislava
Dear Trevor
I think what you are doing is great, I have passed this along to many coaches at the rink, and just starting to discuss this. I also think it is going to
give new and younger coaches as well as older coaches some great new information that is valuable and extremely helpful. Most coaches I find start out
coaching with all the information that they were taught from their coach, then after a while they start
developing a little of their own technique, and now in
my teaching I have found your website and it is real food for thought, it is great to try something different with the skaters, just one little word can
make such a difference in how they interpret something.
Hi Trevor,
The jump manuel is very detailed. I tend to understand better if I can also see it done, so the idea of the video appeals to me. Are they available yet? I can’t remember if I signed up for the video(s) or not, it has been awhile.
Thanks for all your hard work!
Connie
I think it’s great! My loop jump became real loop jump! Trying to use manual for other jumps as well.
Fantastic information! This will speed up my progress for sure!! Thanks for all your hard work.
Hi Could some one please send me the Jump manual to my email??? angelz-a101@hotmail.com Thanks 😀 I’ve tried with different computer but it doesn’t work for me :/
Thank you Trevor, I found the Jump manual interesting. I wonder what elite coaches think about the difference in techniques between males & females in toe jumps, such as Flip and Lutz. It would be interesting to hear their comments.