Beginner Waltz Jump Tutorial (journeybacktotheice) #adultsskatetoo

Hi guys and welcome back to my channel. Today's video is going to be a beginner waltz jump tutorial, so let's get started. The waltz jump is the first basic jump you will learn in figure skating. It's considered a single jump, but it is actually only a half rotation. The first thing I like to do when teaching a waltz jump is just a simple walk through so the skater can get used to what the waltz jump is going to be like when you add the jump. Before starting the walkthrough, I always like to have the skaters practice the H position because this is a crucial part of the waltz jump. So depending on which way you jump, you either lift your left leg or your right leg. I jump counterclockwise, so I will be lifting up my right leg. Practice lifting up your leg in this position a few times, just getting used to that feeling of going up and holding it. Now when it comes to the walkthrough, all we're going to do is bring our leg up into that H position. We're going to turn towards the inside of our circle and we're going to take the leg that was up in the H position and now put it down on the ground, making sure that we are facing the opposite direction we were when we started. A really easy way to visualize this waltz jump walkthrough, hop through, or even the waltz jump itself is just to think of it as walking up a set of stairs. You just have to make sure that you can get your knee extended high enough to get onto that next step. Now we're going to go find a line anywhere on the ice and we're going to practice this. Stand with your feet parallel facing the direction you'd like to jump. We're going to practice that visualization that I talked about, about going up the step, and we're going to do it with our walkthrough, our hop through, and our waltz jump. So with our walkthrough, we're going to stand with our feet parallel facing the direction we'd like to go. We're going to take our arms and swing them ever so slightly behind us, and we're going to bring them forward with the leg that is going to go up into the H position. And you want to make sure that your arms come together like you are holding a beach ball. When you bring your arms back, you want to make sure that you're not bringing them too far back above your head. They're not going crazy. They're nice and controlled right at our side, just ever so slightly at like a 45 degree angle behind us. I will say it's very common for beginner skaters to struggle with this part because they'd like to flail their arms around just to kind of maintain their balance. And this is actually really counterintuitive when you're doing the waltz jump. So my advice for that, and what I always have my skaters do, is just practice standing with your feet parallel facing the direction you'd like to go, and practice bringing your leg up and your arms up at the same time. But instead of doing the full walkthrough, you're just going to practice doing the arms and the leg into the H position, then going back and restarting, doing the process over and over again until you feel really comfortable and stable with that. But anyways, back to our walkthrough. So once we have our arms in that beach ball position, we have our leg in the H position, we are now going to pivot towards the inside of our circle, just like I'm doing so in the video. And when you're pivoting towards the inside of your circle, you want to make sure that you're leading with your hip, and you want to make sure that you keep your arms up in that beach ball position the entire time. You then want to put the leg that was up in the H position down on the ground, make sure that you are facing the opposite direction you were when you started, keep your arms up in that beach ball position in front of you, and then break out into a landing position. Practice this a few times till you feel comfortable, and then we're going to move on to the hop through. So our hop through is basically the exact same thing as our walkthrough, so I will go over it in that much fine detail, but this time, instead of just stepping over like we were in the walkthrough, we're actually going to add a little hop when we go up into our H position. So for the hop through, you just want to make sure that this time you actually do focus on that pullback or that swing back of your arms, because it is going to help you with the hop through a lot. Like I said, the hop through is the exact same thing as the walkthrough, except this time, instead of just stepping and putting our foot down, we're going to go from our H position, and we're just going to hop and transfer our weight over that line. So make sure that you're doing all of these exercises over a line so you can visualize that jumping over. And as always, make sure that when you land, you check out into a landing position. Even if you land on two feet or you don't fully land it, make sure that you reinforce that landing position. Once you feel comfortable with that, now we can move on to what I consider the beginner waltz jump, or the waltz jump that I start all of my students off with. Just like our walkthrough and our hop through, we're going to stand with our feet parallel, facing the direction we'd like to jump on one side of the line. This time, really focus on pulling your arms back and swinging them up with that leg that goes into the H position. This is going to help your waltz jump a lot. I know waltz jumps can seem a little bit scary and intimidating at first, so instead of thinking about this as a full waltz jump, I just want you to think about this as jumping over the red line. Nothing too crazy, just like you're jumping over a puddle. And with this waltz jump, I just want you to focus on bringing your arms back, bringing them together with that leg that goes into the H position, and when you do this, just add a little bit more power than that hop through, and you'll have a waltz jump. Once you feel comfortable with that, something I will have my students do is now adding a T push or a one foot glide into our waltz jump over the red line. So we're still staying on this red line. We're just going to add a little bit more speed and momentum into our jump to make it a little bit easier. When you're pushing into this, you want to make sure that you draw your arms back, just like I'm doing in the video. You also want to make sure that that leg that is going to go up into the H position comes back with your arms. So it will go back and it will come through going forward with our arms at the same time. You also want to make sure that you are bending the knee of the leg that is gliding on the ice before you jump. Now, the important part of this waltz jump to focus on that I hadn't really talked about with the other ones because it wasn't as crucial, but now that we're adding this glide into it, you really want to make sure you do this because if you don't, you may end up falling or hurting yourself. So you want to make sure that when you glide, you roll up onto your toe pick, which is going to give you the height. The toe pick is what is going to launch you up into the air, which is why figure skates have toe picks. Toe picks are not there just to trip you. They actually serve a purpose. So bending our knee is going to help us rise up onto our topic when we do this version of the waltz jump a lot. So just practice that you can even practice that standing thing where we went into our H position and did nothing else. And this time just glide up onto the topic H position and put our feet down and start the process over again. So you can get comfortable with this motion before you add the jump. Now, if you find that you are struggling with getting yourself to do the waltz jump by yourself, or you're a little bit intimidated about it, I'm going to talk about a few things that are definitely going to help you get to the stage where you can add the back crossovers, the back one foot glide into the waltz jump, everything. So you can confidently master this jump. We're going to move over to the wall and the wall is going to be your best friend when you're learning most of your single jumps. If you want, you can practice both your walkthrough and your hop through here at the wall, but I am just going to move straight onto that waltz jump because I want to get you comfortable with doing this all by yourself. The first method we are going to start with is pushing both of your hands up on the boards when you do that jump. So when you are jumping from the H position, you're going to push both of your hands up onto the boards so that you can lift yourself up. This is going to help you focus more on that jumping motion from the H position, getting you comfortable with it. So just keep practicing it over and over again. And as you practice it more and more, try and put less pressure on the boards with your hands and do more of the jump by yourself. We're now going to start trading off our hands instead of keeping both on the boards. When we jump, you're going to have the hand that is closest to the boards, touching the boards. When you first go into the jump and as you go up and jump, you're going to trade off and switch hands. And again, practice this over and over again, over time, slightly put less pressure on your hands when you trade off. So you start doing the jump all by yourself. Now you're going to reach out and have your hand slightly touching the boards. And from here, you can do a waltz jump all by yourself, but if you need to reach for the boards, you can because you're close enough, but you're not touching the boards this time. As you progressively do this more and more, keep inching further and further away from the boards. I like to inch at least one hand length away every time I do a successful waltz jump. Eventually the goal is to get you towards the middle of the rink where you can do the waltz jump all by yourself and hopefully break that mental block you may have about jumping alone. Once you feel confident and comfortable enough to do this on your own, start adding a back edge into your waltz jump and even start adding a few backward crossovers over time. And as you get more comfortable with it, you can start working on adding more height, more speed, trying to get more power, all of those things. That is going to be it for this video. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below. Make sure you subscribe to stay up to date. I post new skating related videos every week, and I will link my skating tutorial playlist up here on screen. Anyways, I will see you in the next video.