Learn The ISI 7-Step Mohawk Sequence!

Hey skaters, welcome back! I'm so glad you're here. I am Coach Julia and today I am going to be teaching you a little footwork sequence. This one was inspired by a skater here at our rink named Brandon who was looking for this on my YouTube channel, so I am putting it on there. This is for you, Brandon. I hope you enjoy it. All right, so this is going to be the ISI Gamma Level Seven Step Mohawk Sequence. I know that's a lot. ISI Gamma Level Seven Step Mohawk Sequence. So ISI is a major skating organization that's all over the Americas and Asia and so if you are part of that, this is going to be really helpful for you in passing your Gamma Level Badge Test. If you're not part of ISI, no worries. This is still a great exercise for learning how to do your Mohawks with momentum going into it. It's one thing to be able to stand there and do a Mohawk, but to be able to skate into that Mohawk and skate out of it is a whole different challenge, and so this is going to be great for you even if you're not part of the ISI skating program. Okay, let me show you what this skill looks like. So for this skill you are going to need both your forward inside Mohawks going both directions and backward outside Mohawks going both directions. Now I have tutorials on how to do both of those Mohawks and I will post links down below. So in case you haven't learned your Mohawks yet, you can follow those links and you'll be caught up and ready for this video. Now in some parts of the world, these Mohawks are called C-steps. So you might be accustomed to hearing your coach say C-step. Depending on where you are, there's different names for different moves. So this is a Mohawk or C-step. Okay, so we're going to get started with this tutorial and I'm going to be doing it both counterclockwise and clockwise for you because not only should you work on both footwork both ways, but in the ISI Gamma Test, you have to be able to do this footwork sequence going both directions. We're going to start today going clockwise. So this is seven steps. I'll count them out for you. The first step is going to be on your right foot. Now I like to think of it as stepping inside my circle. This is a circular footwork pattern. So I will teach my students how to do it on a circle. Today we're using this big red hockey circle down on one of the ends. So if you stand with one foot on each side of the circle, you're going to step onto the one on the inside first. So you can keep it straight in your mind, whichever way you're facing, you're going to step on the one inside the circle first. That's very confusing for some people, so hopefully that gives you something to go by. Whether it's right foot or left foot, just step on the one inside your circle first. Okay, so we're going to start with three forward stroking steps. So we're going to go right, left, right. So we're ending back on the inside of our circle. This is where the mohawk comes in. So, so far we've been very nice and square with our upper body. We have a nice V position with our hands, nice low. This is a position you should be very comfortable with by the time you're learning this footwork sequence. All right, a nice low V in front. And then we're getting ready for our mohawk. Now a mohawk is going to check our upper body before our lower body. So we have to prepare our upper body first. So before we take our fourth step into our mohawk, we're going to shift our shoulders so the outside one comes forward in front of us. So that's going to be the left one coming in front. That way I can copy that with my foot. Okay, so now I'm starting to face inside my circle. Now I'm going to look behind myself, switch to my right hand, and then copy it with my foot. So the upper body is going to move, and then the lower body is going to follow. All right, so again from the beginning we have our three forward stroking intro steps. We're going to go right, left, right, shift the hands, step, shift the shoulders, step. Now we're going to finish it up by putting our feet together, checking out, and doing a forward, an outside mohawk. Okay, so there's actually two mohawks hidden in here. One that we see very clearly where we're facing inside the circle. Another hidden one at the very end where we're facing outside the circle. So let me show you that from the first mohawk. So we have the obvious mohawk we all know, forward inside. We're going to put our feet together, check out, and here is our backward outside mohawk. So let's take it all the way through the top. I will walk you through the names of the steps first, then we'll do it again walking through the counts because it is that seven steps and we want all seven steps. So we're going to go right, right foot, left foot, right foot, shift the hands. We're going to do a forward inside mohawk, put the feet together, check back, and back outside mohawk onto that right foot. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And there you have the full seven step sequence. So let's take this same sequence going counterclockwise. So we're going to do the same thing. We're going to step on the foot that goes into the circle first. Now it's going to be my left foot. So I'm going to have that nice forward posture. I'm going to give myself three beautiful forward stroking steps, left, right, left. I'm going to shift my right hand forward, step onto my right inside edge, look behind myself, step onto my left back inside edge, put my feet together, check back onto my right outside edge, and step forward onto my left forward outside edge. Okay, so we have the same thing, just repeated the other direction. One more thing that I really want to start having you work on is extending your legs and having nice timing. You're going to want to do this more and more as you improve your footwork sequences and make them more difficult in the future. This is really the first sequence that's required, especially in ISI. So we're going to talk about that extension and timing. So every time you take a step, I want you to think about squeezing all the way from your hip, from your glutes. So when you push, you want to have that extension come all the way from your toes to your hip, and then toes to hip, okay? Another thing you can think about that makes it look really clean, really tidy, is bringing your feet together in between each step. This is a carryover from ice dance where you want your feet to collect in between each step. You can think about putting them in a little shoebox, putting your shoes in the shoebox, and then pushing out. So you want to start with those feet in that shoebox. You're going to push. You're going to extend from the toe to the hip, shoebox, toe to hip, shoebox, okay? So every time you're collecting and you're extending all the way from that toe through that hip. If you can think about that with every motion, extend, collect, extend, collect, extend, collect, extend, collect, you'll have really beautiful lines and clean, clean footwork. The other thing is that timing. So for this sequence, you want every step to carry the same volume, the same weight, the same amount of time, the same distance on the ice. So if you think of like a metronome, you want each of your steps to follow that pace. So we go one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. That's an example. It doesn't have to be a three timing like a waltz, but that's an example of how you can keep the pace, the distance, the glide for every step in the sequence, nice and even. That's another thing that's going to give this sequence an elevated look as you go through it. All right, skaters. I hope you enjoy this little Mohawk footwork challenge for you. Whether you are part of the ISI program or not, there is something wonderful to be gotten from practicing your footwork. So I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do give us that thumbs up. And as always, I'm looking forward to reading all your comments in that section down below. If you haven't done so yet, then hit that subscribe button and the little notification bell down in the corner so we can see all my videos when they come out. Happy skating and I'll see you next time.