Get Coached - S&C for Figure Skating w/c 15/9/2014 to 6/10/2014

Again it has been a few weeks since the last post, and a lot has happened in a relatively short time.
Two of my skaters, one junior one senior, were both at the Lombardi Cup in Italy with another 6 novice and junior competing at the Southern IJS in Lee Valley, London, and a further 12 skaters competing at the Deeside IJS, Wales. This included Basic and Advanced Novice, Junior and senior skaters.
It was a mixed bag of performances across the board but overall good, moving in the right direction.
Training has been about competition preparation and individual development.
For example, one coach has asked that their athlete work on developing their triple extension for jump take off. The athlete jumps on dry land without extending at the ankle, this same athlete has also struggled to decelerate the downward momentum on landing. Thus we worked on various repeated hops, jumps and landing exercises both single and double leg.
Another athlete needed to improve their explosive speed of movement with regards to take off and landing in combination jumps, this is a more experienced athlete and as such we introduced drop jumps and rebound jumps into their programme. This was already a very individualised programme and we did not want to add any significant volume at this point, but we did need to answer the needs as highlighted above.

The overhead lifts are seen by many S&C coaches as essential for athletic development and key in improving core strength and stability in performance. In my opinion and experience these lifts are key for take offs, landings and spins in their various forms for Figure Skating.

I have included two short video clips showing an overhead squat and an overhead split squat performed by one of my athletes. He has been performing these lifts for about a year now and is competent but we did need to work on shoulder mobility for the overhead squat.
This is not a coaching article but rather a call to notice the benefit of these exercises for Figure Skating.

As always any relevant comments or feedback is welcome.