- Joined
- Jul 26, 2016
It seems to me that at the lower levels of what I'll call "beginning competitive" figure skating (when you first start to do competitions), there seem to be two categories of jumpers when considering 1A and all doubles:
1) Those that jump high, travel far, and give themselves plenty of time to complete rotations before exiting with some speed. Generally, the rotation is slower so they need to do this to make the rotations;
2) Those that barely eek out a hop over the ice but rotate *extremely* fast and manage to squeak in their 1.5 or two rotations in a fraction of the time of the "big" jumpers.
It would seem to me that the kids that are able to snap into their jumps and get fast rotation are at an advantage in the long run, even if they don't jump high, because I would think its harder to teach a kid to snap and rotate fast rather than to train them to jump higher. While the "big" jumpers may look like the jump is more impressive now, I would think its harder to progress to harder jumps if they don't naturally rotate fast.
I'm curious what people have experienced with this. For the record, my skater is a slow rotator/big jumper and I question whether he'll be able to move on to other jumps as he can't, for the life of him, rotate very fast (coaches say his fast twitch muscles are lacking). There is one girl that I swear gets no more than 3 inches above the ice but can land all her doubles because she rotates faster than anything I have ever seen (I call her the Tasmanian Devil because it is quite remarkable to me).
What do the judges prefer to see - big and slow jumps or small and fast jumps?
1) Those that jump high, travel far, and give themselves plenty of time to complete rotations before exiting with some speed. Generally, the rotation is slower so they need to do this to make the rotations;
2) Those that barely eek out a hop over the ice but rotate *extremely* fast and manage to squeak in their 1.5 or two rotations in a fraction of the time of the "big" jumpers.
It would seem to me that the kids that are able to snap into their jumps and get fast rotation are at an advantage in the long run, even if they don't jump high, because I would think its harder to teach a kid to snap and rotate fast rather than to train them to jump higher. While the "big" jumpers may look like the jump is more impressive now, I would think its harder to progress to harder jumps if they don't naturally rotate fast.
I'm curious what people have experienced with this. For the record, my skater is a slow rotator/big jumper and I question whether he'll be able to move on to other jumps as he can't, for the life of him, rotate very fast (coaches say his fast twitch muscles are lacking). There is one girl that I swear gets no more than 3 inches above the ice but can land all her doubles because she rotates faster than anything I have ever seen (I call her the Tasmanian Devil because it is quite remarkable to me).
What do the judges prefer to see - big and slow jumps or small and fast jumps?