How can I break the habit of landing my Axel two footed?

Question

I have the full rotation, but I just don't check out all the way. I'm so close, but I just can't do it!

Answer 1

lean in more on your right leg and pull your left leg back once u get the rotation

Answer 2

I had that problem for a long time too.  Before I stopped skating for awhile, I kept letting my upper body break forward and I'd put my arm down.  When I came back, I developed a new problem of landing on two feet all the time!  Grr!  I worked on axels for FOREVER and a day and it was so frustrating.

Here's what I worked on to improve my axel and get rid of my bad habits:

A new coach was a breath of fresh air to my axel.  We sort of started all over since I had so many bad habits.  First, we did axels just from standing still, but rather than doing silly side toe hops like I had been for soooo long, I just went right into it.  She noticed that when I took off, I was sort of twisted.  My shoulders were more on an angle than square in my take off.  Every time I did them, I made sure my shoulders were dead square before I took off.  I did a lot of "walk throughs," starting with my right leg out behind, jumping up into a back scratch and hopping to snap a check out (and my shoulders were square).  From there, we worked on them from crossovers.  Pushing back, going into the "neutral" postition when your free foot comes into your skating foot just before you take off and then taking off with shoulder square and getting your knee through...like you're trying to touch your knee to your chest.  I found the more I get my knee through, the more snap I have and the easier it is to get around and get my free foot out.....and the jump is bigger!  After YEARS of working on stupid axels, I managed to get them fairly consistent the night before the yearly competition at my rink.  Whew!!!!

All of that really helped.  She also gave me the visual of skating on "two" sheets of ice.  You take off from one and step up to the second, where you snap into the back spin position.  It all just takes a lot of your body "un-memorizing" the bad habits and "re-learning" the new ones, so it's a lot of repetition.  Then it becomes second nature and you think -- whoa, why did this take me so long??  :)  Good luck, think positive.  Once you get the feeling of doing them correctly, you'll want to do them all the time!!

Answer 3

In your skates, hop up and down on your right tow pick with your left leg crossed over five times. Try it again, and keep doing it. Altenate axels and the hops.