The Russian Twist, Part 4 – More Drills, One-Foot Landing (Chris Conte)

Chris Conte continues his multi-part series on air turns or the Russian Twist.  In Part 1, he introduced the overall concept.  In Part 2 he explained the first turn and discussed how it relates to snizzles and the d-position.  In Part 3 he offered more details and some Russian twist demonstrations.  In this video, Chris shows a progression of development drills and spends time talking about proper air position and landings.

At the beginning of the video, Chris offers to provide some examples of skaters doing the Russian twist drills.  The following video shows one skater performing many of the drills Chris has talked about so far in this series.

Chris explains why he likes the Russian twist as a teaching tool.  He says, “It’s the generic version of all the take-offs.”  Next he shows how he builds moving Russian twists on a circle.  First he uses a forward outside three-turn entrance into 2-foot natural squat to get the initial position correct.  He then repeats this drill over and over.  Next he slowly adds Russian twists to the exercise, cycling between natural squats and full twists before just doing repeated pushes into twists.  Finally he shows how to create a good air position (closed position) and land on one foot.  He starts with walk-throughs, then alternates between three-turn Russian twist and three-turn one-foot landing.

The entire second half of the video is a more thorough explanation by Chris on the closed air position, and the idea that skaters need to prepare for landing while still in the air.  He chides the old-school approach to “checking” jump landings without preparing for the landing in the air.  He provides tons of details about the air position, the movement of the free leg and foot during the landing movement, and the physics behind the landing (free side must decelerate the rotation while the landing side absorbs the vertical load).  He also discusses landing position, including common errors he sees.  The landing needs to be functional and attractive.

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