Expert: Dr. Bruce Forciea - 7/28/2009

Question
first of all, thank you so much for your trick about not popping jumps in my last question, it helped sooooooo much!!! anyway, so i was wondering if you had any tricks for getting through programs. out of my programs, i always land all my jumps, but the second i do my program i fall on alot of them. i was wondering if you had any advice on this, besides just running my program alot, because i already do bith short and long every session ( 2-3 sessions a day). thanks!!!!!!

Answer
HI Lilly:

I'm glad to have helped you with the popping issue. One exercise you can do to help build endurance in programs is one I used to do with students. The idea is that when you practice you take time between jumps to rest while in a program there is no rest time. You need to condition yourself so that you can still execute your jumps without a rest between them.

Here is the exercise and you can modify it based on your skill. You want to use the whole rink. Skate from one end to the other fast and perform a waltz jump. Then skate back to the opposite end of the rink and again do a waltz jump. Without stopping continue to the opposite side of the rink and perform a salchow. Again, skate to the opposite side of the rink and perform a toe loop. I think you may be getting the picture now. The idea is to continue moving fast while performing all of the jumps on each end of the rink from waltz jump to lutz. If you can get through this then continue with lutz back down to waltz jump. If this is too easy you can do the same exercise beginning with axels and moving through double lutzes.

Hope this helps,

Good luck with your conditioning.

Bruce