Get on the Axel Train

Something amazing happened on Friday night, my Axel suddenly clicked for some reason! I have been consistently managing a couple of under rotated, wobbly Axels from a T-position most sessions for a couple of years now. But progress has been slow putting it onto the circle to get some flow on the landing. The tiny bit of extra speed usually freaks me out and I end up popping the jump and doing a two-footed little dance while leaning forward ridiculously to complete the rotation on the ice.

A year ago, I started getting occasional lessons on the jump harness. It was a real life-changing experience! Finally, I could hurl myself into the air without fear. I started landing really fabulous Axels on the harness. I learned what it felt like to land one, on one foot, and rotated. I also picked up a lot more technique over the last year, not necessarily because of the harness, but the harness did let me experiment on techniques without fear.  Unfortunately, having great Axels on the harness did not immediately translate into results off the harness, because I still get spooked. I have seen people take a lot of bad falls, and even had a couple myself. Some people call it “being chicken”, but I prefer to think of it as a “strong survival instinct”.

Me and my coaches seem to have two different approaches to tackling my Axel:

1) Look for technical fixes

2) Try to fix my brain

Approach 1 usually degenerates into nitpicking over some irritating detail. I have literally had sessions where my Axel got worse the longer I tried to fix it. On the other hand, it’s important to fix technical mistakes and I have definitely improved on that.

Approach 2 is decidedly challenging, but often my best Axels happen when I shut my brain off and just go for it. As for getting over the fear, the harness has helped somewhat, and I wear a lot of padding. But that only helps so much.

The reality is that at some point you have to step out of your comfort zone and do something that scares you. My coach has told me so many times that it has to “feel weird” because what I am comfortable with is wrong. My excuse was always that it felt like something is wrong with the jump, but often when I look at videos, it’s not that bad, I just freak out because it feels weird.

Over the last couple weeks I made a few discoveries:

• Don’t rush the takeoff
• Jump up as high as possible 
• Make a tight air position
• Stand up straight on landing

I know, right? Sounds obvious right? I’ve only been told all these things a zillion times but there are so many things to remember in a manoeuvre that takes like half a second, it’s hard to consistently add more things. Anyway, the last couple weeks I had been doing “ok” and feeling confident but still only managing a handful of decent attempts in a session, but nothing that I would call a breakthrough.

On Friday night I went to the rink after work, and the first two T-position Axels went well. But it’s impossible to land them with any flow, because there’s no momentum, so I usually end up hopping around trying to get my balance. So I decided to do one on the circle, from a back edge, with a tiny bit of speed. To be honest, I have landed them  this way only a handful of times, and really well only once.

Well, I landed the first one. It was not perfect. It did not have an easy, flowing exit edge. It was pre-rotated on the take off and cheated on the landing.   But it was on foot, with some speed, and I was shocked! I let out a yelp of surprise and triumph. I waved my arms in the air. I bragged to my friends. I took a photo of the landing edge.

When you’re 33, and you learned the Axel as an adult, you are allowed to make a big deal about it.

Well I decided to do another one, and I landed that one too. Woo hoo! I could hardly believe it. I have probably never landed two in a row like that before. 

I got a friend to take video, to see if I could capture the moment. But I had lost all my mojo. I was so excited to get it on video, I started rushing and falling into old habits. So I put my camera away.

Then I started landing them again, with my camera safely out of sight. Some of them were bad and scratchy. Some of them were very under rotated. Sometimes I was leaning forward so badly on the landing that it was awkward to finish off. Sometimes I fell. But I stopped freaking out and popping them. I stopped doing a two foot dance. 

I did so many Axels on that session, I lost count. Again and again, I just kept popping them off. I even decided they were fun. I wanted to enjoy that feeling as long as possible. Not only was it such a great feeling to actually execute the jump, I wanted to cement some muscle memory of how to do it correctly. I thought they were going to have to kick me off, but then I rolled my ankle when I started getting tired, and I decided I’d had enough.

How did I do it? Somehow I managed to convince myself to stay in the backspin position in spite of every instinct telling me it was a bad idea. And because I kept landing it, maybe my brain was starting to connect the dots - that holding the position = easy landing, and not a big scary painful tumble. 

So how will I do tomorrow? Usually for me, I take one step forward and one step back. And I will be stressed out that maybe I can’t repeat my success from Friday. And then usually if I don’t repeat my successes I get sulky. But I think I need to look at this differently. I have come really far with my skating and I know consistency is difficult for me. Maybe I will land more Axels, maybe I won’t. But now I have an experience that I will never forget.  At least for that one hour, I had a consistent Axel. And OMG it was so much fun!

Sessions like that are rare, but they make it all worth while. All the early mornings, late nights, sore muscles, toe pick belly flops, bruised knees, cut fingers, running through the fog in the dark to catch the bus, getting changed in bathroom stalls, blowing off friends at the pub, tedious drills, suffering through session after session of crappy skating, hours of off-ice jumps, and on and on. We persevere through it all because the exhilaration of achieving new heights is such a great feeling.