Backwards crossover drill for building confidence and skill
To begin have your legs around shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent to give you a lower centre of gravity increasing your balance and control, keep your body weight evenly distributed between both your legs. Before even starting to try this while skating, I’d like you to practice the motions for backwards crossovers off the ice in your street shoes, your probably wondering why the hell would you even try this right? You need to understand how to lean and balance while your transferring your body weight from one leg to another, practicing off the ice helps to build an understanding of exactly what you need to be doing on the ice.
If you feel this is to easy, please do this on the ice in skates (with a slight twist), the twist is to practice the crossover motion on the ice in slow motion while standing still, this is a great way to build your balance and control while crossing over.
- Skates shoulder width apart
- knees bent slightly
- lift left skate slowly and place over right skate (not infront but completely over)
- hold this position for (5-10seconds) if you find yourself wobbling all over, keep working on it until your stable.
- Lift and bring your right skate under and return it back along side your left skate
- Repeat in both directions
Points and tips for doing backwards crossovers
While performing crossovers, your toe area of the blade should be the last part of the skate blade to come off the ice, and also the first part of the blade to come back in contact with the ice (always push and flick with ice with the toe area of the skates blade as it come off the ice for more power and speed)
Your heels will point the way (where ever they are point is the direction you will go in). Try to keep head up and focus on where you are on the ice and of course who is around you.
From the beginning with pictures for a better example
1. weight in both leges, knees bent and skates shoulder width apart
2. lean in direction you want to crossover in (leaning to my left, which is your right) weight is slowly being directed to my left leg (which is my leg on your right hand side)
3.lift right skate over the left (my right is your left) weight totally in my left leg.
(notice my left skate is out its outside edge)
4. Once my right skate is completely lifted over the left, pretty much all the weight is now in my right most.
5. Return my left skate along side the right skate (restoring the weight as its now balanced between both skates).
