Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #271901 in Books
• Published on: 1988-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

A comprehensive manual of Free skating technique. Excellent.
A freestyle skater in search of a comprehensive technical analysis of skating technique could not do better than to choose this book. John Misha Petkevitch works his way steadily from the basics of edges and carriage through to quadruple jumps and Death Drops. Throughout, the emphasis is on the physics of skating and the mechanics of controlling rotation and momentum. Because, as a former Olympian himself, he writes from personal experience of the moves he is describing, he is able to relate his points on technique to what each move should feel like. His analyses of the common errors associated with each move are especially useful. The freeze frame photographs of Brian Boitano's demonstrations of exquisite spin and jump technique are a particular joy; for me, the book was worth buying for the illustrations alone. An excellent buy for skater or coach.

A life-long manual freestyle skate
This book by Misha gives the very comprehensive description to the basic spins and back spins, jumps from single rotation to multi rotational, and of course the fundamentals of skating, ie edges and stroking. The wonderful thing about this book is that Misha provided the possible faults to the failure of execution of a particular move. So one may treat this book as a 'coach'. I personally liked the illustration of the sketches of the tracing on ice and the precision that is shown by Brian Boitano featured for the jumps and spins. You get to watch a few frames of a quadruple toe loop too A must buy for any freestyle skater in advance technique. Truly a treasure of a life-time.

Fabulous technical reference - a "how-to" book
This book is perfect for the beginning, intermediate, or advanced figure skater, and for coaches as well. However, it is not suitable for fans and other people who are only interested in learning something about this sport.

It includes plenty of skating jargon, as well as descriptions of moves in the field, spins, and jumps that can get very technical and even a little confusing at times. The author covers every imaginable aspect of figure skating, from choctaws to spin combinations to axel variations, describing how to execute each move.

I can't wait to get back out on the ice to try out some of the new techniques that I have learned from this book!