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Forward and Backward Crossovers


A great way to pick up speed going around corners on the ice - not to mention looking like a pro in the process - crossovers are where it's at. Learn how to do crossovers.
 Forward and Backward Crossovers
These moves are the fundamentals for everything else that you wind up doing in skating. Hi - thanks for tuning in. My name is Sean - I'm part of the management team here at Pickwick Ice in Burbank, California, and About.com has invited me to talk to you about forward crossovers and backward crossovers.
Form and Posture During Crossovers
So, the most important thing - as we know at this point - is that you want good form and posture: your feet centered - parallel on the ice, your knees bent, your torso up, your chin up, and then your hand position.
Forward Crossovers
With forward crossovers the first thing that we're going to wind up doing is we're going to go onto the ice and we're going to find one of the hockey circles. Because what's going to wind up happening in a crossover, is you're going to be moving around the circle. With crossovers, what I normally suggest, is starting from a "T" position, stepping on your hockey circle, working with a one-foot glide. You can either do a half-swizzle, working around the circle, or you can do a stroke position, towards the left. So if we're going towards the left, our left skate is going to be on our outside edge, and we're going to pivot around the ice, going that direction. This left foot is not going to leave that hockey circle.

So now we're going to start getting a little more complicated. Your right foot is going to cross over your left foot. How do we do that? We start from the "T" position - we're going to push off, at this point we're going to be gliding around the circle on our left outside edge. At this point we've picked up our right foot, and we're actually going to cross over our left foot onto our right blade. At this point you are riding on your right skate, and then you're going to push off behind you with your left skate. We'll get back to balance and we'll push off again - we're going to cross over onto our right, putting our weight onto our right, and then pushing again off on our left. We're going to do the exact same thing for the other foot.
Backwards Crossovers
So, with a backward crossover, we're going to start with our right foot planted on the ground. We're going to push off with our left foot, gliding on our outside right leg. We're going to cross onto our left, and it's going to be our inside blade, and then we're going to push off again.

Now, these moves are a little complicated, and it takes a lot of practice. Don't get discouraged if you don't pick it up right away. You'll find people that work on these moves for a long time, but don't feel afraid to ever talk to a coach or sign up for one of these classes if you're not getting it quite on your own - it's a great idea.

If you have any more questions regarding these topics or anything else regarding ice skating, feel free to visit us on the Web at About.com. Thank you.
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