So this is a move that is taking FOREVER to refine, but I do feel like I made a breakthrough (October 2022, Day 110ish) on adjusting my snakewalk to get that zigzag effect (where your legs are moving in opposite directions. There are a lot of tutorials that I’ve watched early on that don’t emphasize the importance of timing the switch in foot direction right. I won’t link to those here because I don’t want to call anyone out. But essentially, the diagrams that have been drawn look like this:
There are two main problems I encountered when following this pattern:
- I ended up putting too much weight on my front foot. This was problematic when I tried ot learn the variation where you have the leading toe.
- Because your feet are always following each other, you don’t practice weaving your feet in and out, moving them in opposite positions with each beat.
Here’s how I looked following the above pattern:
I revisited snakewalk after admiring @juulesskates and @rollin_bori‘s snakewalks. I also appreciated the tutorials by @frozenand.ice and @thediamondwalker.
Here are links to the three tutorials posted by @frozenand.ice:
Here is the link to The Diamond Walker’s YouTube tutorial. I like how he talks about the pop you need to feel as you extend out the legs and switch directions.
Observing their tutorials, the foot pattern is more like the below. In one step, both feet are gliding in the directions outline below.
This is how I look when revisiting my foot work:
As you can see, I’m trying to extend my legs in each direction as much as possible to add more pop. The lightbulb went off that it is like sideswipe in that way.
Here’s to making light improvements!