Axel hook (of doom)

I have been working seriously on my axel for over a year. In the past 2 months I have made a lot of progress but my main problems remain not jumping up enough and not getting my legs crossed/straighter in the air. My coach has been helping me a lot and pointed out this week that I need to focus on leading slightly with my left shoulder and getting into my knee more. Both of which I am working on.

One thing I have noticed recently watching the videos I have taken of myself is that I seem to pre-rotate too much, when this happens there is no way I can really jump high enough, then can't really cross my feet and then it becomes harder to land on my toe/I have more flat footed landings. It looks like I hook to harshly rather than jump off the edge.

I am trying to fix this by doing a lot of prep exercises- when I do waltz jump-backspin I am able to not hook or pre-rotate but then I have a really hard time breaking the habit when I try the axel.

Does anyone have any mental tips or advice that could help? I would appreciate any thoughts! Until then I resort to posting my entertaining falls on instagram.


Note: I generally don't have a problem landing on one foot and my backspin position has improved a lot.

When my coach catches me doing this, he makes me stop jumping and just glide around in axel pre-takeoff position on the left outside edge for the whole rink. You should be able to hold that position for an indeterminate amount of time. It's harder than it looks, and if you're able to control the edge in this position, you'll be able to control it when you're taking off for the axel. Hope this helps.