Backward choctaws

A held back outside edge into a closed choctaw, an open mohawk immediately after it, and crossovers between the lobes.

BIS Skills 4exercise 5In the syllabus both before and after 01/10/2026

Not checked yet. The requirements on this page are a first draft by a non-expert, and no coach has seen them yet. Read them as a starting point and check them with a coach. Corrections are very welcome.

The choctaw is the other half of the mohawk family and the harder half. Both change foot; the mohawk keeps the character of the edge and the curve carries on, while the choctaw changes it and the curve reverses. That reversal is the whole difficulty: the skater has to put the new foot down on a lobe that bends the other way while their body is still leaning into the old one.

Placement is the lesson. The short axis is given as the guide, which is a practical way of saying that a choctaw put down early or late leaves the pattern crooked and the next lobe short of room. The turn can be technically clean and still wrong for where it happened.

Then the mohawk arrives immediately afterwards, and that pairing is what the exercise is built around: two changes of foot, in opposite senses, close enough together that the upper body never gets to reset. Getting the choctaw right and losing the shoulders before the mohawk is the commonest way to skate this badly.

Elements

Right backward outside choctawRBO to LFI: a step onto the other foot, changing edge and reversing onto a new one. No cusp.
Left backward outside choctawLBO to RFI: a step onto the other foot, changing edge and reversing onto a new one. No cusp.
Extended edgeA plain edge held for a third of a circle, long enough to be a position in its own right.
Left forward inside mohawkLFI to RBI: a step onto the other foot, holding the edge and staying on the same lobe. No cusp.
Right forward inside mohawkRFI to LBI: a step onto the other foot, holding the edge and staying on the same lobe. No cusp.
Right backward inside edgeRBI: the right foot travelling backwards on an inside edge, tracing a clockwise lobe.
Left backward inside edgeLBI: the left foot travelling backwards on an inside edge, tracing an anticlockwise lobe.
Right backward outside crossoverRBO to LBI: the free foot crosses in front of the skating foot onto the same lobe, still travelling backwards.
Left backward outside crossoverLBO to RBI: the free foot crosses in front of the skating foot onto the same lobe, still travelling backwards.

This page lists which elements the exercise calls for and what it is working on. It does not reproduce British Ice Skating's sequence, pattern or wording. For the exercise as published, go to their own document.