International coach and jump specialist Nick Perna continues a series of videos covering new insights and exercises for the lutz jump. In Part 1, Nick shared the Pigeon Toe Walk exercise to maintain the body in the correct position to keep the skater near the front of the blade to help ensure a true outside edge. In Part 2 he shared another exercise for ensuring an outside edge take-off for the lutz by having the skater jump toward the non-axis side called a side hop lutz drill.
NOTE: To better understand this video, please watch Nick’s previous foundational videos on the lutz here…
Introduction to the Lutz
Fixing a Flutz
Lutz Jump Setups
Lutz Prints and Theory
Lutz Drills and Insights
In this video, Nick shares yet another exercise he uses to ensure an outside edge take-off that seems to contradict his earlier discussions and teachings regarding the lutz. This is a relatively “traditional” approach to the lutz, although Nick exaggerates the movements to guarantee the desired outside edge, and he claims this teaching method typically morphs automatically into the desired power-edge-passby-toe-flick method he taught in earlier videos. The purpose of this drill is to help skaters “feel” the outside edge.
Nick explains, “This is basically a cross-stroke into lutz.” He continues, “Most skaters by the time they’re ready for lutzes, they should be able to do back outside cross strokes.” The exercise consists of a back cross stroke position and rather than do a back cross stroke, the skater instead puts the toe pick into the ice and keeps the feet crossed and jumps straight up without rotation. Nick says, “The outside edge is clear. It hasn’t changed, it hasn’t rolled to a flat, it’s not a forced edge. It’s a genuine legitimate outside edge.” The non-axis (non-picking) foot will not have a toe flick with this method, and it will typically come off a clean outside edge (no toe drag).
Nick continues, “Now what you usually find with this is the skater has a hard time rotating.” Over time the skater can learn to pivot on the toe pick with the feet remaining crossed, but Nick warns that skaters “tend not to get much height at first, but they generally can do a full rotation.” This “full rotation” is a result of a half turn pivot on the ice and a half turn in the air.
Nick explains that this method works best for skaters who struggle to feel the outside power pull with the toe flick that he described thoroughly in previous videos. If a skater can do a back outside cross stroke, they should be able to do this exercise with a true outside edge. Nick shows how this is similar to a loop jump, and this relationship can be leveraged to help understand the foot placement and pivot on the ice. The lutz then becomes essentially the same motion as the loop on the final pivot up into the air.
For skaters who struggle with the pivot to forward on this lutz drill, Nick returns to the loop jump, having the skater enter a loop jump from back cross strokes. For skaters who struggle with the half turn in the air for the single lutz using this technique, Nick uses exercises at the wall to learn this feeling.
As Nick explains, a large percentage of elite skaters does at least some pivot on the toe pick for triple and quad lutzes. This pivot can occur with either the foot crossed or partial split take-off methods, but the exercises shown in this video can help all skaters learn to better pivot on the toe pick while maintaining an outside take-off edge. Nick cautions against allowing the edge of the blade to drop to the ice on the picking foot, as only the toe pick should be used to prevent doing an unintentional loop jump.
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