Audrey Weisiger discusses some extremely beneficial exercises for lutz.  One of the biggest challenges in coaching is to get our young skaters to stay on an outside edge on the lutz take-off.  Audrey has tons of great ideas that she's developed over the years to address this issue.  This video is packed with great information.

In this video, Audrey shows a drill that can be thought of as an "inside-out rocking horse."  It's a simple drill to understand but it's not simple for most young skaters to do.  It's a very powerful drill as it introduces movements that most skaters have not experienced prior to working on lutz.  In particular, the "pigeon toe" internal rotation of the hips and feet is often a completely foreign feeling to young skaters.

Audrey shows variations on the drill including moving the feet in opposition and having one foot (toe pick foot) still.  Then she goes on to talk about another helpful drill, the back pivot.  As she says, most young skaters have a very difficult time with this particular pivot since the direction is counter to their normal rotation.  She then adds another drill, a two foot gliding drill which she builds upon by having the skater "pull" the outside edge but end on both toe picks to feel the internal rotation of the feet and hips.

Audrey also discusses the hip position on the reach back.  She does not encourage an open hip during the reach and she explains why.

Later in the video, Audrey discusses arms.  Notice that she encourages her skaters to have close arm movements that are more linear.  In particular, she's trying to avoid large movements where the arms go around and she explains why that movement can result in a flutz.

Audrey is an Olympic coach and we are very lucky to have her contributions to iCoachSkating.com.  Please rate this content and leave a comment for Audrey or other members below.