Figure Skating Lesson: Power From Standstill C Cuts (Nick Perna)

Nick Perna continues his explanation of slaloms and shares a drill to help skaters develop the proper weight transfer, balance, and power.  Please review Nick’s forward slaloms and backward slaloms.  This video is actually an independent concept from slaloms.  Nick offers a very fundamental explanation of how we generate power in skating.  The drills are very practical and are appropriate for skaters of all levels and abilities.

Nick explains that whenever we do any kind of motion we are constantly balancing and unbalancing and re-balancing.  He explains what he means with the simple movements of walking.  We unbalance ourselves by essentially starting to fall and then catch ourselves by putting our other foot down.

This is also necessary to generate power in skating.  We unbalance ourselves, then push on the resulting edge, and pull the same skate under us or put the other skate down to prevent falling.  Nick says “We have to become unbalanced to create movement.”  Incidentally, this is why timid and fearful skaters take such a long time to develop power in their skating.  Timid skaters don’t like being unbalanced, yet it is a prerequisite for generating power.  The drills Nick shares are perfect for these skaters.

Nick uses a concept he calls “blurb” to illustrate falling into the circle in order to unbalance the skater.  This creates the fall, so the skater can now push on the edge, and when the feet come around they catch the skater’s weight during the “cut.”  Nick’s drawing on the ice helps show the balance/unbalance/fall movement.  Nick makes it clear the skater must re-establish balance after generating power or the skater will fall.
Proceeding from two foot standstill slalom drills, Nick has his students do one foot standstill cut drills (or “standstill C cuts”) before having them do full moving power pulls.  Nick demonstrates all 4 cut drills – forward inside, forward outside, backward inside and backward outside.  Notice that Nick acknowledges that the backward outside is the hardest one, but it’s also the lutz take-off edge so it’s worth working on! Nick uses these standstill drills with all of his skaters at all different ages.  Nick says, “I teach from little ones all the way up to Senior citizens, and I do these types of drills with all of them.”  These concepts are difficult to describe in words, but watch the video to clearly understand what Nick is talking about.  These drills are priceless for timid skaters that do not generate any skating power because they are afraid to fall.

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