Nick Perna continues his axel lesson with Kayla. In this segment, Nick focuses on the waltz jump. After watching Kayla’s moving waltz jump entry, Nick shows her a very controlled, aligned and organized entry that will improve the likelihood of a successful and consistent axel.
Nick teaches this entry in several steps. First the skater glides backward on two feet with the knees straight and locked. The feet can either be side-by-side or slightly staggered but should not have much sideways space between them. The skater is turned into the circle and facing and looking in the direction of travel with their head over their back shoulder. The purpose of this step is to get the skater onto a solid edge with nice alignment.
Next the skater passes the arms close to the body and allows the shoulders to rotate outside the circle. Then the head also rotates outside the circle and faces the direction of travel again. It is very important that the skater keeps the knees locked throughout this transition.
Next the skater picks up the free foot and holds it close to the skating foot. Again the skater should keep the skating knee locked during this transition. Also, the body position should not change at all. Notice the body lean into the circle when Nick demonstrates it for Kayla. He addresses this with Kayla when he mentions “You’re a little bit off your skating hip. Here you want to be leaning back just a little bit more.”
The final part of the setup is in the next part of the lesson.
This entrance is often tricky for skaters to learn initially but it creates such a strong and consistent platform for the forward edge jump take-off that it is worth working on repeatedly to get it just right. Nick does not mention it in this video, but one of the reasons it works so well is the critical upper body turn from inside the circle to outside the circle is done on two feet, which makes controlling the rotation much easier. Passing the arms close to the body also helps minimize uncontrolled rotation.
Incidentally, many skaters feel extremely “stuck” when first learning this entry. They don’t feel a natural rotation that allows them to easily step forward and rotate an axel. But many of these skaters including those doing axels and double axels are often attempting those jumps while being slightly out of control. For many skaters that have an inconsistent axel, just applying this entry can give them 100% control of every jump attempt, making their consistency skyrocket.
This is a simple idea and easy to teach. It will pay big dividends to those that master it and use it consistently. Stay tuned for the next part of this lesson…
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3 responses to “Axel Jump Lesson Part 2 – Four Step Backwards Entry (Nick Perna)”
I love this step by step demo. I always have known this set up is extremely important, but I really need to reinforce the importance to my skaters and be more strict about the correcting the positions. Thanks so much for the great info!
Thank you for breaking this down and using a skater so we can actually see your instruction demonstrated. It looks like when you’re doing this going backwards after rotating the arms that you left hip is more open? Hers are more parallel? Thanks again
Love this. Excellent.