Salchow, axel, lutz…it sounds like a list of Russion music composers to me. One of my fascinations with figure skating is just how the announcers figure out what jump the skater is doing. Besides the fact they have their program written down in front of them, of course.
I did a little digging and while I’m not proficient yet, in order of least to most difficult, here are the types of jumps:
- Toe Loop
- Salchow
- Loop
- Flip
- Lutz
- Axel
If you have about 10 minutes to spare, here is a video explanation on all the jumps. The good news is it has lots of explanations and footage. The bad news is it looks like it was created in 1991 and has awful music. If you can get past that, I think you can learn something.
Figure Skating Jumps
Uploaded by oxygala. – Check out more sports and extreme sports videos.
Axel is the hardest and easiest to spot because they go into it facing forward. That may have been the only thing that stuck in my brain but at least I know when I see it, to be impressed!
If you want a more detailed training series, Michael Weiss has a great set of video tutorials here. I’m gonna get this one day!