Kate Fraser and her fiancé, Amandeep Sandhu, woke up the other day feeling sore and experiencing mild pain. They hadn’t fallen out of bed or exercised vigorously, though it felt that way. Rather, they had tried to recreate a move done by Danny Amendola on the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.”
On an episode that aired on Oct. 15, Mr. Amendola, 38, a former N.F.L. player, and his partner, Witney Carson, a dancer and choreographer, performed a sexy routine set to the song “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors. At around the 45-second mark, Mr. Amendola lifted Ms. Carson, who was laying on the ground, by pulling her up by her ankle.
The pair, who performed the move seamlessly, drew immediate cheers from the studio audience. They also unwittingly created a trend on TikTok as others have tried to recreate the move, which apparently is so difficult that TikTok added a disclaimer to some of the videos. “Participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt,” it reads.
“I had seen their dance posted online and it thought it was absolutely beautiful,” Ms. Fraser, 28, wrote in an email. “Then I saw the TikTok trend going around of other couples trying and begged my fiancé to try it with me.”
Like Johnny’s iconic lift of Baby in the movie “Dirty Dancing,” Mr. Amendola’s lift of Ms. Carson has proved appealing for many, but is considerably harder than it looks.
Even Mr. Amendola’s competitors on the show were intrigued, with Ilona Maher, an Olympic bronze medalist in rugby sevens, posting a TikTok of her attempt to recreate the move.
“Easy,” Ms. Maher and her dance partner, Alan Bersten, agree, after watching a playback of Mr. Amendola and Ms. Carson’s performance.
But neither Ms. Maher nor Mr. Bersten, a professional ballroom dancer, could do it in the video, which has been viewed more than 13 million times.
“I heard something click,” Mr. Bersten says when he tries to lift Ms. Maher off the ground. “I don’t know if it was in my back or your ankle.”
Molly Robinson and her husband, Matt, who live near Salt Lake City, do a challenge every Monday and post it to social media. After so many friends suggested Ms. Robinson try the leg lift, the couple gave it a shot.
“We tried it three times,” before we succeeded, said Ms. Robinson, 36. “With this one, our height difference was beneficial.” (Ms. Robinson is 5-foot-4, while her husband is 6-4 and built like a football player.)
Interviewed by Page Six, Mr. Amendola and Ms. Carson expressed surprise at how the move has caught on online.
“I actually had to ask Witney,” Mr. Amendola said of the surge in videos. “I was, like, ‘Um, is my algorithm messed up, or is everybody trying our dance?’”
Ms. Carson said, “We finally did a tutorial, just to be like, ‘Let’s help everybody out so you don’t get hurt.’”
In the tutorial posted to Ms. Carson’s TikTok account, the two call the move “Operation Archer” and offer tips for each partner.
For the person doing the lifting, Mr. Amendola cautions: “Make sure they’re balanced coming up. And once you get them up, let go of their foot so they can have somewhere to land.”
For the one being lifted, “you want to make sure your bottom leg is straight and of counterweight and balance yourself with an arch,” said Ms. Carson.
Most importantly, adds Mr. Amendola, “make sure, ladies, that your foot is at the very base — bottom — of my foot.”
Madison Smellie, 27, and her husband, Austin, watched the tutorial beforehand and pulled off the move smoothly. It may have also helped that Ms. Smellie was a cheerleader in high school and college.
As for Ms. Fraser and Mr. Sandhu, who live in Montreal, they launched into it without any prep.
The video Ms. Fraser posted to TikTok was “our third and final try because it was actually hurting my fiancé’s foot too much!” she wrote. “You think it would be painful for the person being lifted up. But by the sound of it, it was more painful for the lifter because all of your weight is on them.”
She added a bit of advice for anyone who wanted to participate in the trend.
“I would definitely suggest stretching before and after because we didn’t — and we felt it the next day.”
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