A Good Skate
I am especially grateful for today's good skate after the disasterous practices I had on Monday and Tuesday.
I skated about 25min. on Monday. I slept in late again. Bad skater! I ran through moves (not great) and fell on a few jumps before leaving.
I skated 1.5hrs. on Tuesday. I sucked at intermediate MITF almost worse than when I first started them. Then, I had a total splatfest on jumps. Even the janitor asked me if I was alright when I got off the ice. When I said that I was fine and would be back tomorrow, he seemed surprised.
Today was much better. I had my 45min. morning lesson with coach. It was very frustrating at first. We worked on intermediate moves again. I don't think coach will ever like the way I do these. I don't hold my free leg high enough on the underpush of each xover on the forward power circles. I don't have enough power on my power 3's (he even hates the backward perimeter xover stroking down the long sides of the rink - I don't sit on the BI edge enough). I don't extend enough on my back double 3's. I was getting pretty upset by this point, and I think he realized it b/c he told me that my brackets and slide chasse sequence were good enough for now. (Coach speak for "I know you're getting pissed, so let's move on to something else.") So, it was onto jumps. We only had a few minutes, so we did 2salchow and 2toeloop. Coach got me to do huge single salchows by skating fast and bringing my leg and arm through together when I jump. I managed a few doubles, and he was satisfied. On 2toes, he told me to think of continuing the forward motion by pulling the skating leg toward the picking leg, and then kicking up and out with the skating leg as I take off. I got maybe 2 inches of distance, but that's much better than yesterday where my landing mark came before my toepick when I looked at the tracing.
Down side to lesson: Coach didn't have my music again, so I still have just an itty bitty part of a program and I'm testing on Nov. 7th. Or I hope I'm testing on Nov. 7th. I just mailed in my registration, and the test list is already really long. I guess my home club is one of the only clubs that offers dance tests so a bunch of ice dancers just signed up for about a million dances, and the last summer test session was cancelled so those skaters all get first dibs on this test session. And I thought I was signing up early!
I also skated public today after my lesson. Got an extra 1.5 hours of ice time. I mostly just messed around. I worked on spirals. I've decided that mine aren't bad, but I want to get to at least Sara Hughes level (which is about where I am off ice). I also did all of the novice moves that I know. Very tricky stuff! And, I finally gave my spins some exercise. I am very pleased to report that I have a decent back camel now! Camel-back camel was very good today :) Flying camel is still more of a flying salchow, but I'll leave that for coach to fix (I sure do make him earn his coaching fee. Every other lesson, I come in and tell him that he needs to fix me. His usual response, "Again!?") I was also playing around with a catch camel into a layback. I don't think this is going to be possible for me right now, but I did sorta manage a catch camel that leaned back in to an attitude spin without letting go of the blade. I tried this going straight (so I could look at myself in the glass) and found that if I lifted my knee as I did the attitude, it had a very nice look. Now if I could just manage that while spinning... After spinning, I threw in a few walleys (these were bad, but I've forgotten about them for the last week or two), axels, and 2salchows. I left quite pleased with myself.
I skated about 25min. on Monday. I slept in late again. Bad skater! I ran through moves (not great) and fell on a few jumps before leaving.
I skated 1.5hrs. on Tuesday. I sucked at intermediate MITF almost worse than when I first started them. Then, I had a total splatfest on jumps. Even the janitor asked me if I was alright when I got off the ice. When I said that I was fine and would be back tomorrow, he seemed surprised.
Today was much better. I had my 45min. morning lesson with coach. It was very frustrating at first. We worked on intermediate moves again. I don't think coach will ever like the way I do these. I don't hold my free leg high enough on the underpush of each xover on the forward power circles. I don't have enough power on my power 3's (he even hates the backward perimeter xover stroking down the long sides of the rink - I don't sit on the BI edge enough). I don't extend enough on my back double 3's. I was getting pretty upset by this point, and I think he realized it b/c he told me that my brackets and slide chasse sequence were good enough for now. (Coach speak for "I know you're getting pissed, so let's move on to something else.") So, it was onto jumps. We only had a few minutes, so we did 2salchow and 2toeloop. Coach got me to do huge single salchows by skating fast and bringing my leg and arm through together when I jump. I managed a few doubles, and he was satisfied. On 2toes, he told me to think of continuing the forward motion by pulling the skating leg toward the picking leg, and then kicking up and out with the skating leg as I take off. I got maybe 2 inches of distance, but that's much better than yesterday where my landing mark came before my toepick when I looked at the tracing.
Down side to lesson: Coach didn't have my music again, so I still have just an itty bitty part of a program and I'm testing on Nov. 7th. Or I hope I'm testing on Nov. 7th. I just mailed in my registration, and the test list is already really long. I guess my home club is one of the only clubs that offers dance tests so a bunch of ice dancers just signed up for about a million dances, and the last summer test session was cancelled so those skaters all get first dibs on this test session. And I thought I was signing up early!
I also skated public today after my lesson. Got an extra 1.5 hours of ice time. I mostly just messed around. I worked on spirals. I've decided that mine aren't bad, but I want to get to at least Sara Hughes level (which is about where I am off ice). I also did all of the novice moves that I know. Very tricky stuff! And, I finally gave my spins some exercise. I am very pleased to report that I have a decent back camel now! Camel-back camel was very good today :) Flying camel is still more of a flying salchow, but I'll leave that for coach to fix (I sure do make him earn his coaching fee. Every other lesson, I come in and tell him that he needs to fix me. His usual response, "Again!?") I was also playing around with a catch camel into a layback. I don't think this is going to be possible for me right now, but I did sorta manage a catch camel that leaned back in to an attitude spin without letting go of the blade. I tried this going straight (so I could look at myself in the glass) and found that if I lifted my knee as I did the attitude, it had a very nice look. Now if I could just manage that while spinning... After spinning, I threw in a few walleys (these were bad, but I've forgotten about them for the last week or two), axels, and 2salchows. I left quite pleased with myself.
posted by Jennifer @ 12:09 PM
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