Thank Goodness for a Great Skate

After yesterday's splatfest, I decided to approach today's practice a little different. My usual routine is to run through the intermediate MITF once each, jump, and then squash spins in the last few minutes of practice. Today, I ran through all of the intermediate MITF, and spent extra time working on the ones I'm not very comfortable with - the clockwise backwards power circle, the backward double 3's, and the backward power 3's. I made minimal progress on the the power circle and back double 3's, but I had a breakthrough with the back power 3's. I forced myself to squish in the 6 3turns that my coach wants on each end of the rink. After a few scary attempts, I started getting comfortable with them - getting a real push before each turn and a check after. The clockwise pattern was by far the scariest one. I felt like I was going to slam right into the wall on the first back3. Once I figured out that I was just facing the wall for a second, and the pattern would pull me back around the corner (not into the wall!), I did what I think were passable run throughs.

After intermediate MITF, I just didn't feel like jumping, so I decided to play around with some advanced moves. I did my favorite, the novice counter sequences first. I love those. My turns don't always turn right on the long axis, but I have so much fun trying to make this pattern flow down the ice. I also did the novice brackets. Those were a little scary, but made the intermediate brackets seem much easier. Then, just for giggles, I tried one of the junior moves. I don't remember what it's called, but it goes diagonal across the ice in sequences of 3 backward power pulls and 2 turns (quick twisting rockers?). I had four sets back power pulls/turns on each diagonal. It must have been pretty funny to watch because I was moving at a snail's pace. I probably looked like I was having a seizure more than doing MITF. But, I had fun.

I worked on spins for quite awhile today. I'm a natural spinner, but I tend to neglect them in order to get more practice time on the things I'm bad at (aka. jumping). I had several highlights. I had a back camel from the FI3 entrance that had 8 revs! Veeery slow revs, but 8 revs. I also had a camel-back camel with 5 revs on each foot. And, wonder of wonders, I had a flying camel with 7 revs! Great progress for me! I also managed a sit-layback that maintained speed.

I left jumps for last. I tried to do fun footwork into all of my singles: an inside spread eagle into my salchow, an outside spread eagle into a waltz-toeloop, travelling 3's into a loop, and a mohawk sequence into a flip. I also tried an outside spread eagle into an axel, but had such a skid on my entrance edge that I decided to abandon that idea. I also worked on walleys. One of my current goals is to have a floating walley like Janet Lynn. Not quite there yet. I still lean forward and get too much toe pick. Another highlight of the day was landing several 2salchows. (After 10min. of nothing but falls and popped jumps, but I perservered and was rewarded with semi-consistent 2sals.)

I really enjoyed my skate today. I think I'm going to try to give footwork and spins more attention all of the time. I'm not giving up on doubles, but I'm tired of spending 1/2 of my time on my rear end. Today was so positive, I'd like to repeat it.