April 26, 2007

4:10p
Tuesday lesson
This week I had two lessons- as I did not have one when my coach was at adult nationals.

Tuesday lesson was mostly on the harness. AND it broke my early lesson curse. I took the first lesson of the session, which usually I hate because I haven't had time to warm up, but it went okay. I got five minutes to warm up, so I did a few laps, and then some crossovers. I also fell during my forward crossovers- and I'm really not sure how that happened at all. One minute i have a nice edge, the next I'm sliding across the ice like a curling rock.

I asked if we could do jumps in the harness, because the show is this weekend- and the muscle memory of the harness usually gives me about a week before I go back to wimpy jumps. We started just by doing "wind up, bend and jump". I didn't try and double rotation, but was able to do a tight position full single rotation and land it most of the time. I had quite an audience- as lots of people were lined up to go to the movie theatre, but I tried to ignore it. It might look stupid, but I'm sure most of them couldn't do it! I did lots of waltz jumps, really getting good height and distance, but almost always fell on my landing because I was leaning too far. Still- it was good to jump for height. Then we worked on salchows. I have a bad habit of jumping too early. If I jump at the end of the 3-turn I only get a half rotation in the air, and it's a full rotation jump, but apparently that's really when you are supposed to jump, so I worked on those. The biggest problem was a scratchy 3-turn. Also did some toe loops and half flips. After the half flips we started working on turning it into a split jump, just jokingly- but on the harness they really weren't too bad. Kind of fun. Then I did a few backspins, including one before my coach was holding the harness rope, so he pointed out I did that one on my own! Then I got out of the harness, thankful that we didn't do any loop jumps!

Off harness, I was able to translate the practice into some really good waltz jumps and some okay salchows. I ran my program once and it was okay, with the exception of the 3-turn, side toe hop, 3-turn, side toe hop, 3-turn sequence. I took it out and replaced it with 3-turn, half flip, 3-turn, toe-loop, toe-loop; which seems like it should be harder, but for some reason I can actually do it. The ability to do it to the music makes it easier than the sequence I messed up each time. Ran the program again, and while it isn't as good as I'd like- it's a reasonable program for a no-test skater. I think Burton wants me to change my big swizzle at the end to a backward pivot, because he found out I do those well. I like the swizzle though- because it's funny to swizzle in a program that also has lots of jumps and because it goes perfectly with the music (wooooOOOoopp).

Afterwards we did a few backspins and then I was off to practice. During his next lesson Burton called me over to show me how another student was doing on backspins (really really well, I was impressed) and had that student demonstrate the exercise he did to work on them (using the axis as a point to try to hit at. Starting at the hockey line, gliding on the edge, hooking the curve and centering the spin back on the hockey line) I practiced that and suprised myself by actually being able to do a few rotations! I always end up shocking myself when I did it right.

I also managed to fall about 600 times while attempting shoot the ducks- I can finally dip low enough to do them (a major benefit of teaching snowplow sam) but I completely lack the strength to lift my leg. Still, i think the ability to fall while trying is a major improvement, because when I took Delta I was so far from the ice I couldn't even sit down on it when I couldn't do the shoot the duck!


(Wednesday lesson will be friends locked)