December, 2009

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2009-12-08 15:57:00
Last week
I should recap last week's skating before this week's begins. (If this week begin's- we have major snow predicted, so tonight and tomorrow might get canceled) Last Tuesday was a challenging, but good LTS class. I honestly don't remember it all- I know we worked on loops, and I have the hardest time rolling off my toe. Any tips? Andy said bunny hops, and I've been trying, but I'm not sure which side is supposed to help me. I do okay on one side, but just have a flat "thunk" on the other side if I have the guts to jump at all... (First I had to remember how to DO a bunny hop. It's been awhile) Wednesday I didn't skate due to a bad dentist appt and a canceled lesson. Saturday had a challenging lesson and a great practice. Courtney and I started partnering, and it was a mess. She's never "been the boy" before- so she's learning that, and well, it's harder with her foot in the way! It's just 1 progressive on the Dutch Waltz that I really chicken out on, but getting used to dancing together is a challenge. I was told I look to much like a freestyle skater and need to look more like a dancer. Could someone tell my freestyle coach that I look like a freestyle skater? I think he thinks I look like a big wuss. (I think I look like a hippopotamus on skates. Maybe a BIT more grace in the upper body) My practice went really well- possibly due to the peppy music in the background that helps get me going (I'm not going to go into another ice dance rant...) Before my lesson Courtney wrote out a practice plan for me, and we disagreed on a reasonable number of jumps. She wanted me to do AT LEAST 15 loops. I'm lucky if I can do the same jump 5 times without pain... Synchro went pretty well- it was our last practice, kind of sad, but at least it was a good one. Christmas show is saturday, if you're in the I.C. area, you should stop by. It's the last Rhythm and Blades performance! Yoga last night was good, but I can barely walk today. Once I get warm I can stretch pretty well, but my body doesn't complain until afterwards- so I WAY overstretched. We did a "butterfly stretch" (yeah- some sanscrit name...) and I can get my knees to the floor easily, and get my body almost there, so then we did it assisted, and being pushed, lightly, I can get my body flat to the floor without pain (just stretch). Well, today, my body is telling me it didn't really want to do that. Same with a straddle stretch- couldn't get all the way to the floor, but my head could reach the floor with a relatively flat back. That was a new experience for me. But it's all so lopsided. I need to figure out stretches for my spirals. Man those need help.
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2009-12-17 13:20:00
Tricky Skating Coach
I'm so mad about my group lesson this week. We worked on brackets, counters, and rockers. Oddly enough, I'm better than most the kids, and about as good as Y. (the good kid) at them- (That's not saying much) but I do think Andy was impressed. So after spending 5 minutes on brackets and 15 minutes on counters and rockers he draws a turn that has a really deep edge, another edge, and then the turn and exit edge and asks us to identify it. Walking it over in my head, it's not counter rotational, so it has to be a rocker. Nope, he says. But it turns into the circle - it has to be. Nope. So then I try to figure out how it can be a counter, it can't be but that's the other choice, nope not a counter. So I think about the R and C Amber Czisny drew on the ice- it definetly faces the way of the R. It HAS to be a rocker. So then I start thinking "is it a 3-turn?" but there is a big edge change at the beginning, like the one that leads into a rocker/counter, so it can't be a 3-turn, and I go with rocker as my final answer. None of the kids can even decide why it might be one turn over the other (I at least had rotational reasoning for a rocker). Andy finally demonstrates it. The darn thing was a 3-turn with an edge pull before it. I KNEW that, it made me so mad. So he asks us all what that means? I said "We are very bad at turns", and he looked at me and said "Exactly". Grr, I feel tricked. If we had reviewed all the turns and I wasn't in a counter/rocker mindset, I would have gotten that right!
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2009-12-30 10:15:00
Waltz jumps are so easy, you should be able to do them with your hands tied behind your back.
Uh, no. They are not. I started my lesson with a series of waltz jumps with my hands held behind my back (she didn't tie them- thank god). It was NOT fun. Jumping was SO scary. Courtney told me it should be the same feeling, and I was comfortable enough with the jump to not have problems. I had problems. My "barely left the ice" changed to "immeasurably off the ice". It was truly terrifying. But supposedly necessary to teach me how to jump using my chest to lead. So there was a lesson in it, and not just torture. We also did half-loop (which the way I do it is a half jump, she said it isn't a whole jump if you use a 3-turn entry), half-flip (looking pretty good, she wants to start working on full flips), half-lutz (I half-flutz. My entry needs to be less of an edge and more of a flat diagonal that changes to outside right before the jump. Skating on flats is hard. Lutzing on a public skate session is harder). Then toe loop (it's getting there. I hate this jump), and salchow (I need to stop riding on my toe pick to slow my entry down). Then we did combos. Waltz- side toe hop- waltz jump, an easy one from years ago that I had forgotten how to do. Waltz - half loop- salchow (eek! I have NO speed by the time the salchow comes along). Everything I did was fine, I guess. But the over all feeling of the lesson is so blah. I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with my skating. If I can stay uninjured I'd like to do bronze free, but injury made me give that up last year. There are no dance partners to be found, so who knows if I'll ever be able to test those. (Might have to go out to quad cities to skate with a friend... we'd need a few practices though.), Silver moves will never happen, I don't think. The 8-step and the damn spirals that I could have passed 3 years ago if I had done pre-pre but now don't have the flexibility for are going to hold me back forever. The other things aren't passing standard, or even close, but they are improving. Spirals and 8-step are regressing. Very excited about meeting some skatingforums folks in NJ. Worried about how I'll skate, since they've all read about things I'm good at/ improving on, and I feel like they'll see my actual skating and laugh. Like I always say here, when I say "great backspin today!" it doesn't mean there is any resemblance to an actual backspin...
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