Adult Skaters are taking over...

This morning for the first half hour of freestyle, there were 6 adult skaters, 2 kid skaters and a coach (who is a competitive adult skater) on the ice. By the end of the freestyle there were 6 adult skaters, 5 kid skaters, and that same coach.

HAHAHA we outnumber them!  (Also, a lot of the kids were on spring break...and every adult came to ice this morning, but that is beside the point.  And we have a new adult- I think she is in college, a former competitor.)

I had a good, but lazy (I was exhausted from staying up too late last night) freestyle.  Did some work on change foot spins- I can totally do them, but I tuck my foot back on my ankle for the backspin.  Carson will not like that.  I tried some loops, and Taylor told me the problem is that I'm kicking my feet away from each other instead of closing tightly.  I was trying to lift my knee, but I need to lift my knee WHILE getting that position.  Hopefully the harness will be up next Wednesday. That might give me a better feel of what needs to happen.  


LTS was a dud.  The coach who substituted is an excellent coach, but I think he doesn't read the ability of the classes well. He is the same coach who had me and the Basic 7 girl doing power pulls to loops when she couldn't hold an edge...    Anyhow, I called it, and we started on crossovers.  He demands beautiful crossovers.  This isn't a bad thing, but we spent 10+minutes on right over left (our "good" ones) and less than 2 minutes on left over right...  Lots of talk about posture.  Why don't group coaches spend more time on the bad side.  Then came 15 minutes of pointless-  well, not pointless, just not appropriate.  He wanted us to do 3 swizzles, cross our feet on the ice, and do a double 3 with our leg crossed in backspin position.

The problem is, he never pointed out to us this was an exercise for loops.  The two other skaters were focusing on the double 3s (which we've never done in class)- and so they were opening their arms to have the proper pre-rotation for the three turns, which is the opposite of the checked/closed position the loop requires.  I DO NOT do a loop from crossovers, mostly because I get stuck in the ice and can't jump, but this excersise pointd out I cannot double three from that much speed.  The exercise was totally lost on us because we couldn't do the fundamental portion of it- three turning, in a non-pre-rotated position skating that fast.  If it is a valueable exercise, it needs to be built up- first working on whether we can double three at all, and then moving to the more complicated crossed leg position, and then doing it at speed.  In the end, it was over half the class wasted to frustration and annoyance (annoyance from the other gals because they didn't even understand why we were doing these, until I pointed out it was the loop entrance.)

Last, we did one pass across the short axis of power three turns.  He did point out to C. that she "goes spaghetti"- something she needs to hear. She is a good skater, but has no confidence on the ice.  He had her repeat it once more with a better body position.  Then we had time for a single sit spin. 

I KNOW I need work on them, but I hate spending class time on crossovers.  I spend my own time on them now.  There is just only so many times a coach can tell you "bend your knees, lift your chin" before it gets old...  (And I have darn fine crossovers in class.  The problem is I can't transfer them to my other skating.  Kind of like three turns- I can do them all on a certain path, but once that angle changes, even slightly, it all goes away- which is why the FS5 spiral sequence is a nightmare.)