Rewiring for Loop Jumps

Today I was feeling a lot better but still not 100%. Fortunately I still had energy to skate. On Mondays I only have about 25 minutes to practice everything in my expanding portfolio before a private lesson and a group lesson. I slacked off a bit on stroking exercises although I did get through most of them, I didn't spend too much time on them. I practiced all my spins briefly, although the ice was a bit too chewed up to work on backspins very much. I found a less chewed up patch back behind the icing line to practice my sit-change-sit a little bit to keep the momentum going.

During my lesson I asked my coach what is on the first freestyle test. She rattled off a surprisingly long list of elements, most of which I have not practiced yet. Including a program! Yikes! But she thinks it's not out of the question to be able to start pulling a program together around Christmastime.

On that note we moved on to a new element, the loop jump. After watching my substandard version from a RFI 3-turn, she showed me the way she wants me to do them, from a long backward glide on both feet, one foot in front of the other. I have seen the jump done this way but I had never tried it, and it seems impossible. There is no swinging of a leg or toe pick to initiate the jump, it just springs out of nowhere. All the jumps I learned were basically tacked on to three-turns, so much that in my mind the three-turn IS part of the jump. I have a real mental block doing the jump this way. My coach is really trying to re-wire my brain! I managed to squeak out a couple of proto-loops while clinging to the boards but that was about it.

We also worked on the toe loop, which used to be an easy jump for me but now that there are all these new things I have to think about it is a real mess. In one attempt I even got so confused I fell down! I can't remember the last time I fell doing a toe loop. Sometimes I feel a bit like a deer caught in headlights when my coach fires all these tips at me, I just seize up.

The way I was originally taught to skate was mostly through a 'watch me' sort of instruction and a few basic cues. For example a toe loop was 'three-turn, pick, jump, land'. It didn't really get more technical than that. The key elements with each jump was which type of three-turn and whether it was a pick jump or an edge jump, that was about it. I never had a step-by-step breakdown on anything until I started working with this coach. Therefore, this style of learning has lead to a tendency to just skate on automatic pilot, and a poor sense of kinesthetic awareness. I am re-learning each element from scratch complete with microscopic details. It is difficult, but it should make me a better skater so I am trying to soak up all the new instructions.