Another multiple day post, yeesh.
On Saturday my regular session was cancelled for a ringette tournament. I paid extra money to go to the national training rink and it was wonderful. I skated for over 2 hours with only about 4 other skaters on the ice! I tried to work on just about everything but I definitely practice camel spins and combination spins the most. I had some fun with spin variations that travelled wildly but were fun. When I left I had blisters on both heels but it was totally worth it!
On Sunday I made it to a women's drop-in hockey scrimmage at yet another rink. It was pretty fun and I got in some good practice. It would be nice to get in some skills practice but there aren't any ice times for that that suit my schedule. Fun to meet some new friends too!
On Monday I had one of those throwaway practices where things just didn't go well. The ice felt crowded after the empty session I had on Saturday, and it was hard to even find enough space for a spin or a waltz jump. My blades felt like they were wobbling and my boots were too tight or loose no matter how many times I adjusted them. In my lesson I got flustered attempting my stupid toe loops and was downgraded to practicing them from a standstill again. Actually even through I was frustrated it was a bit funny when my coach asked me "Are you practicing these?" LOL!
Also I got a bit confused with the loop. It's a four step process: bend the knee, pivot on the ball of the foot/blade, push onto the toepick, pivot more and jump. I was combining everything into a big scratchy mess instead. I don't know how I will be able to do all that in the actual splitsecond of the real jump, blah. The real demoralizing moment happened when my coach said "I want you to get up to Lutz feeling all the jumps as being a natural motion. Then we will go back and do another round of fixing stuff." Gah, like we're not already doing them properly? Yuck.
At one point my coach made yet another reference to double jumps and it's making me wonder what I really want to do with my skating. I don't really like jumps and I don't learn them quickly. I'm afraid of falling and have zero kinesthetic awareness for skating. Even good single jumps don't seem to be in the cards for me, so where do I want to go with all this? I mentioned the 'artistic' category of competition to my coach once and she was not too jazzed about it but I wonder if it might be a better fit for me. Seriously persuing ice dance is out of the question not only because of the difficulty of finding an adult male partner but also because I'm ticklish. So while I'm going to continue with freestyle for a while yet I'm going to try to really focus on my basic skating skills and maybe try to make it onto the adult synchro team next year. With enough practice there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to do all the skating skills levels and there's nothing more fun to me than actual skating to music.
The group lesson on Monday was also a bit of a wash, partly because we spend probably less than half of the time actually practicing the skills. The other part was that the coach would show us something complicated very quickly and then expect us all to know it. It's probably a technique for teaching kids but I don't appreciate being talked down to so it can be a bit annoying at times. On the bright side, I worked up the courage to ask the other coach to list the steps again and she spent a couple of minutes teaching me the steps and correcting me, which was very nice of her. Then instead of getting in line to practice the sequence I just did it by myself, to the side out of the way and nobody seemed to mind. I like this better than waiting in line to practice it down the ice and then running over little girls. I have tried to go ahead of them but they all bunch up in front of me! Next season I will probably skip the group lessons. The ice time is better spent when I can dictate my own practice routine.
No comments:
Post a Comment