Another Week in Skating

I had a pretty good week!

On Friday I put in a lot of solid work on basic skating skills and spins. No jumps.
My coach seems to think I'm ready for my skating skills test which is coming up, whee! That's exciting. I'm a little worried about it but generally I'm feeling more confident about it now.

On Saturday I had a good time in my long morning on the ice. I learned that there is going to be a Christmas show! We started practicing a group number for it which should be fun. I have to choose a jump and a spin to do in the show. Probably I will pick a flip jump but my spins are all inconsistent so I will have a hard time choosing something that will not look like total crap. We don't have very much time to practice, I wish we had started earlier.

In spin lesson we had a fun time trying to do some sit spin variations holding the blade, and then standing up into a leg pull. I can't do them but I did better than I expected. I can do the leg pulls in a glide but doing them in a spin is much harder! After the lesson I practiced them from both forward and backward sit-spins. I think that is why my outer hip muscles were ridiculously sore the next day! I have a new appreciation for Alissa Czisny's amazing leg-pull spin.
For private lesson we worked on jumps for the first time in a while. I am still not jazzed about the toe loop but my coach actually thought most of my jumps were looking basically not so terrible as they used to. She wanted to start with loop for the next lesson and get to flip and Lutz. Wow!
I had a major wipe-out on Saturday too, the worst one I've had since getting back on the ice 4 months ago. I was just skating along practicing my Waltzing Mohawks and my blades clinked together ominously. Suddenly I was sliding along the ice on my belly! The first time I've landed that way instead of on my butt, at least this time around. It was a shock to fall like that and also the way the ice stung my skin but it actually didn't hurt at all. That is a relief because I am afraid of falling especially when(if?) I get to doing bigger jumps but each time I fall I am reminded that it's not too bad.

So on Monday we did get to flip and Lutz. This time coach brought her video camera. It's very effective. She pointed out how my arms are sort of staying out at shoulder height in the flip, but instead the right arm should pump under and upwards. Seeing it on video made it easy to fix. Then we tried to fix how I bend my right knee before picking (it should stay straight, then bend after picking) but with less success. Also I need to keep my toe pointed in the picking foot to stay on the pick instead of falling back onto the blade. I need to channel my inner ballerina I guess. For the Lutz she had me going at a crawl around the circle before going slo-mo through picking and counter-rotating on the ice. Then she insisted that I try actually jumping and I squeeked one out. She filmed a couple of them and they are sad, but it's a start. The Lutz freaks me out a bit but I am pleased I can go through my bunny-hill version of it without panicking. After the lesson I tried a couple going a bit faster and screwed them up so I am going to keep it slow for now :)

Almost forgot to mention that I got my skates sharpened. I have been having a lot of skidding in three-turns and spin entries. I mentioned it to my coach and she suggested getting a sharper...uh...sharpening job. So I had long chat with my sharpening guy (apparently a former Novice-level Canadian champion!) and he agreed to decrease the radius of the hollow. My blades felt really grabby at first after that but my edges were so much more secure, I think it was a good move. I was hoping it would magically fix my spin entries too but alas, good edges cannot make up for bad technique ;) He also pointed out that I could have an alignment problem with the blades that can cause skidding. When I told him about how easily I end up on the flats in my figures he considered it even more of a possibility. After my test, I may investigate this some more. It's actually quite fascinating.