Music

On Monday, my coach brought me some music to listen to and pick something out for my program. It's a CD of Spanish guitar music, and I love it. Hopefully we can piece something good together that will work.

What did I do at practice on Monday? After a bit of a warmup with stroking and power pulls and two-foot turns, etc. I did some 3-turns down the line and took a quick look at my new Jr. Bronze Skills patterns. After a lot of searching I finally found them on the Skate Canada website, so I printed them out. But, it was too crowded to have my nose buried in a sheet of paper while skating around so I will try them another time.

As usual I put a large fraction of my session into spins. I have quite a number of them to practice now! The upright, sit, and camel version on both feet makes six. Then there are combinations and variations and the occasional layback or attitude making quite a significant number of spins that I like to practice. And now I have my new flying camel to add to the mix! I tried to focus on the ones that we were experimenting with for my program. Sit-broken leg is not too bad as long as I don't screw up the entry (sometimes my free blade scrapes the ice). I did one of them that felt really good and solid and then I saw the trace and it had traveled badly, sigh. It hadn't even felt like it was traveling! Then I experimented with camel-layback-backsit, and it is a mess. The layback is hard to centre, and I get up onto my toe, yuck. If I can get it down this will be a cool, and probably less common, combination, but it might be wise to pick something I can actually do well. If I can get a bunch of time to practice it, we'll see where it goes.

I always get in a few spirals and leg pulls before I get to camel spins for a bit of a stretch, and they were alright. I tried my catchfoot spiral again, but my balance gets messed up and my free arm ends up sort of desperately reaching out to the side which must look ridiculous. I tried doing something with it like bringing the hand up to my face or taking the hand back to my free knee, but it threw my balance off. This is going to take some practice! I tried a leg pull going backward but was too frazzled trying to watch for traffic that it didn't go so well. Will have to wait until Friday.

After that I started working on jumps but I felt a sharp pain in my left knee during the takeoff of a Salchow. I've had issues with my knees for years and it's exactly this type of thing that sets them off, but this time it didn't just shake off right away. I went and sat on the bench for a minute and it felt ok so we went ahead with my lesson, but we focused on elements that keep the weight on my right foot like backspins, loops, and flips. I had one terrific backspin and my coach was really impressed with the newfound height in the free leg. Unfortunately I couldn't repeat it but that's the way with skating, sometimes you do something cool and you don't know how you pulled it off! For loops she had me try doing 4 in a row after I mentioned having accomplished this the other day. My first attempt was ok but she says not to jump again immediately after landing, but hold the landing edge for a few moments before doing the next one. And to try making those edges less curvy, haha. I did better the next time but the upper body was a bit wild, so that's something to aim for improving. For my flip it was the same old story about needing to check the 3-turn better, and a new bit of advice about keeping my arms still for longer. I tend to sort of pull them in as I initiate the jump, instead of waiting until I have already left the ice. That's going to take some time to get into that new habit!

In our group lesson we ran through our number for the Christmas show again. It was not too shabby. I have to remember to ask on Friday what I am supposed to wear to it. I am guessing I shouldn't wear my silly elf hat :)