Monday practice

Yesterday I had my first practice after competition.

After watching my performance, I decided on a few goals for my skating:

• More 'attack' especially in spins; spin faster
  
• More height on jumps
• Skate faster
• Be more precise in my movements
• Learn more elements/moves

With these goals in mind I tried to bring a little more attack into my practice. I tried really launching myself into my spins the way my coach recently showed me. It actually worked better than I was expecting and I managed one really sweet camel spin! Didn't get any more rotations on it though, hmm. I had good luck with this in my sit spins too. I made sure to practice all my spins including the dreaded backsit (makes me fall on my butt more than anything else) and my crappy proto-layback spin. I even tried to reach back and grab my blade in a couple of camel spins but a) it pulls my hamstring and b) I can't reach it. Boo!

For my jumps I also tried to give them more spring but usually my technique ends up going out the window when I do this. I get especially chicken in the waltz jump. I feel good on the entry edge, all coiled up like Tigger, ready to jump. Then when I jump, something feels funny in the way my weight is rocking through the blade and I don't kick out as much as I want to. So I think it's a matter of making sure not to rock up onto the toe too quickly. And being less chicken. Anyway my jumps were ok and no problems with the flip.

For my lesson my coach was also feeling like it was time to learn some new things so we worked on the Lutz jump. We had gotten to this jump before but haven't worked on it since we got tunnel vision over my program. We basically started over from the beginning. There is a lot to think about in this jump and I commented that if I thought the other ones were bad, they were nothing compared to the Lutz. I did squeak out a couple of them at a crawl, and my coach said they were good. Wow! After that I wanted to work on back camel spins but we were running out of time so I only got to show her one. I had to hop in my toe a couple of times to keep from falling. Coach says the technique is basically there, but -- get this -- I'm not pressing into the ball of my foot. That's why I end up on the toe pick. She suggested practicing a spiral position at the boards with a bent skating knee and then gradually straighten it. And then we were out of time!

In group lesson, we worked on some assorted cross rolls and twizzles. The coach was really into the twizzles. We did them forwards, backwards, in singles, doubles, and triples. I was feeling dizzy by the end of it! Not surprisingly, I have the classic problem of being able to reasonably pull them off on the versions that resemble a backspin (same foot and direction) but on the other foot and direction are quite hopeless. I sense much practice on my bad side/direction in my future!