Friday, March 4, 2011

The A-word

It's been a busy week in ice sports again. On Sunday I had another great hockey game. We actually won it! First game in quite a while. I had one cool rush where I came around my net, swooshed around a forechecker, managed to hang on to the puck through the neutral zone, and get a weak shot somewhere in the vicinity of the net. I don't remember if it was on goal or not...funny how it's always a blur.

On Monday I had another dreaded jump lesson! I really hate doing 2 in a row. That is what I get for not having any ideas for what to work on, my coach will always pick jumps! My coach was really not pleased with any of my jumps, some days she is like that. She had me try toe-toe and loop-loop combinations; the second jump is always the better one. Not sure if this is typical. Otherwise the rest of the hour was pretty routine, nothing remarkable happened just more good practice. It always feels so lame to skate for only an hour.

This morning coach surprised me by talking about stroking. We haven't done a stroking lesson in ages, and I don't know if that is because I've improved so much or because she is obsessed with jumps, haha. She wants to teach me all the stroking patterns that are on the freeskate tests! This is great and will help me be a better overall skater. It was just surprising because she didn't want to teach skating skills but it's optional for freestyle skaters and stroking isn't so maybe that's why. We started in on some of the Jr. Bronze patterns which involve edges down the long sides of the rink and crossovers around the ends. For someone who did patch I thought it would be a breeze but it's a different beast going fast! My forward outside edges are fine but we did forward and backward inside and they need a LOT of work. But this is exactly the type of thing I'm happy to practice.

Because we were talking about freeskating tests we got on to the dreaded 4-letter word: AXEL. Dum dum dum. She asked if I want to learn it and I admitted that I want to be able to do the Axel but without all that hard work and falling. She pointed out that with her technique most of her kids don't fall that much. As if on cue, a girl beside us wiped out on a wonky Axel attempt. She wasn't helping! Strangely, Coach says that I'm ready to try it, this is weird because she seemed so displeased with my jumps this week. I'm sure that my waltz jumps need to be 1000 times better first. Who knows?

I filled out the rest of the hour practicing my Skills patterns and just a few of all my spins and jumps. One hour is just not enough time to skate!

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