Combo spin fail

"Excellent"

I wanted to name this post "More dreaded jump exercises" or something but decided to take a more positive tone. One of my salchows elicited an "Excellent" from my coach today! So I suppose it is not really my ugly duckling jump, that title squarely belongs to my loop.

I had been sort of avoiding doing jump work with my coach so I bit the bullet today and asked to work on them. Of course I got more of the hated slow-mo walkthroughs; you know, the ones that require patience, edge control, perfect body position from head to toe, blah blah blah. I admitted that I have not been doing them as much as I should, so I will make a better effort to do them now. We worked on all four of the jumps that we have been studying. I was a bit disappointed that the loops I did for my coach were sad little hops, when I had pulled off some more inspiring versions earlier in the hour. The main bit of advice on that one is to stand up taller and not bend forward.

I am not particularly enjoying working on jumps. The preparation going into the jump requires concentration and edge control. The jump itself happens so fast that it's hard to tell exactly what all your body parts are doing. There are so many little bits to remember, it's overwhelming. Jumping wasn't taught to me in this way when I was a kid, so it's rather jarring to spend so much time nitpicking them now. Of course I want to have nice jumps so I have to suffer through it. I think the key will just be not to overdo it, to make sure my lessons over the course of the week are balanced across all types of elements. Otherwise it's just too frustrating.

I spent the rest of the freeskate practicing all my elements. My camel spin was not as effortless as it was yesterday, but it was still not too bad, I don't fall out of it as much anymore. I tried some more back camels and still get about one revolution. I had some decent backspins too. Yesterday I probably did some thirty or forty camels; it can really take time to warm them up. So with only about ten minutes to practice them today, I was not really expecting them to be at the same place. I practiced my layback too and while it is probably all wrong, I am having some success with feeling less dizzy when looking up at the ceiling.

I practiced spirals on both legs, both edges. My right foot spirals feel extremely awkward. I need to make a point of practicing about ten times as many of these than left foot spirals. My left footers get plenty of practice doing camel spins. In the group lesson they made us try those awful forward spirals (aka "leg pulls"). I surprised myself by managing to pull off a sloppy, bent-knee, but not so bad version on each side. My coaches seemed surprised too! I had been griping about these things on Saturday and swore up and down I couldn't do them. They also noted that I had held them for as long as they had instructed, when hardly anyone else did. Still, I don't think I will ever put them in a program if I can avoid them. Let's just say they are a bit, um, suggestive.

After that there was public skating, so I decided to stay but after about 20 minutes it was just too crowded to do much of anything really. I managed to do some laps of two-foot and one-foot slalom/skiing, and a two-foot turn exercise that has been baffling me. I think I made some progress in combining the turn with the required change of edge and smoothness. I did some opposite direction spinning while helping a little girl practice her spins and turns. I stuck it out to the 40-minute mark when there was a Zamboni break, then I called it a night. I couldn't even practice three-turns in this environment.

Good news, the ice conditions were much better today. I wonder if it is because of the drier weather, or because of the complaint I made last week?

Yawn

I have been very busy! To summarize, I accumulated about four more hours of skating in the last two days. I am skating well and having fun!

Friday

Morning skate:

• Figures: FO8. This time I got the first quarter of the circles to be in the right spot, when going without markings. But, the left circle is too large and the right circle is too small. Also after inspecting the tracings, the second half of the circles are being traced mostly on a flat instead of an edge >:( I never checked this before.
• Skating skills: Learned the new 'Watzing Mohawks' pattern with my coach and practiced both it and the three-turns pattern. She thinks they are almost testable; I want them to be breathtaking to watch.
• Freeskate elements: A bit of a blur now, but I mostly concentrated on spins I think. Also spirals, I practiced forward spirals on each foot, on flat, inside, and outside edges. Discovered that change-edge spirals are not as easy as regular change-edge glides.

Physiotherapy Appointment:

• I finally decided to go see a physio about my chronic knee and back problems. He says I have too much of an anterior pelvic tilt (i.e. I stick my butt and tummy out); this was not news to me. But I actually learned a lot at the appointment, he did a very thorough assessment of the flexibility in my legs and hips.
  
• Punchline: stretch quadriceps and psoas muscles, strengthen left gluteus medius, improve posture.

Evening skate:

• With my husband out of town and me being an ice-aholic, I went to public skate at the rink where I already have a pass. For about half an hour I had a wonderful time spinning and it was not too crowded to boot. I practiced backspins in upright and sit positions and found it helpful to keep the skating knee bent. I also practiced forward upright spins trying to reduce travel and found that keeping a deep knee bend helped some of the time. I experimented with attitudes and camels with some success.
• After that they announced over the PA that figure skating was not allowed! I threw my hands in the air and muttered 'Since when?' I have been skating at this rink's public sessions for over two months and always there is a collection of us figure skating in the centre of the rink. We don't cause trouble. And yet when I went a couple of weeks ago there were two boys kicking a puck around and teenagers pushing eachother around while sitting on those useless plastic contraptions for beginners, but I didn't hear any announcements about that. I had to speak to these kids myself. Who's more of a danger?
• After the ridiculous ban on figure skating I decided to buck up and practice my basic skating skills like stroking, power pulls, two-foot slaloms, two-foot slalom turns, FO and FI three-turns, Mohawks, swing rolls, cross rolls, etc. It's tough to practice crossovers in that environment except forwards CCW going around the ends. I wish they would have us at least change directions at this rink. I had originally planned to stay for the second hour but with freestyle banned I just wasn't into it, and anyway my knees were sore.

Saturday

• Skills lesson: we ran through the last pattern on the first skills test, which essentially consist of doing several crossovers then holding an edge for 12 counts going around a hockey circle. There are variants for each of the eight edges of course. My coach watched me do each of them and said these are a piece of cake for me because I did figures. After the backward outside edge, she said "Do you know how long it takes me to teach my students how to get into that gliding position that you just did?!" She seemed relieved! The only one I had to do-over was my LBI edge. Not a strong edge for me. Coach thinks I could test these next week. Whee! After that I asked her to look at my crossovers and we got through 3/4 types before running out of time. She did not have a lot of corrections except to keep the free outside leg straight when bringing it around on forward crossovers.
• Group lesson: we practiced some fun new moves like a change-edge with three-turn tacked on, and two backward cross-steps with three toe-steps (not sure of proper names for these moves). I was surprised that the coach running the lesson (not my private coach) put me at the front of one of the lines. There were more advanced skaters there that should have been at the front of the line. I suppose it was some kind of vote of confidence :)
• Spin group lesson: we started with camels and I was having a good camel day. I even pulled off one of my best ones with everyone watching! I almost cheered! Then we practiced backspins and I had less success >:( I hate those things. Coach wanted us to practice Biellmans next and I just laughed, so she said I could just watch. I was dreading getting to the extreme flexibility stuff, but they can't make me do it. None of that Gumby stuff is technically required, and falls more into the sport of gymnastics in my opinion.
• Freeskate: I dutifully practiced everything including all my jumps that I have been working on. Even my loop is a bit less embryonic. They all feel more solid but my coach hasn't watched them in a while, so I'm not sure how they are looking. Guess I should stop putting off another jump lesson. My favourite jump is the flip, but my coach hasn't worked on that one with me yet; I'm sure she will pick it apart when it's time. I noodled around with fun spin combinations like camel-layback-backsit, of course they're all very much in the developmental stages. But I had fun and even managed to look up at the ceiling in one of my proto-laybacks and didn't fall over! It left me pretty dizzy though. I had a fabulous day for camels. Then I had a blast making up footwork building on he stuff we did in group lesson. One of the moves just begged to have a spin tacked onto the end so I had fun doing that and also throwing in some split jumps and split jump followed by a toe loop. I used to be very bad at making up footwork, I am pleased to be improving in that area as well.
• I checked with a staff member if freestyle is allowed at this rink's imminent public skate, and she assured me that it is not, not even backwards skating. I gave her a bit of a hard time about it and she acknowledged that I must know how to control myself on the ice and not cause trouble, but freestyle is not allowed for anyone nonetheless. I left it at that. All the better for it, I saved my money and was tired and ready for lunch anyway.
  
• Stretching: It was a beautiful day today (weird for October) so I took my yoga mat outside and did some stretches, including the stuff from physio. I had some good progress with my left foot forward splits, my front calf is almost grazing my mat. Splits in the other direction still have a long way to go.
  

Waltzing Threes

I had a better session today. We began with something fun and new! My coach taught me a dance-like pattern that is on the first skating skills test. It is a clockwise pattern of three-turns, crossovers and steps that covers the whole ice surface, called 'Waltzing Threes'. It is actually quite fun and I am looking forward to practicing it again. My coach is going to photocopy the pattern for me, because I am still a bit fuzzy about how the pattern goes in the corners of the rink. Strangely, I have not been able to find information about the Skate Canada test content online, even though all of the USFSA test content is available online. So I will have to rely on my coach for now. I hate not being able to find things online!

After the skills session was the CanSkate class (learn to skate). This time I did not have to teach by myself, whew! I helped out with organizing the kids and mostly shouting gems of wisdom like 'Arms up! Feet together!'.

In the group lesson we practiced some weird pattern of edge changes I had never done before. I did not really get to see what the whole thing was, and I was so far back in the line that by the time it was my turn, the other students were doing the pattern back toward me and we had to swerve out of eachothers' way. So that was a bit of an annoying waste of time. After that we switched to more useful drills in a better format. I like the group lessons, but sometimes we try to practice so many moves that I only get to do each one once or twice. I will have to practice them more on my own.

We had another group spin lesson too and my backspin seems to be progressing. My coach doesn't like my free leg position, but this is an improvement over not being able to do the spin at all. Then, she broke my sit-spin!! I have a toe-out, heel-in, foot-on-an-angle position with my free foot in my sit-spin that my coach does not like. Now when I try to have the foot vertical (but pointed), I get even more unbalanced in the spin and travel/fall out. So I am a bit irked that now I can't do a sit-spin. I need to find out which is the more serious offense, an "ugly" foot position or gross traveling. In my opinion traveling is worse but I will ask my coach's opinion. I know that I also don't squat down enough but she seems willing to let that slide for the moment. That is a relief, because I have knee problems and it will take some time at physiotherapy to improve my range of motion in the knee.

Then it was time for freeskate and I spent twenty minutes on my camel spin. I don't normally spend so much time on it but it was taking forever to really warm up. I did spirals and stretches, but it took quite some time to get comfortable. I did manage several respectable if slow camels, but the rest of them all failed in a fall/lean to the inside. I know I need to lean to the outside of my supporting foot, but somehow it's just not translating into actually doing it.

During this experience I began to get frustrated, again. It is hard when you have a good skate (like I did last Saturday) and then the next time or two, or seven, you suck. It is easy to be fooled into thinking that each practice, you will do the same or better as the last. This is completely untrue in figure skating, at least in my experiences both as a child and as an adult. Memories of frustration and exasperation started coming back to me. This became worse as I discovered my broken sit-spin when trying to fix the free foot position, and then when an elite skater commandeered the ice. I had to keep forcing myself to continue for the rest of the session.

I would like to bitch and moan about this elite skater for a moment. Today he spent about twenty minutes working on a triple toe loop. This meant that he would be skating at full blast across two-thirds of the rink surface. At one point I realized that most of us were crammed into the other third of the ice, working on our elements at low speed because there was no room. Then, when he practiced his program I made sure to stand at the boards when he came by, but he still skated WITHIN ONE INCH OF ME. Sorry, I cannot move back any more! It is not reasonable to expect me to sit in the penalty box for the entire duration of his program when I have paid for the ice too. Then, to make it even more disgusting, his run-through mostly featured popped jumps that were poorly landed, so it felt even more so like wasted time. I wish this fellow was in a different session! Our session is labelled Intermediate/Senior so I suppose he is entitled to attend it. However it is also the session with all the new freeskaters like me working on bad waltz jumps and shaky backspins. The next most elite skater is powerful and has an axel and is working on doubles, but I have not had any problems with her. Probably there is nothing I can do about it though, and in general all the other time slots I am in are full of the same level skaters so I had not even had a single problem until today.

Anyway, speaking of bad waltz jumps, I diligently practiced my waltz jump prep over and over today. I even did the jump this time, but I have lost the sense of joy in it that I briefly experienced. As soon as I jump, I know that my step forward was not executed correctly, so that kind of takes the fun out of it. So mostly I focused on the prep and the step. Through repetition, each piece of technique is slowly absorbed so it is very important. I have the backward push, feet together, and change of arms down pat. Now for the rest of it!

I spent a bit of time working on my other jumps, but I am not feeling too jazzed about them right now. I would rather do them while my coach is watching because I know they are flawed. Since my coach fixed my swinging Salchow free leg, the jump feels like a wretched little thing and I'm not much inclined to inflict its ugliness on whomever might be watching me. However it is better than my loop which has been reduced to a weak hop when I try it with the new entrance. From a three-turn, I have more confidence and the jump is stronger (but probably still flawed). At least it is a jump though! Ah well I will never be a big jumper so I don't feel too bad about slacking off on them.

This week there was a spirals competition, which I am not signed up for (i.e. haven't payed for the time slot). I had entertained the idea of doing it anyway, for the practice, but by the end of the morning my confidence was not that high and I just wanted to go home. When I walked by on my way out of the building I saw them practicing front catch-foot spirals, and was glad of my decision. This ugly spiral is new since I was a child skater, so I never learned how to do it. But I know from yoga classes that I am not flexible enough to do even a passable Level 1 version of it. No need to advertise this in front of a group of 12-year old Gumbies!

This afternoon I spent two hours stretching.