Yesterday morning I had an good skate focusing mostly on basics. I decided to start my figures work with edges on a line because the circle eights are giving me a lot more trouble than I had been expecting originally. After building a bit of confidence with all 4 varieties, I did do some forward circle eights. This time instead of focusing on the size and shape of the circles I was paying more attention to my edges. I think that I end up falling onto the flat of the blade when my free leg passes in front. Probably the movement is not smooth enough and it's erasing the nice inward lean that I keep on the first half of the circle. I asked my coach about it and she agreed that the lean has to be maintained as well as a "pressing" on the edge. Again that magic word that I'm still trying to interpret, heh.
After that I did some work on my crossovers. I practiced them with holding the edges for a long time in an exercise my coach taught me, then gradually speeding them up. I do them on a hockey circle but I get going so fast that I have to make my circle a lot bigger, I also start to get a little freaked out, especially when going backwards!
Then a little work on spins, but they were not so great. Falling out of my camel again! Never take a vacation, it will break half your elements!!
I can't exactly remember if I worked on my jumps, hmm. It was only yesterday, but I can't remember. I think I did some spirals, but not jumps.
For my lesson we worked on the stuff for my skating skills test. We worked on getting the Mohawks program to the proper rhythm of the music, but it still feels rushed. My coach decided that she didn't like the free leg position on the backward edges, so that was a bit of an adjustment to change it. She agreed that the music seems fast and let me know that performing it to the music is not actually required in the test. So, if I can't seem to get it to the music I can just skip the music, but I would prefer to be able to get it as prescribed.
My coach also took a look at my 3-turns pattern and thinks it is pretty good but I need to cover more ice. She says that someone "my size" should be able to do that, and it will be expected from the judges. In fact, according to her, it is my "strong, deep edges" that make the patterns curve so much and why they are giving me some problems. The Preliminary level is designed with little kids in mind, they aren't going to be very skilled and most of their steps will be more straight than curvy, my coach says. So maybe the best thing is just to get the test over with and move on to the more interesting levels anyway.
I noticed that I was skidding a lot on my three turns and spin entries so I went and got my skates sharpened in the afternoon. Whee! I hope it helps :)
Showing posts with label figures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label figures. Show all posts
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
All alone
On Friday morning I had the ice all to myself! We had a holiday this weekend and I guess everybody was away. My coach arranged to double up our lesson on Saturday so she could sleep in, lucky her :) It was pretty nice to be alone on the ice. I only wish I had had more time. By the time I got through all my "icework" there was no time left to do fun stuff like improvise at top speed. Oh well!
I practiced pretty much everything, wasn't having an amazing skating day but pretty good nonetheless. I worked on my forward inside figure eights for the first time in a while. They are pretty sucky, but why would they not be? Still struggling with being on an actual edge for the second half of the circle. It seems like I can only hold an edge when going relatively fast. Huh.
I practiced pretty much everything, wasn't having an amazing skating day but pretty good nonetheless. I worked on my forward inside figure eights for the first time in a while. They are pretty sucky, but why would they not be? Still struggling with being on an actual edge for the second half of the circle. It seems like I can only hold an edge when going relatively fast. Huh.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Disappointment
After looking forward to skating this morning so much, I was thoroughly disappointed today with a wasted lesson and crappy skating. The whole 20 minute lesson was spent on the step forward into the waltz jump. At first this was ok, then I started getting frustrated because my coach kept offering useless tidbits like "You look awkward". Well, duh. That's not helpful! Then I started analyzing it in my typical fashion and was also getting frustrated that maybe I'm just too old, inflexible, and injured to be any good at this sport. This attitude did not help.
After the lesson I worked dutifully on the waltz jump prep for another ten minutes or so and then tried some spins. I did not even feel like doing other jumps. All my spins were crap except for the back sit, surprisingly. They traveled pitifully and involved much toe-pick scratching and loss of balance.
This is not the first time I have experienced this type of two steps forward, one step back progress. Figure skating is filled with it and I had much frustration in skating as a child. I tried not to let this one incident get me down, after all I have been having many good sessions lately so one bad one is no big deal. But I still have a sense of wasted time and money, and general disgust with myself. What was extra lame about the whole morning was that I did not have fun, which is the whole point of doing this.
The session was not an entire writeoff because I actually made progress with my figures, of all things. I found this great reference on the web that describes many aspects of skating, including figures:
http://www.worldfigureskating.net/index.php
Since I will basically have to teach myself, I read through the instructions for the forward outside eight and even printed them out and brought them with me in case I needed to check them. I practiced about six eights and then checked out my tracings. I measured them and found them woefully asymmetric. On the start of the circle, I go out too far so my circles are more oval-shaped and off-centre. You are not supposed to use markings but I currently need them as a learning tool, so I measured and marked out the proper locations of the quarter-circles. Then I tried to skate the figure again, hitting all the marks. This felt strange, like I was tracing circles with big bites out of them. But the resulting traces looked more round and smooth. Following the instructions from the website immediately helped my edges be more secure and less wobbly. So I feel very good about this progress, even if it is for a skill I cannot test. In a way, I feel like I am keeping alive a dying art.
In order to make better use of my lesson time I am going to make some rules for myself, which I will try to obey.
I spent some time cruising the web for other adult skating blogs and found them very inspiring. I should figure out how to make links for them on my sidebar. By midday I was anxious to get back on the ice and just keep practicing. Furthermore I cleverly chalked up my overall terrible skating after the lesson to dull blades, which is not entirely impossible. I have skated at least 25 hours on this sharpening and I have heard that sharpening is recommended about every 20 hours. So I contrived to escape work early, and drove like a maniac to the skating store and get them done just before closing :) The blades look much better now and I hope they bring me a more pleasant skate tomorrow. Tomorrow is my 3-hour epic morning and I am looking forward to it now!
After the lesson I worked dutifully on the waltz jump prep for another ten minutes or so and then tried some spins. I did not even feel like doing other jumps. All my spins were crap except for the back sit, surprisingly. They traveled pitifully and involved much toe-pick scratching and loss of balance.
This is not the first time I have experienced this type of two steps forward, one step back progress. Figure skating is filled with it and I had much frustration in skating as a child. I tried not to let this one incident get me down, after all I have been having many good sessions lately so one bad one is no big deal. But I still have a sense of wasted time and money, and general disgust with myself. What was extra lame about the whole morning was that I did not have fun, which is the whole point of doing this.
The session was not an entire writeoff because I actually made progress with my figures, of all things. I found this great reference on the web that describes many aspects of skating, including figures:
http://www.worldfigureskating.net/index.php
Since I will basically have to teach myself, I read through the instructions for the forward outside eight and even printed them out and brought them with me in case I needed to check them. I practiced about six eights and then checked out my tracings. I measured them and found them woefully asymmetric. On the start of the circle, I go out too far so my circles are more oval-shaped and off-centre. You are not supposed to use markings but I currently need them as a learning tool, so I measured and marked out the proper locations of the quarter-circles. Then I tried to skate the figure again, hitting all the marks. This felt strange, like I was tracing circles with big bites out of them. But the resulting traces looked more round and smooth. Following the instructions from the website immediately helped my edges be more secure and less wobbly. So I feel very good about this progress, even if it is for a skill I cannot test. In a way, I feel like I am keeping alive a dying art.
In order to make better use of my lesson time I am going to make some rules for myself, which I will try to obey.
- No babbling or extensive analysis
- Try to just do what she says and see what happens
- No complaining about being too old, inflexible, etc.
- Don't explain why you did it wrong unless it is useful
- Pay 100% attention
I spent some time cruising the web for other adult skating blogs and found them very inspiring. I should figure out how to make links for them on my sidebar. By midday I was anxious to get back on the ice and just keep practicing. Furthermore I cleverly chalked up my overall terrible skating after the lesson to dull blades, which is not entirely impossible. I have skated at least 25 hours on this sharpening and I have heard that sharpening is recommended about every 20 hours. So I contrived to escape work early, and drove like a maniac to the skating store and get them done just before closing :) The blades look much better now and I hope they bring me a more pleasant skate tomorrow. Tomorrow is my 3-hour epic morning and I am looking forward to it now!
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Whirlwind Weekend
Wow, I had a busy three days!
Friday
Got up early to skate at 7am and skate at the foggy arena with the stalactites. Actually they were not too bad this time, but still not quite ideal. I got to work on my figures again. They are still atrocious. I had these dreams of trying some of the advanced figures involving brackets and loops and such but my basic circle eights have a long way to go before I am ready for that. But I am lucky to have so much ice to myself to practice them! If I spend 15 minutes on them every Friday morning, they make be back to some kind of testable condition by the end of the season (not that you can test them anymore).
After my figures I spent some time warming up and going through some skills. My coach worked on some jumps with me, we have finally moved on to salchow and toe loop jumps. I was swinging my free leg wildly in my salchow, which my coach is trying to fix. Apparently it should stay close as it comes around and cross in front before bending both knees and driving the free knee up. Also the free foot is supposed to bend awkardly at the ankle so that the toes point toward the midline of the body and the heel pointing outward. Good times!
Saturday
I woke up with a sore throat but I dragged myself out of bed for an epic 3 hour morning at yet another arena. This one is the best one yet so far! Really good ice and even seating for spectators. The first half hours was called 'skating skills' which is what has replaced school figures here in Canada. Also dance can be practiced at this time. We spent the time working on stroking, crossovers, a mohawk drill and three-turns. Mostly we focused on fixing my bad posture. I enjoyed this session because good skating skills and poise between elements can really lift an average skater to someone that stands out.
After the lesson there was skating lessons for little children, due to a strange ordering of the schedule. They told me I could help out so I stuck around; I ended up teaching groups of kids all by myself :O Fortunately they were not learning anything too complicated. Since I don't really know how to teach I just adopted a 'watch me' type of instruction but it seemed to go alright.
Once the little kids went off the ice we had another group lesson like the one on Monday. We practiced edges down the ice, three turns, mohawks, etc. After that was a smaller group lesson on spins. I thought we would be working on our spins individually, but I saw my coach teaching a group of girls and asked if I can join them. I suppose she will charge me some kind of group lesson rate for that one. Anyway we worked on laybacks (something I have been wanting to learn!) and back sit spins out of a pivot on the toepick. I was not able to do the back sit at all in front of the group, I just immediately fell out of it. My coach says that on Friday nights there is a spin competition, and next week it is sit-change-sit. Even though I am not in this competition, I practiced the back sit and then the whole sit-change-sit combination until I was able to pull a few off! Too bad my coach didn't see them :P
The rest of the time was open freeskate so I worked on all my jumps trying to incorporate all the new things I learned this week. I finally feel a joy in pulling off a good waltz jump, a jump I used to find very uninteresting. I even experimented with split jumps in each direction and the half loop. I experimented with camel-change-camel, which did not get far because I cannot get into the back camel position. I experimented with coming into a back spin from a long RBO edge, which is seriously harder than it looks. I tried a bunch of consecutive three-turns as some kind of precursor to twizzles, but so far I can only do them on one foot in one direction. We capped off the morning by practicing spirals as the coaches contorted me into painful positions at the boards. Practicing these awful things makes my outer hips really sore! They were sore for three days after Monday's practice and they are still sore this evening from yesterday morning.
Sunday
Today I was still not feeling well and slept most of the day but I was foolish enough to play hockey anyway! Our game did not start well and we were down 4-2 before long. But somehow we got a fire lit under us after that and bounced back for an 8-4 win! I made a few good plays. I even managed to fire off a wrist shot from the point. My new goal is to try not to make any bad mistakes that directly lead to a goal against us. It's not as easy as it sounds!
Well it's been a busy weekend, I can't wait to have some tea and go to bed.
Friday
Got up early to skate at 7am and skate at the foggy arena with the stalactites. Actually they were not too bad this time, but still not quite ideal. I got to work on my figures again. They are still atrocious. I had these dreams of trying some of the advanced figures involving brackets and loops and such but my basic circle eights have a long way to go before I am ready for that. But I am lucky to have so much ice to myself to practice them! If I spend 15 minutes on them every Friday morning, they make be back to some kind of testable condition by the end of the season (not that you can test them anymore).
After my figures I spent some time warming up and going through some skills. My coach worked on some jumps with me, we have finally moved on to salchow and toe loop jumps. I was swinging my free leg wildly in my salchow, which my coach is trying to fix. Apparently it should stay close as it comes around and cross in front before bending both knees and driving the free knee up. Also the free foot is supposed to bend awkardly at the ankle so that the toes point toward the midline of the body and the heel pointing outward. Good times!
Saturday
I woke up with a sore throat but I dragged myself out of bed for an epic 3 hour morning at yet another arena. This one is the best one yet so far! Really good ice and even seating for spectators. The first half hours was called 'skating skills' which is what has replaced school figures here in Canada. Also dance can be practiced at this time. We spent the time working on stroking, crossovers, a mohawk drill and three-turns. Mostly we focused on fixing my bad posture. I enjoyed this session because good skating skills and poise between elements can really lift an average skater to someone that stands out.
After the lesson there was skating lessons for little children, due to a strange ordering of the schedule. They told me I could help out so I stuck around; I ended up teaching groups of kids all by myself :O Fortunately they were not learning anything too complicated. Since I don't really know how to teach I just adopted a 'watch me' type of instruction but it seemed to go alright.
Once the little kids went off the ice we had another group lesson like the one on Monday. We practiced edges down the ice, three turns, mohawks, etc. After that was a smaller group lesson on spins. I thought we would be working on our spins individually, but I saw my coach teaching a group of girls and asked if I can join them. I suppose she will charge me some kind of group lesson rate for that one. Anyway we worked on laybacks (something I have been wanting to learn!) and back sit spins out of a pivot on the toepick. I was not able to do the back sit at all in front of the group, I just immediately fell out of it. My coach says that on Friday nights there is a spin competition, and next week it is sit-change-sit. Even though I am not in this competition, I practiced the back sit and then the whole sit-change-sit combination until I was able to pull a few off! Too bad my coach didn't see them :P
The rest of the time was open freeskate so I worked on all my jumps trying to incorporate all the new things I learned this week. I finally feel a joy in pulling off a good waltz jump, a jump I used to find very uninteresting. I even experimented with split jumps in each direction and the half loop. I experimented with camel-change-camel, which did not get far because I cannot get into the back camel position. I experimented with coming into a back spin from a long RBO edge, which is seriously harder than it looks. I tried a bunch of consecutive three-turns as some kind of precursor to twizzles, but so far I can only do them on one foot in one direction. We capped off the morning by practicing spirals as the coaches contorted me into painful positions at the boards. Practicing these awful things makes my outer hips really sore! They were sore for three days after Monday's practice and they are still sore this evening from yesterday morning.
Sunday
Today I was still not feeling well and slept most of the day but I was foolish enough to play hockey anyway! Our game did not start well and we were down 4-2 before long. But somehow we got a fire lit under us after that and bounced back for an 8-4 win! I made a few good plays. I even managed to fire off a wrist shot from the point. My new goal is to try not to make any bad mistakes that directly lead to a goal against us. It's not as easy as it sounds!
Well it's been a busy weekend, I can't wait to have some tea and go to bed.
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