Get on the Axel Train

Something amazing happened on Friday night, my Axel suddenly clicked for some reason! I have been consistently managing a couple of under rotated, wobbly Axels from a T-position most sessions for a couple of years now. But progress has been slow putting it onto the circle to get some flow on the landing. The tiny bit of extra speed usually freaks me out and I end up popping the jump and doing a two-footed little dance while leaning forward ridiculously to complete the rotation on the ice.

A year ago, I started getting occasional lessons on the jump harness. It was a real life-changing experience! Finally, I could hurl myself into the air without fear. I started landing really fabulous Axels on the harness. I learned what it felt like to land one, on one foot, and rotated. I also picked up a lot more technique over the last year, not necessarily because of the harness, but the harness did let me experiment on techniques without fear.  Unfortunately, having great Axels on the harness did not immediately translate into results off the harness, because I still get spooked. I have seen people take a lot of bad falls, and even had a couple myself. Some people call it “being chicken”, but I prefer to think of it as a “strong survival instinct”.

Me and my coaches seem to have two different approaches to tackling my Axel:

1) Look for technical fixes

2) Try to fix my brain

Approach 1 usually degenerates into nitpicking over some irritating detail. I have literally had sessions where my Axel got worse the longer I tried to fix it. On the other hand, it’s important to fix technical mistakes and I have definitely improved on that.

Approach 2 is decidedly challenging, but often my best Axels happen when I shut my brain off and just go for it. As for getting over the fear, the harness has helped somewhat, and I wear a lot of padding. But that only helps so much.

The reality is that at some point you have to step out of your comfort zone and do something that scares you. My coach has told me so many times that it has to “feel weird” because what I am comfortable with is wrong. My excuse was always that it felt like something is wrong with the jump, but often when I look at videos, it’s not that bad, I just freak out because it feels weird.

Over the last couple weeks I made a few discoveries:

• Don’t rush the takeoff
• Jump up as high as possible 
• Make a tight air position
• Stand up straight on landing

I know, right? Sounds obvious right? I’ve only been told all these things a zillion times but there are so many things to remember in a manoeuvre that takes like half a second, it’s hard to consistently add more things. Anyway, the last couple weeks I had been doing “ok” and feeling confident but still only managing a handful of decent attempts in a session, but nothing that I would call a breakthrough.

On Friday night I went to the rink after work, and the first two T-position Axels went well. But it’s impossible to land them with any flow, because there’s no momentum, so I usually end up hopping around trying to get my balance. So I decided to do one on the circle, from a back edge, with a tiny bit of speed. To be honest, I have landed them  this way only a handful of times, and really well only once.

Well, I landed the first one. It was not perfect. It did not have an easy, flowing exit edge. It was pre-rotated on the take off and cheated on the landing.   But it was on foot, with some speed, and I was shocked! I let out a yelp of surprise and triumph. I waved my arms in the air. I bragged to my friends. I took a photo of the landing edge.

When you’re 33, and you learned the Axel as an adult, you are allowed to make a big deal about it.

Well I decided to do another one, and I landed that one too. Woo hoo! I could hardly believe it. I have probably never landed two in a row like that before. 

I got a friend to take video, to see if I could capture the moment. But I had lost all my mojo. I was so excited to get it on video, I started rushing and falling into old habits. So I put my camera away.

Then I started landing them again, with my camera safely out of sight. Some of them were bad and scratchy. Some of them were very under rotated. Sometimes I was leaning forward so badly on the landing that it was awkward to finish off. Sometimes I fell. But I stopped freaking out and popping them. I stopped doing a two foot dance. 

I did so many Axels on that session, I lost count. Again and again, I just kept popping them off. I even decided they were fun. I wanted to enjoy that feeling as long as possible. Not only was it such a great feeling to actually execute the jump, I wanted to cement some muscle memory of how to do it correctly. I thought they were going to have to kick me off, but then I rolled my ankle when I started getting tired, and I decided I’d had enough.

How did I do it? Somehow I managed to convince myself to stay in the backspin position in spite of every instinct telling me it was a bad idea. And because I kept landing it, maybe my brain was starting to connect the dots - that holding the position = easy landing, and not a big scary painful tumble. 

So how will I do tomorrow? Usually for me, I take one step forward and one step back. And I will be stressed out that maybe I can’t repeat my success from Friday. And then usually if I don’t repeat my successes I get sulky. But I think I need to look at this differently. I have come really far with my skating and I know consistency is difficult for me. Maybe I will land more Axels, maybe I won’t. But now I have an experience that I will never forget.  At least for that one hour, I had a consistent Axel. And OMG it was so much fun!

Sessions like that are rare, but they make it all worth while. All the early mornings, late nights, sore muscles, toe pick belly flops, bruised knees, cut fingers, running through the fog in the dark to catch the bus, getting changed in bathroom stalls, blowing off friends at the pub, tedious drills, suffering through session after session of crappy skating, hours of off-ice jumps, and on and on. We persevere through it all because the exhilaration of achieving new heights is such a great feeling.

Sudden Rush

I check the web frequently for competition postings, hoping that a local competition with adult categories will come up. Well one finally did! It's in February, yikes! That's pretty soon considering that I don't even have a program and have real consistency problems in many of my elements. But I mentioned it to my coach anyway. I wasn't sure how she would react, but she is into it and wants to help me find music and get a program. There are not a lot of adult competitions and if I miss this one it might be six months or even a year until the next one, so we figured I should just go for it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my coach is interested, this is more what she does than teaching Skating Skills.

We spent some time today talking about what kind of elements we could put in my program. She likes my spirals and leg pulls and wants to put them in as a spiral sequence. I tried a catch-foot spiral but it's a bit wobbly. I'll need to practice it to get my balance. I know I said that I hate leg pulls, but I can actually do them, and I don't think they look so awful in a backward glide. But they are more difficult going backward! Two jump combinations are allowed in my category so my coach had me try out some Salchow-toe loop and loop-loop combinations. They didn't go too badly considering that I've never done loop-loop (that I can recall) and it's certainly been a long time since I did any combination in fact. My coach was relatively pleased with my efforts. Then her charity ran out when she took a look at my flip, and decided that I need more control on the 3-turn; that's a shocker :) So now I am supposed to practice them and make sure they are not too curvy. It's surprisingly difficult!

I spent the rest of the time going back to fundamentals mostly. I put in a good chunk of time on edges and even forward circle eights. The forward edges are getting a bit better and I am on the edge for more like 3/4 of the lobe instead of only 1/2. But the circle eights are still on the flat from about the halfway mark. Figures are all about balance and lean, which are obviously going to take me some time to develop. On the bright side, the size and shape of my circles were quite good.

I managed to get in several laps of stroking both forward/backward, and CW/CCW. I haven't done that in a while. Also worked on crossovers in all directions, feeling motivated knowing that they are in the next Skills level!

I put in some good practice on my spins probably managing at least 5-10 of each type. Backsits and forward uprights are still a bit crappy which means I should be doing more of them, but I did fewer oops! Camels were going well for me, I had several that were quite good and I didn't fall out of any of them. Some of them did not really come together, but I didn't fall out or have to give up on them. I tried to reach back for a catchfoot position, but while I can reach my blade I can't quite reach far enough to grab the part that you can hold on to. It takes a surprising amount of hamstring strength. Other than that, I didn't try any wild positions, just trying to get the basics down a little more. Consistency is key!

Epic Lesson

I had a fantastic skate on Saturday :D
It started with skating skills, which was relatively empty due to the Thanksgiving holiday. I practiced my three routines to the appropriate music (a three-turn sequence, a mohawk sequence, and held edges on a circle in all 8 flavours). The music for the mohawk sequence seems a bit fast and I'm having a hard time hearing the beat so I don't have the hang of the timing yet. I'll have to get some help with that.

Then we had skating lessons for kids as usual (CanSkate). I taught my own group again, and it is getting easier now that I have taught this level a few times. As long as I stay with this level I'm good! They were having trouble with their two-foot turns, so I got them to practice "doing the twist" by just standing and swiveling their hips back and forth and it helped a whole lot. It's also a good chance to practice spinning in the opposite direction.

For the group lesson we did an intense crossovers workshop, ugh. My coach wants us to be able to hold the underpush without bending forward, but it's just so hard on my old knees and back. I started going to a physiotherapist recently though so I am hoping he can help me get into these awkward poses that my coach keeps trying to contort me into.

After that it was time for group spin lesson, but all my coach's other students were away so I got to have a private lesson for that plus the duration of freeskate :) We weren't really planning to use the entire 75 minutes for a private lesson but we were having such a great time that we just kept going. Next week I am away on vacation so it is just lesson time that I would have had later anyway. Plus I think my coach was happy to be employed that whole time!

I did in fact have a terrific lesson. We covered just about everything. We talked about testing and competing. We even got to three new jumps. Whee!

• One-foot upright spin: for the test, the want the free leg brought in beside the skating leg, not crossed in front like a scratch spin. I practiced one of these and was told "that was a really nice spin". Currently I'm holding the knee bend for quite a long time and was rewarded with one well-centred spin to boot.
• Sit-spin: more work on pointing the free foot forwards and up, not out to the side. The position coach likes feels like my toe is pointing to the left, but it's actually pointing forward. To centre them I need to spiral in farther on the entry and get more lean over the left foot; feel the blade really biting the ice. I feel the lean on the entry but once I get spinning I sort of fall inward. We made some progress on this including keeping the free leg straight on the swing around. Coach says they look more appealing now when I get everything right. Still need to work on deeper sit position off-ice.
• Camel spin: need to make the entry more smooth and really extend, almost lock both knees. I practiced two. The second one really felt good and coach says it's perfect, she doesn't want to mess with it. Only suggestion is to not lift the free leg so high, think more of getting an outward or even upward turn of the free foot/toe. And fold more forwards and square the shoulders. Pretty nice considering how awful this spin was two months ago.
• Backspin: bleah. I fall to the outside edge and scrape the ice; also have a real comfort zone problem with the free leg being in any other position except crossed in front of my skating leg. I told coach that I'm not thinking of my body position because I'm trying to find the right spot on my blade, but she thinks it should be more the other way around; a proper body position will naturally lead to balancing on the proper part of the blade. Aim for keeping the hips level, free thigh parallel to the ice, free foot directly in front of skating knee. Toe pointed. Duh.
• Attitude spin: didn't get too far with this, I'm having trouble figuring out if the free knee has to move behind the line of the body. We seem to be having a communications disconnect on this one. Anyway, idea is to work on a regular upright spin entry with free leg about 45 degrees out from the midline of the body. Then bend the free knee and try to make the free ankle point to the ceiling. Haha. One good exercise is to try this just gliding down the ice. This is hard. Did I mention the toe should be pointed?
• Waltz jump: we worked on the dreaded exercise and she claims it shows that I've been practicing it. No comment on the step forward, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right yet. I've been trying to think about pivoting on the ball of the foot instead of deepening the curve. We had a bit of a discussion about how I can't absorb all of her great feedback at once, and I'm better at thinking about one thing at a time. She told me to try a jump without thinking about it; apparently that one was quite good. *shrug*. Also tried setting it up from backward crossovers. Scary fast!
  
• Salchow: coach thinks it looks quite nice, not too much feedback here. Remember to BEND the knees, and jump from the deepest knee bend without hesitation. Practice holding the check after the three-turn more.
  
• Toe loop: one thing I noticed on Friday is that when I look at my toe-loop tracing the toe-pick mark is at an outward angle to the direction of the glide. I think this means I am opening the hip of the picking foot before picking, which is probably a cheat. I focused on keeping the hips more square and coach thinks it looks much better. I still need to consciously sweep the skating foot toward the picking foot more closely before jumping.
• Loop: some serious improvement here. We are pleased that I am over my mental block on entering the jump from a backward two-foot glide and am managing something better than a bent-over hop. Need to get the timing of arms and legs more co-ordinated (this is true for all the jumps). One neat bit of advice was to turn the ankle of the jumping (right) foot so that the toepick is pointing down and to the right. So the ankle is flopping in a bit to the left side, and try to jump outwards not just upwards.
• Flip: After all this coach mused that I am almost ready to move on to the flip, so why not try it? I told her it is my favourite jump and I'm worried she will take the fun out of it, haha. So she had me show her my flip and she said "Wow, I don't want to take the fun out of that for you!" She thinks the jump is pretty good. :D But I am rotating too much on the ice, need to think about pick, jump, rotate in that order. She also showed me her preferred method to set up the jump.
• Lutz: since we are on a roll we moved on to the dreaded Lutz. I told her I have been too afraid to try it. She had me practice the setup from a clockwise glide on the hockey circle, same as waltz but without looking back and going the other direction (feels very strange). Then practice reaching back with the right foot, and move right arm back even farther. Then we tried the pick and jump in two ways: pick and jump but don't rotate; and try the pick and jump and rotate from a standstill. Then pick, jump, and rotate from the gliding setup. I managed to squeak out a couple of crappy ones. Whee!
• Bunny hop: We had not talked about these a lot but they are on the first freeskate test so I got to practice them a bit. Learned what to do with my arms, LOL.
  
• Mazurka: I had never learned these before but they are pretty easy. It's not easy to make them look really amazing though. Especially in my non-dominant direction.
  
• Footwork: we talked about it a bit and I showed her some of the stuff I had been experimenting with last Saturday. Then she tried to teach me how to do a bracket which was pretty much "do this" and "your way sucks" LOL! Well we were out of time so I'm sure next time she will bombard me with her usual plethora of technical tidbits.

I had a lot of fun in this lesson and was pleased we got to talking about programs, testing, and competing. Coach wants me to suggest some music. Too bad all my favourite tunes have vocals! I guess I could stand to skate to the Star Wars soundtrack. But it would be a bit goofy, especially at my age.

Rewiring for Loop Jumps

Today I was feeling a lot better but still not 100%. Fortunately I still had energy to skate. On Mondays I only have about 25 minutes to practice everything in my expanding portfolio before a private lesson and a group lesson. I slacked off a bit on stroking exercises although I did get through most of them, I didn't spend too much time on them. I practiced all my spins briefly, although the ice was a bit too chewed up to work on backspins very much. I found a less chewed up patch back behind the icing line to practice my sit-change-sit a little bit to keep the momentum going.

During my lesson I asked my coach what is on the first freestyle test. She rattled off a surprisingly long list of elements, most of which I have not practiced yet. Including a program! Yikes! But she thinks it's not out of the question to be able to start pulling a program together around Christmastime.

On that note we moved on to a new element, the loop jump. After watching my substandard version from a RFI 3-turn, she showed me the way she wants me to do them, from a long backward glide on both feet, one foot in front of the other. I have seen the jump done this way but I had never tried it, and it seems impossible. There is no swinging of a leg or toe pick to initiate the jump, it just springs out of nowhere. All the jumps I learned were basically tacked on to three-turns, so much that in my mind the three-turn IS part of the jump. I have a real mental block doing the jump this way. My coach is really trying to re-wire my brain! I managed to squeak out a couple of proto-loops while clinging to the boards but that was about it.

We also worked on the toe loop, which used to be an easy jump for me but now that there are all these new things I have to think about it is a real mess. In one attempt I even got so confused I fell down! I can't remember the last time I fell doing a toe loop. Sometimes I feel a bit like a deer caught in headlights when my coach fires all these tips at me, I just seize up.

The way I was originally taught to skate was mostly through a 'watch me' sort of instruction and a few basic cues. For example a toe loop was 'three-turn, pick, jump, land'. It didn't really get more technical than that. The key elements with each jump was which type of three-turn and whether it was a pick jump or an edge jump, that was about it. I never had a step-by-step breakdown on anything until I started working with this coach. Therefore, this style of learning has lead to a tendency to just skate on automatic pilot, and a poor sense of kinesthetic awareness. I am re-learning each element from scratch complete with microscopic details. It is difficult, but it should make me a better skater so I am trying to soak up all the new instructions.