Saturday
After two bottles of wine shared between my boyfriend and two other friends at the Olive Garden last night, I was in no mood to wake up for an 8:00 lesson...but of course I did. After warming up, good student that I am, I immediately started working on my back consecutive edges. My coach told me that she was so pleased with how fast I pick things up, as my inside edges looked great, especially considering how little I skate and how recently I started doing them. "Maybe it was the wine," she said, "but they look great!" Lol, If that is what it takes to make me a great skater, bring on the Zinfindel. :D I also had the opportunity to work with a different coach today, one that I will probably "graduate" to this fall. This turned out to be a little nervewracking since I felt my skills were inadequate due to lack of practice. She had me work on loops and told me not to worry about it. Landing the loop my first time working on it must have been a stroke of luck, because it didn't happen so easily this time. If I could only remember to let me hips do the turning, not bring my shoulders around to fast, don't drop my arms, bring my arms in faster, point my toes, and JUMP!, I think I could get it. Unfortunatly, my brain just couldn't make my body to it, so I only managed about 2 decent jumps. Practice will fix that.
At open practice afterward, I worked more on scratch spins, which only resulted in their deterioration. To be expected, I guess. On the GOOD note, my back spins were fantastic! For whatever reason, I can get my freeleg up really high on the back scratch spin, and when I'm "on", I can do a better back scratch and forward scratch. How wierd is that? For some reason the backspin really clicks with me. But that is about all that is worth mentioning regarding my weekend skating. I hope to make it to a rink in the cities this friday, and I definitly am looking forward to Champions on Ice this Sunday!
But on to skating. First things first� my scratch spins are gone. Vanished. MIA. I don�t know what happened to them, but I can�t seem to do a damn spin for the life of me. I was pissed about that. Really pissed. But putting that aside, my lessons went pretty well. I felt a little odd Saturday morning because it had been two weeks since I had been on the ice. IT took a while to get the feel of skates under my feet again. My backspins were right where I left them, which was great. I thought for sure I�d have to struggle to get those back, being that I just learned them, but that was not the case. In fact, I can honestly say that I can do a backspin more consistently than a forward spin right now! My waltz jumps were so so�..I am still working on bringing my arms back more in the take-off, and since I haven�t had the chance to practice that, it throws me off sometimes. Salchows were so-so, but I�m not too worried about them because they are my best jump when I practice them regularly.
I happened to have a few breakthroughs this weekend. The first was unlocking the problem with my toe loop. I think this all stemmed from a miscommunication with my coach over how I should be doing them. Initially, she had me practicing picking and jumping strait up without rotating, just to get the jump motion down. To make a long story short, I was bringing my legs strait together, which was how I thought I was supposed to do it. In reality, I should be crossing the skating leg in front of the picking leg after I pick- like the mazurka. So now I face the struggle of trying to undo the method that has been ingrained in my head. I understand the mechanics of the jump and how it should work, but I can�t seem to make my body do it right. So as frustrating as that is, at least I know why I was having such a problem with the toe loop!! Now I just have to work on correcting it.
I also had a breakthrough in jumps this weekend. I landed my first loop and flip jump! They were probably the most tiny, hunched over, pathetic jumps ever recorded, but it was a start!! I have been working on loop preparations for a few lessons, and I have been doing them a lot on the ground. When my coach asked if I wanted to try one, somehow my body cooperated! I am excited to work on them more, I really like the loop jump! I don�t know that I was necessarily ready to learn the flip jump, but my coach suggested I try it. She told me that the loop jump would provide the same position for the flip and lutz (and axel too of course, but I�m not worried about that yet!), and she was right. My half flips are very big and easy for me to do. I feel like I get a lot of hang time in the air when I do them well. Although I have played around with attempting a full flip, I could never do more than land squarely on two feet. Learning the backspin and loop jump has solved that problem. I knew the entrance for the flip since it is the same as the half-flip, so she simply asked, �do you want to try it?� I did, and �voila.� I landed my first flip jump! The only problem is, I am going CRAZY without ice here at school. All I feel like doing is going out and practicing loops and flips!
So aside from my *&%#* scratch spins, my lesson was good. I am hoping to do a lot of skating next weekend. I can�t wait! Oh, as a side note, I went to Redwing, MN tonight and drove past the Reidell skate factory. Exciting, eh!
Well, I haven't updated this in a while because I haven't been skating in a while. In fact, I haven't been skating in 2 weeks and it is driving me crazy! All I do is pine for the ice... go to skating websites, you know how it is. Skating kept me motivated, but now that the ice is gone, here I am, at my computer, past my bedtime, looking up skating websites, and NOT studying for the immunology exam that I should be studying for tomorrow. I just want to skate. Waah! But the one thing that keeps me motivated is looking at next semesters schedule...I specifically arranged my schedule around every open skate session that our rink has. Next fall will be a nice relaxed semester too. Gosh I cannot WAIT.
So I will eagerly update this next week, after I have had a lesson this weekend.... if I can make it to this weekend!
