Skating Saturday

First private lesson with C today! Effectively it was more like my seventh private with her, because I was the only person in her class for a while at one point, which is one of the reasons I knew I liked her style. We didn't go over much in the way of new things, but we spent the time cleaning up old stuff. This is good, because whether I ever learn another trick or not, my overarching goal is to make everything look confident and deliberate rather than timid and awkward. (I would say "graceful and speedy," but I feel like those might be out of my reach. I'll take looking like I at least intended to do 90% of the movements I make.)

I'm going to work towards testing, primarily moves but also freeskate elements, because why not. This dovetails nicely with the adult edges/moves class, in which we're doing a lot of Bronze patterns. (Moves in the field are done in "patterns," i.e., alternating forward crossovers around the rink.) So we worked on cleaning those up, and now instead of "do forward crossovers down the line," it's "inside edge makes a lobe (aka an arc) that takes up this much space, cross here, put your other foot down here." The patterns work much better this way. I might actually be able to work on the presentation stuff we're learning in class now that I don't have to worry so much about what my feet are doing.

Last night in class, we learned crossrolls, which look fairly simple. It's basically a funny-looking forward crossover with no stroke in the middle, right? Ha. They are in fact tools of the devil. I kept getting about three of them and then grinding to a halt. I learned today that momentum comes from an underpush by the leg that becomes the free foot after the cross (so, for right over left, the left needs to push as the right leg arrives on the ice). Technically you need to do this on forward crossovers as well, but because you get power from the outside half-swizzle thing before the cross, it's not as disastrous if you don't have much underpush. These guys, you're effectively stuck in glue if you don't. So now I have something to practice the hell out of this week.

We spent the last half of the lesson on spins, because my two foot spin has been languishing for about six months now. Apparently I was doing it "backwards," so we broke it down entirely and have started building it up again. I'm not getting any more revolutions yet, but it feels way more like a spin than what I was doing. YAY.

Finally, we did more pivots, and not just the easy forward ones. No no, I get to work on the backwards pivots. Back inside, eh, not too hard. Back outside, though.... I will say one thing for them: You start from an inside three turn, and when I have something else to focus on, I can actually do a passable inside three turn. I just can't think about it too hard or I crap up.

(Another point in their favor is that they're the prettiest pivots. ONE DAY.)

In regular class today, we worked on @#$%!ing ballet jumps some more. My hatred for this jump knows no bounds. I can hop onto my toe pick okay, but hopping up and down on said toe pick like a pogo stick? Nope. I don't know if it's pants-wetting terror a healthy sense of caution, a strength issue, a "need to jam that sucker deeper and more securely into the ice" issue, or what. That said, I can now do a not-horrible side toe hop. (Uhhhh, ignore the axel there. Look at what she does after the axel.) So maybe there's hope.

Anyway, so that was almost two and a half hours of skating today, plus assorted activities this afternoon, and now I am bushed. My legs are probably going to hate me tomorrow.