Fourth Lesson

Before my lesson tonight, I got over to the pro shop and got a chance to get my skates ordered. As I discussed before they are Jackson Freestyles -- maybe a bit "up" for me but I think it will be really good. They were $180 plus tax. Well worth it, I think. They should be here in a week or so. I can't wait!

Tonight's lesson was great. It was my last one with Dawn, as she is going home. I don't know who I'll have next week. Anyway, I got on the ice a bit before 7 just to get warmed up and so forth. I still feel like I've never been on the ice for the first 2 or 3 minutes. Dawn says that should diminish a little when I have skates of my own. I hope so. I got really good skates tonight actually, they seemed relatively new and fit well and I laced my right boot tight enough so it didn't give me problems.

I told Dawn about my fall on Friday and so forth and so we worked on swizzles some more (since that was what I was doing when I fell). It's amazing how having your instructor there can help you feel more confident, even when (as an adult who outweighs her) there's not a goldarned thing she could actually do to keep me from falling if I started. I think my issues with feeling a little out of balance are mostly due to posture -- too far forward; and looking down too much. Also I need to bend my knees a bit more and tuck my butt a bit. I know what I'm supposed to do, it's making it happen that seems like the hard part.

We started by working on my pushoff some more. Dawn confirmed that the 'crunch' I sometimes hear is when I am using my toepick (bad, sloppy) instead of my inside edge. We went on to work some more on my swizzles, and also (since I asked) she introduced the rocking horse. I can kind of get the feel of the backward swizzle but it's not quite coming yet. I need to work on it. We also touched on the backward wiggle, which I'm still having problems with, and then we worked on my snowplow stop. That is coming along much better. Finally in the last couple of minutes or so we looked (since I asked) at a one-foot glide, and she showed me the position I'm supposed to be in. The right boot (in this case) is tucked in tight just above the left boot and the leg is straight forward, not out to the side at all. I experimented with that a little bit. Dawn suggested I try to see if I can get to 4 seconds. Right now I'm at about 2. Then we were out of time, so I thanked Dawn for all her help and told her I'd see her in September. I hope to be greatly improved by then. I'm really grateful to have had her as my first instructor.

After my lesson and the obligatory Zamboni break, I skated for about an hour. I noticed with the relatively good skates I got tonight my feet didn't hurt at all and I wasn't turning in on my inside edge so much. I'm glad to know that was more the skates than me. It was not very crowded (15-18 people). I spent most of my time working on swizzles, gliding and the snowplow stop. The main thing I'm working on on the swizzles is to feel confident in them. The basic 8s say I have to do 6-8 in a row, which I was doing tonight so that's good. My glides are in good shape. I worked a lot on the snowplow stop and practiced going faster than usual in my glides and then stopping. Dawn thought that if I felt more confident in my ability to stop that I might not be as scared to go fast. There's something to that, and my stops are much, much better. As I think about it now, though, I'm wondering if it's not so much not being able to stop that I'm afraid of as just wiping out because I lose my balance. If so, it might take going fast and wiping out and losing my balance and falling (and surviving) to get over that. We'll see.

I did try a couple more 1-foot glides (on my left foot only). I'll keep working on that but it's a Basic 2 skill so I'm not going to worry about it a lot. I'm not going to get to practice over the weekend due to my schedule (don't want to go Friday anyway after my experience last Friday). At Monday's practice I really need to work on the rocking horse/backward swizzle and also the backward wiggle. The latter I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing but I need to not avoid it. Also I could stand to work on pushing off with my left foot more. Always more to work on! I'm really happy with what I achieved tonight though.