Lucky Thirteen!

[GRR! I posted this once and Blogger ate it with a Tomcat error, so I had to rewrite it. GRR!]

I had my 13th lesson last night. All in all it was a good lesson, not earth-shattering or anything. We reviewed my progress on the elements I've learned so far (except the turn, for some reason we didn't get to that). Glenn thinks I'm making good progress on the glide and that I'm almost there -- I think so too. We worked on the glide a bit and he mentioned (again, I think) that it's really all about my body and where it is, not about the boot and the blade. In particular, he said I need to think of an inside edge even when I'm moving my body to produce an outside edge -- otherwise my blade will tend to turn outward, which will throw me off. I'll have to keep this in mind. Glenn also showed me the grapevine, which is sort of like a swizzle but you cross your feet in front of each other when they come together. He had me try this at the boards and then again with him skating in front of me and supporting me. It's really hard! It's hard to bend my knees enough to make this happen. I asked him if this was preparation for learning crossovers, and he confirmed that I needed to be able to do this to do crossovers (which makes a lot of sense). It's really kind of neat how the skills prepare for each other. The turn and the 1/2 swizzle pumps prepare for the two-foot spin, which prepares for the one foot spins as well as jumps and lots of other stuff. And of course the glide is necessary for everything.

After my lesson I stayed another 1.5 hours or so (till after 9, so more than 2+ hours of skating with my warmup and lesson). I worked on the same elements and spent another half hour or so on the turn. It's definitely coming, it is both more fluid and more consistent. It's still not 100% though. I need to be more committed to it, one can't be half-hearted about it or it doesn't work. I thought of the Yoda line, "Do! or do not. There is no try!" The turn is like that :-). I still need to work on the clockwise ones though, I could stand a good 30 or 40 minutes just on that since I've done only a few. I also need to work more on my right foot glides, and on backward swizzles and glides. Glenn wants me to work on putting my feet really together (touching!) when I'm gliding backward. I can now do that forward, but not backward. Of course, 3 or 4 weeks ago I couldn't do it forward, so there's definitely progress.

I had a chance to talk to Jennifer (one of the other coaches, who taught me several lessons in June) to ask her about the difference between the Basic 1 "snowplow stop" and the Basic 2 "moving snowplow stop". She explained that the Basic 1 version is mostly for the kids, to get them used to the motion ("making snow"). Really, in looking at the Basic Eights I am doing really well. Depending on the criteria, I have all the Basic 2 stuff already and the first two elements of Basic 3 (fwd. stroking and fwd. 1/2 swizzle pumps). I say "depending on the criteria" because I don't know if what I can already do for the 1-foot glide and backward 2-foot glide meets the standard or not. Still, certainly by the end of August I should meet all of Basic 2 and half of Basic 3 (fwd. stroking, fwd. 1/2 swizzle pumps and a moving 2-foot turn). And of course the forward crossovers are a Basic 4 element, which I would expect to be working on in November/December; but the way Glenn is moving I suspect he will try to have me through them by October. He doesn't actually seem all that concerned with the class structure, he's more interested in laying good foundations. I really like that approach.