Backward Progress

Only in skating can you say "backward" and "progress" and be telling the absolute truth!

I went to coffee club today. Once again it seemed to take me a while to warm up, I am not sure what's up with that. It might be my shoulder, still, or maybe it's something else. My shoulder is doing much better, so that I can check and turn etc. although I still have trouble raising my left arm much above shoulder height.

I spent my time before the lesson mostly working on backward skating and my right foot glide, although I did a smattering of almost everything. For the lesson we worked (yay!) on backward gliding and also backward edges. I actually made some significant progress on the backward glide and was able to stroke, and then lift my right foot up and hold it in front of my left foot for a bit. I was able to do this more than once, and Cecilia said I was doing much better than last week. After a bit we worked on edges (back inside only) and I was able to actually hold a back inside edge for several counts, even on my right foot! The setup was a stroke or two, then a strongly checked position and picking up the free foot and holding it behind (touching) the skating foot. For example for the LBI the right hand would be strongly back and left hand forward, and right foot picked up and touching the left boot. It really was much better than I've ever done before, though obviously it's not stable and I have much to do still. I would have liked to have stayed to work on it but the Zamboni came and kicked us all off, alas.

I probably won't get to skate again until Wednesday as I am going out of town for work. Alas!