Trial Lesson #2

I had my trial lesson with Linda at coffee club today. We looked at (shockingly :-)) many of the same things:

• Stroking. Linda suggested I should try to think, not of going straight ahead, but actually pointing at first one side of the rink, then the other. Strangely enough, this simple notion seems to enable me to get more power from my stroking and be smoother too.
  
• Crossovers. We spent a good 10 minutes or more looking at crossovers and related issues. We looked at the ubiquitous 1/2 swizzle pumps on a circle, and she tried various means to get me to feel more of a weight-shift between the push with the swizzling foot, then the glide on the inside foot. We also tried doing a chassé with the push to see if that would help me get the idea. I'm not sure I really got that. From there we looked at the crossovers and she held my hand a bit while I worked on getting my crossing foot to be not-so-far-forward. I had some success with this but I suspect I'm still not getting a good enough edge. We also tried the clockwise ones and she said something that Anna had said, too -- the clockwise ones are a bit stiff but in some respects better than the CCW ones. How bizarre. Anna had said (if I remember) that it was perhaps that I had fewer bad habits in that direction.
  
• Edges. We spent a couple of minutes looking at my edges on a circle, and she said my LFO (I think it was) was "not bad." Coming from her that's a good compliment, I think. The inside edges are actually rather weak. I never work on them, and it shows...
  
• 3-Turns. We spent our last couple of minutes looking at 3-turns. She spent some time talking to me about body position etc. and how I can approach these. She also suggested that I should try to get a deeper edge to make it easier while I'm learning these.
  

That was all we had time for. I spent a couple of quick moments at the end and asked her how long she'd been skating (since childhood) and teaching (7 years). She said she had learned school figures as a child and has recently (last couple of years) taken up dance. She's a biochemist by profession which explains why she is able to analyze things so well.

It was a really good lesson, and I can see that my choice is not going to be an easy one. The woman is good. I guess the positive way of looking at it is that it won't be a choice between qualified vs. not, or even good vs. better. It will probably be "good that I relate best to" vs. "good that I relate less well to". That's a good position to be in.