Edge Pressure

I had my second lesson with Anna today at our usual time. I had about 15 minutes to warm up, which was just sufficient to look at most of my stuff include the FO3s. My RFO3s had deserted me but I managed to get 'em back, more or less.

We started off doing some basic stroking, looking for extension and general flow. She's more or less pleased although my left leg extension is much weaker than the right leg, as is to be expected at this point.

After that we went to look at... Mohawks! We had worked on these on Wednesday a bit, but we went at them again. The RFI open Mohawk (RFIOM) we made some good progress; specifically at getting good rotation, not breaking at the waist, leading with the arms, and keeping my head up. We went on to look at the LFI, and that is not yet happening. We spent some time on it with minimal progress.

We went on to look at edges. My FO edges are not bad, but my FI edges are a little weak. We worked on getting a better flow to them by doing a 5-count of:

1. Push (initial push-off)
   
2. Set (feel the edge correctly)
   
3. Scissors (switch the arm positions with a scissor action, not rotation)
   
4. Foot (bring the free foot/leg forward)
   
5. Switch (switch to the opposite foot)
   

She also emphasized that even when I bring the free leg forward I still need to be leading with the skating hip. This is actually something that Linda had had me working on a while back -- not letting the free hip rotate forward.

After that we went on to look at backward crossovers, which I told her I can't yet do. So we worked on skating backward and seeing if I can get set up correctly for backward crossovers. While I know what the motion is I'm not getting enough separation between the forward and backward blades to do the crossover; and of course I can't look down to see if it's happening since that will throw my balance off. So from there we just worked on skating backward on one foot and trying to get good kneebend in the skating leg and good extension forward on the free leg. That's where we left it.

Anna gave me some specific homework (icework?) for next week. The first was to work on my hockey stops, with the specific goal of getting more.... edge pressure (of course). The second was to work on skating backwards on one foot, feeling the weight placement, pressing into the ice more, and extending the free leg in front (not behind). This is to help me on backward crossovers.

Following the lesson I stayed for the remaining 45 minutes and worked on these issues and others. I also got to see one of the adult skaters (Lisa) working on her program for the meet at our rink in March. It's a nice program.