Edges, Edges, Edges

I had my 3rd lesson with Anna today. She was a bit late, so I was very well warmed-up by the time my lesson started. We started by looking at my hockey stop (my homework), and she seemed satisfied that it was improved. I still need to work on it, though...

I told her that I'd concluded that my problems with the backward crossovers are because my back edges are weak; so we looked at them. Eeep! The BOs are not too bad, but the BIs.. yikes, they are weak. I was trying them on the hockey circle and I had a lot of difficulty just getting into them, especially (of course) RBI. She said I need to focus on getting comfortable, get set in the correct posture and be able to hold it.

From there we went to working on the FO3s. She said they have improved. There is still a lot of room for improvement, starting with consistency! Then we looked at the RFI Mohawk. It's better too, but still scratchy. I'm still having trouble getting good rotation. We also tried an LFI Mohawk or two; I need to work on these as I still don't have a feel for where to place the free foot, and of course one needs to just know since looking down will pitch me forward. I need to work on just skating a bit on the LFI with the free foot in the correct position so that I just know where it is.

After that we went to look at the FI3s. I know I did at least one of these before, but today I just couldn't for the life of me do one. It seems to be mostly fear; plus a little bit of weakness in the FI edges. To work on it we went back to looking at the MIF FI edges. I didn't do very well at them, and she said I need to get over my skating foot immediately when I push off; as it is there's a little bit of wobbliness before my placement is correct.

That was about all we had time for. I felt a little frustrated and disappointed in myself, it just seems like I have so far to go. There's so much to do. I know I've come a long way but I just feel like I have not made much progress recently. I know that in part I have a lot of fundamentals that need work and it's going to take some time (months, probably), it's just that I felt particularly dorky today. Oh well... Rome wasn't built in a day.

At the end of our lesson, my homework assignment was to work on backward edges... or, as Anna said, "backwards, backwards, backwards!" That will be a little tricky as the only practice time I'll have is tomorow at the Saturday zoo, and then Monday afternoon. I will be traveling for work Monday night to Wednesday night so no Wednesday night skating for me. The other thing that Anna asked me to be thinking about is to be more deliberate in my motions -- to try to move only as I mean to. It's a good thing to think about; when I think of skaters that I admire (not just on TV, but at our rink as well) the ones that seem most graceful and elegant have a certain precision that comes from a thoughtfulness, a deliberateness in their motion. I'll try.

My skating buddy Nicole was back today. She was off the ice for a while due to some surgery. It was really nice to see her again; she was one of the first people I met at the rink and she's always been very nice and encouraging to me. She takes lessons from Anna also so we have that in common as well.