More Progress!

I had a makeup lesson tonight at the beginning of the public session. Anna is going to be out of town next week so we moved my 3/19 lesson to tonight (I'll still have my regular lesson on 3/12). I got to the rink about 30 minutes before my lesson so I had time to warm up, etc. My skates felt a little strange from the new laces; on the positive side my right boot felt firmer and tighter.

We worked on a number of things. The first was to work on back crossovers (of course). Anna says they are looking better but I still need to work more on pushing the heel down & back and to bend the back knee more.

Next up we worked on FI Mohawks. I'm still not getting a good check on the RFI Mohawk; Anna wants me to really feel like I'm being "led" by the forward hand. Then we went back to the LFI Mohawks and eeep, those were bad. Worse than last week. I just had some weird stuff going on.

After that we were back to the 2-foot spin. These are improving slightly; I need to get more of a push on the initial pivot. Anna also wants me to not short-change the initial pivot; I'm going to the spin too quickly and so I don't get enough "oomph." She wants me to try for a 3/4 turn pivot before beginning the spin.

At the end of the lesson we'd talked about looking at my back edges, but instead as a result of a discussion of my status, we went instead to introduce bunny hops and a mazurka. I'd been exposed to the bunny hop before but I'd never really learned it. We spent about 5 minutes or so looking at these beginning jumps, with some success.

All in all, it was a great lesson, in spite of my frustrations with the LFI Mohawk. For the rest of the session I spent a lot of time working on the things from my lesson. In particular, I spent some time on the bunny hop, which seems really trivial in one sense and still a bit daunting in another (ironic, no?). The hard part for that seems to be to really get a good jump from the left foot (assuming I'm taking off from the left foot), and to remember to point the right toe down so I land on the toepick. Other than that it's okay.

I spent a good chunk of time working on the LFI Mohawk; I was determined not to be wimpy about everything. So I tried 15 or 20 of them, with some improvement. I did a number in a row that were almost okay; although I seem to not want to put the right foot down to the ice even when I've done everything else right. I was really happy with it except that, having done a number that were pretty good, I got a little weirded out about it and had trouble doing more. I hope that's just temporary.

I also spent some amount of time on my backward glide. At some point in the last couple of weeks or so, I seem to have developed a pretty good, solid LB glide. Yea! I am still working on the RB glide but it too has improved a lot. Finally! I worried a lot that I'd never be able to skate backward; it seems like a key stumbling block for many beginning skaters.

All in all it was a good skate and I'm really happy with my progress.