Progress

I had my 7th lesson with Anna today. I got to the rink on time and had a good 20 minutes to warm up. Once again I was feeling just a little bit "off" for some reason.

We started by looking at edges down the line. The outsides are not too bad, but Anna wants me to point my toe more and be more careful about the setup and rhythm of the edge -- push, set, switch(arms), foot, then together & switch feet. We also looked at insides; there I need to work on not dropping my free side so much. In general the FIs need more work and don't look too crisp yet.

We looked at crossovers next. The CCW ones are much improved and Anna was happy with them in general. The CW ones need some work; I'm making the crossing movement too big and still having issues with the crossing foot coming down on an outside edge and then flipping to an inside edge.

On the CW backward crossovers, I am stepping *waaaay* too wide. Anna wants a smaller (but powerful) step. She also emphasized pushing the back heel back/down to avoid scraping the toepick and get more power. She also looked at the CCW ones and these are much more embryonic, I need to work them a lot more.

Next up we went to look at my nemesis, FI3s. We worked on the RFI3 for a bit; it's not too bad. Then I decided to bite the bullet and go to the LFI3. I actually managed to try several, so that is a start I guess. I'm not getting enough rotation, and at one point I had my free knee basically blocking my skating knee and my free foot extended, which obviously is a problem. I was able to correct that but it's still needing more work.

We finished off by looking at FI Mohawks. The RFI is not too shabby but she wants me to get a better check and to keep looking in the direction I'm going (will help the check). Then we started into new territory, the LFI Mohawk. After some initial clumsiness I was able to make a decent approximation of one; it's still quite rough to get the rotation and the movement of the free foot to happen together with the correct timing. It's coming along though.

For next week Anna suggested I keep working on the crossovers and also my 2-foot spin, especially lifting the right foot. That will take some work... She said she was very happy with my progress and that we'll be moving on to jumps soon. I told her I'd leave that up to her :-).

Tomorrow and Sunday are the Tucson Invitational competition at our rink. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of folks I know competing. It should be a lot of fun to watch. Maybe next year one of them will be me!