LFI3!

I had my usual Friday lesson today at coffee club. The new management has lowered the CC price to $6, at least for now.

I had a good warmup and then started my lesson. Anna asked me what she needed to see, and I told her I assumed we'd work on moves. So I suggested we start on the LFI3. I tried a few and they were kind of where I left them last -- a bit scrapey and scratchy and tentative. Still, Anna thought they were not bad and actually better than my RFI3. We worked them a bit and found a key point is that when I would start my entrance edge and then balk, I was leaning back. She suggested more pressure (I think of it more as "tension") from the leading hand. We also tried some RFI3s and this advice helped them too.

Next we looked at Mohawks. These are okay; the main problem areas are dropping the free hip (a persistent problem) and looking down (also a persistent problem).

Having spent almost half the lesson on turns, we next looked at back crossovers. Anna thinks they are looking better; she said I should try to get more bend at the ankles, and she suggested thinking of it as putting the back of my calf over my ankle. I assume that will help avoid scraping my toepicks, which I am getting a little of. We looked at both the CW (pretty good) and CCW (not too bad). Anna was surprised that my CCW crossovers are as good as they are. That was nice.

Next Anna wanted to look at more backward stuff, so we looked at alternating back edges/landing position; just pushing onto a back edge with the free leg extended behind in the landing position. These weren't too bad, but Anna suggested pressing the free shoulder forward just a little, and of course to watch out not to drop the free hip.

We were pretty much out of time at that point, but we nevertheless spent another 5 or 8 minutes looking at spirals and lunges. The spirals are not too bad but Anna reminded me to keep the head up! Yes, I was looking at the ice again. Other than that she was pleased. We did them on a flat and then also on an outside edge. In working on them I briefly fell onto an inside edge. Anna said the inside spiral is harder because you have to work harder to keep the free hip up. She also suggested that I try to turn my free hip out a little more in general.

On the lunge, my left foot lunge looks nice. Anna says the problem I'm having with the right foot lunge is because I'm dropping the free side (I heard a lot of that today). I'll have to work on that.

All in all I thought it was a terrific lesson and I thought we accomplished a lot. I'm really happy to think that I am more-or-less in the position to have all 4 of my forward 3-turns in place. Yea!

For next week, Anna said we will look once more at the forward perimeter crossovers. As we were leaving one of the rink employees was handing out free t-shirts to everyone -- very cool. They say "Polar Ice Tucson -- April 15th, 2004". Neat!