Spirals and Lunges

I had a very, very bad day at work, so by the time I got to the rink for my lesson and got my skates on it was only 20 minutes before my lesson and I wasn't in a great frame of mind. Nevertheless I got warmed up and ready to go. When Anna asked me how I was I told her I was having a really bad day, so she suggested we work on whatever I wanted to. We started off with spins, and we worked on them for about 10 minutes. No great breakthroughs, just a lot of corrections in posture. She also mentioned that I'm dropping my left foot out of the pivot too quickly; she also suggested I think of bringing my pivot foot in rather than bringing my feet together. These together resulted in some progress. Also she's concerned that I'm hunching my shoulders a bit (a persistent problem).

From there I asked if we could look at the back Mohawk (step forward). We worked on these for a few minutes. The biggest problem seems to be to make the movement of rotation/looking over my shoulder more smooth and flowing; also to have my weight more on my heel and to make it more of a push than just a step. Overall she seemed relatively pleased with it at this point, though clearly I need to get more comfortable.

Next she asked if we'd ever looked at lunges and spirals, and I said we had not but that I'd done them in group. We went into looking at the left foot lunge (that is, left foot = skating foot) and she made some corrections on that, mostly to get the lunging foot straight back and not to drop the free shoulder/hip. Next we tried some on the right foot; these were not as good. I tend to let the free hip creep forward and then it drags the leg with it. More work!

Finally we did some stretching and then tried some spirals. We tried both the left and the right foot. Anna seemed quite pleased and said she didn't really have much to say other than to keep working to get the leg higher, which will undoubtedly take a lot of practice, stretching and exercise. She suggested that I keep working on strength in the legs and stretching to be more flexible, but she thinks I can have a decent spiral.

All in all this lesson was just what I needed; I got to work on some new stuff and felt like I accomplished something and I wasn't frustrated. I won't have a lesson next week due to Holy Week but I'll pick up again with two lessons the following week so I'll be ready to go back and keep working on my moves.