Potpourri

Before today's lesson I had a good warmup, working through a little bit of almost everything. I had some really good FO3s; I seem to be being more consistent about keeping my free foot close to my body so I was able to hold the exit edge. Yay!

Anna asked me what I wanted to work on, and of course I said it's not what I want to work on but what I need to work on. So I said forward crossovers, spins, back edges, and spirals.

We started with forward crossovers. Some of the points to work on include crossing at the knee and keeping the hips/thighs "quiet", getting in a good rhythm, bringing the crossing foot directly in to cross (diagonally, not in an arc), pushing to the side and not back, and of course keeping the eyes up. I made some good progress, being able to get on a good edge and keep a good position. Hopefully I can do it again :-).

Next we worked on spins. Anna reminded me to engage the top toepick on the pivot and point the toe, and to center my hands when I bring them in. After some good progress Anna showed me how to end the spin by pushing out to a landing position -- bring the arms out, left shoulder slightly forward, push off from the left foot onto a strong RBO edge.

Then we went to edges. We revisited the FO and FI edges first. The FO edges were not too bad but Anna emphasized getting a better rhythm to the edge; a better push and a better set. The FI edges were not as good, still need to keep the free side up and to watch the arms on the rotation. After that we went to look at the BO edges on the line. I rather surprised myself, and Anna too, by managing to hold an LBO edge almost convincingly. There was no movement of the free foot back, but I did manage to hold the edge and do the rotation and push off to the RBO edge. The RBO was nowhere near as good. Still, Anna was impressed (and I was too); we will look at these again on Thursday (ah, the luxury of two lessons a week!).

We finished up by looking at my spiral. The LF spiral was not too bad -- of course I need more extension, but other than that it was acceptable. On the RF spiral I need to keep my weight firmly over the skating foot and keep the hip in, forming a nice vertical column.

All in all it was a great lesson, and I was pretty happy.