Back Mohawks & Choctaws

I had an email from Anna this morning explaining that her travel plans had changed, so I could have a lesson today if I was available. Despite an overly-long late afternoon meeting, I managed to get to the rink in time for my lesson with a few minutes for a warmup.

As I'd asked in an email, we worked on back Mohawks and Choctaws. The motivation is partly that I want to be able to do them, of course, but in particular I need to do the back Choctaw for the alternating 3-turns for the Adult Pre-Bronze Moves test. So we dove in... first the inside BM. The problem with these is mostly convincing myself to rotate sufficiently and look where I'm skating. It doesn't help that my BI edges are still pretty stinky. Still, I managed a few -- Anna held my hand for the first couple. After that we went on to the outside BM. These are a little harder in that the rotation has to be more complete, but easier in that my BO edges are much better than the BI edges. So I managed a couple. The specific note for all of the BMs (and BCs for that matter) is to not step wide, and to stand tall -- I tend to break at the waist for some reason and of course it's totally unhelpful.

After some work on the BMs we went on to the back Choctaws. The outside BC is actually not that hard. The inside one is trickier, both because, again, my BI edges stink, and also because you need to really rotate more than I am comfortable with. Still, I managed a few and I know how they go. With that we were out of time.

While taking our skates off we conferred about our upcoming schedule. Anna is not going to be here next week, so my next lesson will not be until the 10th :-(. We agreed to keep our lesson schedule the same (Tuesdays & Thursdays at 5:30) going into the fall semester at UA. I'm really pleased we will be able to keep this schedule; it works really well for me and I feel like I'm making really good progress.

My task for the next two weeks is to work on the BMs and BCs, and also to work on my bunnyhop and landing position so that we can work on jumps when Anna gets back. YAY!