Best Foot Forward

A good lesson today. During the warmup I managed to do a 2-foot to 1-foot spin that was as good as the one last week. It was pretty cool. The session was pretty lightly attended. There's a competition up in Scottsdale this week and several of the people from my session are going so I'm sure that has affected their schedules. Before the lesson I had a chance to ask Anna something I was thinking about last night while I was trying to fall asleep -- how to feel more secure doing my crossovers at speed. I suggested that perhaps it was a combination of better/more knee bend and more edge pressure. Anna said those things were important and also it would help to push the heel more.

For the lesson, since I'd asked about them we went to work on forward crossovers. We worked them both on the circle and also starting from the moves position. Main points for today were to push more to the side (not back so much); work for better extension ("pump and extend"), and in particular to bend both knees after the push, while crossing the foot. This helps a bit.

After a fair amount of time on that we went to going over the perimeter stroking. Besides pushing (of course) for more/better extension, we worked on getting the end crossovers sorted out. The answer was that I need to prepare better/earlier for the end crossovers so that by the time I get to the middle of the last hockey circle I'm prepared to step into the first of the 3 crossovers. That worked pretty well. I still need to work these a lot more. The main focus of the move is power and second is extension. I know I could develop a lot more power than I am; I still need to get more comfortable/controlled so that I can handle that, specifically that I can push hard on the straightaway and still be able to handle doing the crossovers at the end. And, of course, still get good extension! :-) We worked on these for a while, only in the CCW direction. I should try to practice them the other way a few times, especially the crossovers.

We spent the last bit of time on turns. Some of the same observations that I've had before apply, namely, I need to not force the LFO3 (doesn't seem to happen on the RFO3). Actually the RFO3 is looking pretty good. The LFO3 is okay but I'm still tending to do strange things with my arm. I need to get better tension/extension in the arms to help this. Anna says I'm going into the FO3s with more speed; she seemed surprised/pleased. I hadn't really noticed, but maybe it's just that I'm pretty comfortable with them now. On the FI3s, a little progress. I actually did my best RFI3 ever, it was almost okay. My LFI3 is still wacky; I need to do many of the same things at once, in particular, more tension/extension in the arms, not drop the free side, and keep the free leg glued in. It seems in particular I'm tending to drop my leading (left) shoulder back on the turn (I think I'm not-so-subconsciously balking) which sabotages my balance. We finished up looking at Mohawks -- Anna says I need to turn my body in prepping for the turn more, and keep looking where I'm skating. Some of them are not too bad, and others stink. Lots more work to do.

After our lesson we had a couple of minutes to confer about our schedule. Anna is going out of town for a week and a half, so I won't have another lesson for two weeks :-(. I mentioned in passing that with this lesson (my 26th), I've now had as many lessons after my accident as I did before it -- a milestone of sorts. I think I've really come a long way since I got back on the ice, and I'm really pleased.