Swing Rolls & Waltz Walkthrough

For today's lesson we started by looking at my warmup. Anna said that for a good warmup I need to get into my edges and down in my knees. She showed me a cross roll, which I've seen other skaters do. I can't really get deep enough outside edges in small lobes like that, so that's kind of a wash for now (though worth looking at/working on). She also suggested skating some alternating deep edges in a slalom-like fashion, outsides, insides, forward and back. I'll have to start playing with that more.

Next up Anna showed me swing rolls. These are just FO swing rolls for now, although I'm sure you can do them in all the other flavors too. It's like doing an FO edge except you start with the exact opposite arm forward -- so for an RFO swing roll, you'd push onto an RFO edge with your left arm forward, right arm back; start with extension of the free leg, then gradually bring the free leg forward so that it passes the skating leg at the top of the lobe, all the while rotating the hips. The effect is that your arms aren't actually moving, but your body moves underneath 'em so that the opposite arm winds up in front at the end of the lobe, at which point you push onto the opposite foot and skate another one. They're kind of cool. It took me a little while to get enough feel for them to be able to do them, but after a few minutes I got the idea. Anna said she'd like me to also experiment with only bringing the free leg to the skating leg and not extending it forward -- that's harder.

Next Anna wanted to look at my mazurkas, in both directions. These are looking not too bad, although the one to the right is much better than the one to the left. Anna wants more of a "prancy" feel to it.

From there we went on to the bunny hop, and probably worked them more seriously than we ever have before. I still can't really do the arm thing with them, but other than that they've improved and I can even do several in a row. Anna says I'm still tending to turn my feet; I need to keep them moving straight forward/back. And, of course, I could/should be more aggressive with them. I don't really like them much but I do need to practice them more; fortunately I think today I got more comfortable with them so that is more likely to happen.

Finally it was time to do a waltz jump walkthrough. To be honest, Anna seemed a little hesitant, which surprised me. I asked her about it and she said she didn't want to push me. I didn't know what to make of that; she's never hesitated to push me before, so I don't know if she's a little worried that I'm not quite ready for this, or that I'll hurt myself, or that I'm not sufficiently determined, or what. Anyway, she showed me how to walk through the jump and I tried it a few times. The second time or so I started to have a really bad backward fall, but managed to convert it to a forward fall on my hands and knees, which didn't hurt at all. I was really proud of that! I was anticipating/dreading a fall today so I felt better once I got it over with.

With that we were out of time. Anna wants me to work on the swing rolls and the waltz walkthrough and she says we'll come back to the waltz in a week.

This is the last of the Thursday 5 p.m. freestyle sessions (at least until next summer, perhaps), and so the last of my Thursday lessons. I'll really miss this setup I've enjoyed for the last two months or so -- it's been very fruitful for me. Next week starts the new schedule for lessons, which for me is Mondays at 5 and Fridays at 12:45.

After the session Jenny came over to me and said that my skating is looking good, and Dimitri also said the same. (Thanks J and D!) It's nice to hear. I am making progress, even if it's sometimes kind of slow. I just am going to have to up my determination level a bit if I'm going to be able to do this jumping stuff.