Turn, Turn, Turn

For today's lesson we started by working on 3-turns. The LFO3 was more or less okay. The RFO3 Anna says I'm pre-rotating from when I start the edge -- which I translate to mean "you're cheating". We went on to the FI3s. The RFI3 is still not too bad... we spent some time on the LFI3, trying different things to figure out why it's so bad, but without much success. The approach is fine, it's just that right before the turn I am kind of throwing my free hip back and generally weirding out. We decided to move on.

So Anna gets a gleam in her eye and says "I'm not sure you're gonna like this," and then explains that we are going to be working up to back 3s. Eeep! She's right. Although I do have to say that one of the things I love most about my coach is that she's willing to push me beyond my comfort zone. Anyway... so we started by just working doing a two-footed back-to-forward turn. This is a bit iffy; in particular I tend to want to straighten my knees, but Anna says I need to stay down throughout the turn. For comparison we did some forward two-foot turns and sure enough I can stay down on those. Also, Anna mentioned that she wanted me to not rotate in the turn but just start from a rotated position. For the forward turn I can do that no problem, which led to an interesting point -- Anna wants me to try this same technique for my FI3s. That is, instead of turning the arms into the turn as I always do, to go ahead and start with the arms in the correct position. She thinks that will reduce my overly checking the turn.

After some work on that we went on to look some more at back Mohawks, since I had complained about my continuing difficulties in getting my head to turn. Stupid, I know, but there it is. We worked on it for a little bit with a little bit of success.

We finished up the lesson by looking once more at the back outside edges on the line. I had some poor ones and some better ones. Anna said that the better ones were because I was getting a better push and set in-between feet, and that I need to be sure to internalize that so I can always do it that way.

After the lesson we were talking briefly about the upcoming lesson schedule and my warmup, and Anna said she wanted to spend a little time on Thursday working up a warmup routine for me so that I'll be more focused and get warmed up and comfortable faster. Also, Anna said that she thinks I am ready to start working seriously on the waltz jump! So come Thursday we'll start on that.

It was a good lesson. There is just so much stuff to work on now that it seems somewhat overwhelming.