Old Dog, New Tricks

I went to the public session tonight. I was not feeling horribly focused, so for the first hour I was not horribly productive. I did mess around with lots of stuff (still avoiding those FI3s though!).

I did spend a fair amount of time on forward crossovers. I decided to put my left (a.k.a. "bad") shoulder in the correct position for CCW crossovers, and "memorize" how it felt. How it felt was stiff and awkward; not actually painful, just awkward. Anyway, once I had that I decided to try to hold on to that awkward feeling while doing my crossovers. In other words, I'm trying to turn a disadvantage into, if not an advantage, at least a tool. It did seem to help; I was able to stay better turned into the circle, not to mention that worrying about that seemed to distract me enough to get me not to be so worried about catching my toepicks or whatever. Something to think about.

I spent a little time on my various waltz jump preparation things -- the entry approach (LFO glide, pick and jump into the boards), the walkthrough, and also the exit, which I'd not practiced in a while. The latter is basically just standing at the boards, jumping up and landing on the right toepick and rolling down into an RBO edge.

I spent some quality time with my Mohawks (FI and BI) on the circle. These are coming along nicely, and I can do a nice combo of RFI Mo, stroke-stroke, LBI Mo, lather, rinse, repeat :-). I tried 'em the other way but I still can't do the RBI (or RBO) Mo, so instead it's step to LBO and LBO Mo. Still, it's good.

My new trick for the evening was to try teaching myself something I'd seen the kids do. I've seen lots of kids practicing waltz jumps on the circle, and it's a sequence of waltz jump --> mazurka/side toe hop -->waltz jump. So I taught myself to do a mazurka coming off of an LB edge. It was surprisingly easy. I didn't try the RB one since I figure if I can't do an RB Mo I'm not going to be able to do that either. Still, it was fun to try something new, and, once I can do it off an RB edge I'll have something actually useful.

One of my favorite songs came on the PA so I decided to try to stroke around the rink for the entire song. I didn't quite make it; I took a little break in the middle and then finished the song stroking backwards. I haven't done a lot of extended stroking around the rink in a while, and it shows. The most I usually do is one or maybe two laps around the rink, not 3 or 4, and especially not 3 or 4 pushing for a little speed. This points out that I really need to up my off-ice training a bit. I've been thinking about this a lot lately since I've had so many interruptions with my Saturday yoga practice, and since our new church choir practice time is Saturdays 10-12 twice a month, I'm going to have to re-think. There is a new beginning yoga class MW at 8 a.m. that I've been meaning to try; I could do it and still make it to work by 10, I think, even with time for a shower. I'll have to give it some thought.