Potpourri

For today's lesson, we started looking at my spins. These are definitely improving, and I actually managed to do some really solid 1-foot spins. We worked especially on the exit landing position. Key items are to keep looking up during the exit and, of course, don't turn the head or drop the right side.

After that we looked briefly at just the landing position, and worked on pushing off backwards into the landing position. Anna suggested I need to keep my feet closer together and not push out so wide; I don't need to step wide to make the pushoff powerful. Also, I need to keep the left arm a bit out to the side, not straight in front of me.

Next we looked at spirals. Anna helped me stretch out a bit, then we looked at both the LF and RF spiral. The LF has improved a little; just a *little* bit more stretch and extension. The RF one is a little improved as well, though I'm still not horribly comfortable with it. Anna had me experiment with raising the free side (as one might for an LFO or RFO spiral) and was pleased with the results.

From there we went on to lunges. The LF lunge is good, as usual, and the RF one is improved. Key points here are to keep the free side up, especially on the RF lunge; and feel some tension (point the toe) of the free foot during the lunge.

Finally we went on to jump stuff. We looked at the mazurka first. Anna wants them more "prancy," as I've noted before; and also I learned to do them without starting with the toepick in the ice, just step to the toepick and then continue from there. We also worked on just hopping/jumping straight up and down on the ice. Next we went to the bunnyhop. Anna was pleased with these; I still can't do the scissor action with the arms but she said not to worry about that. Instead, I'm just bringing my arms forward with the free leg as one would for a waltz jump. As time was running out, we finished by looking at what Anna calls a "double bunny hop", which is just jumping from the left toepick, but then coming down on the same toe and then pushing off to the right foot.

All in all it was a good lesson. I feel like I am making real progress on pretty much all the stuff we worked on. I'm still a little frustrated on my 3-turns (was working them before the lesson) but I guess they'll get there in time.