"Wow!"

I couldn't have asked for better conditions for today's lesson. The adult session was almost empty (4 people), and the ice was beautiful! Before the lesson Anna was working on her own stuff, including skating actual figures. I'd seen people skating them before, but never anyone who did them at such speed or with such confidence. I think it's a loss to the sport that so few do them anymore.

We started our lesson working on spins. I had worked them in my warmup and I wasn't all that thrilled with them, but I managed to do some nice ones for Anna and she said she didn't have anything more to say about them for now (except for things I already know). It occurred to me when we finished that I am a lot better at spinning than I ever... expected to be? I'm not sure how to explain it other than to say that I had this feeling of gratitude and amazement wash over me that I am actually able to do this stuff. Which is not, of course, to say that it was perfect or couldn't be improved :-).

Next I asked Anna for some clarifications from yesterday's lesson on crossovers. I showed her some of my questions/points, in particular that it had occurred to me that I had been treating the outside foot push of the crossover differently than a normal stroke (as in normal forward stroking) and that I shouldn't. Anna nodded agreement. Then I also asked if I was correct in thinking that the inside foot needs to be pushing as the outside foot is crossing, and she agreed again. So I'm correct in that. Also, I expressed my confusion at trying to keep down in my knees vs. not and she said again that she's trying to get me to lift the inside foot more cleanly and that she needs me to be lifting the free hip to do it. With that I did a few in front of her and she seemed to think they were better. So I think I know what it is supposed to be like, even if I can't always do it.

With that we moved on to do a little quick perimeter stroking, especially in the CW direction. I'm still not getting as much extension as I could/should but she's liking the way these are looking for now.

Having done that we went on to look at the perimeter crossover pattern. Anna said I need to be a little more mindful of this and not shortchange the "3rd step", i.e. the FI just before the crossover. Also I need to think about not turning my body until my feet come together before the crossover. Lots to think about here, but they are looking better. I've worked them fairly often but we had not looked at them in a while; so she was pleased that they have improved.

For the last few minutes we looked at spirals and lunges again. First off I did an LF spiral which prompted Anna to say "Wow!" That made me happy. She said, "That's a real spiral!" I'll have to take her word for it but it certainly felt more stretched out and higher. She then asked me to get into position quicker, so I tried that with some success. We went to look at the RF spiral and that was a bit weird; I had issues getting my weight placed over my right skate correctly. Finally I managed a couple that were more or less okay, but obviously not as good. We went on to look at the LF lunge (Anna made the "lower!" motion with her hands). On the RF lunge I did one and suggested to Anna that I needed more tension in the trailing leg, and she said "Exactly!". I guess I'm learning :-). Anyway, I tried that and it was quite an improvement. I have to say, doing lunges on clean ice is a little disconcerting -- I'm used to doing it on public session ice where you get some drag on the boot, which is actually a stabilizing influence. Without that drag it's a little harder to keep that leg back, thus the need for more tension.

And with that, we were out of time. I was really pleased with today's lesson and felt like I'd really made some progress.