All 3s, All The Time

For today's lesson, we entered the 3-Turn Zone. Seriously, we spent the entire lesson working on 3s, both outside and inside. First we worked the FO3s. Anna seemed surprised that I am scissoring my arms, although we had worked on this in a previous lesson (see, there are some good reasons for this blog!). Anyway, the FO3s are not too bad. We worked on improving the entrance position. I'm still having trouble holding the exit edge, but Anna said she doesn't want me over-checking since that will give me other problems. She did say that I'm looking into the circle after I turn (presumably to look at the tracing or some other stupid thing) -- need to keep looking over the arm/hand that's leading. How many times have I been told this? Sheesh!

We went on to work on the FI3s. Anna introduced a new exercise to help with this, consisting of skating two lobes of an FI edge followed by the turn. I found this really helpful both to remind me that other than the turn it's really pretty similar to doing edges as far as initial setup etc., and also just to be better prepared for the turn. We started with RFI edge, LFI edge, RFI3. To help with placement of the turn, Anna called out on the edges where the turn would be placed -- it's further than it seems it ought to be. Anyway my RFI3s still need work but it was a very helpful exercise.

After that RFI3 we spent some time on the LFI3. Anna agreed that my free foot is sabotaging me here; and we worked on keeping the free foot in position during the turn, as well as getting a better edge and some other issues. There was some small improvement. Anna says I need to just get one somehow so I know how it feels and then it will be better. I don't know if it's fear of falling or what on this. I've fallen doing 3s before, but except for one nasty backward fall a long time ago, they've never hurt or been serious. The backward fall was because my foot got in front of me, and I'm not doing that anymore. As Anna said, I need to turn my brain off on this one. Any suggestions on how to do that?

All in all it was a good lesson, although of course a little frustrating I'm not doing better on the darn LFI3.