Spin Prep

My lesson yesterday was postponed to today due to the 5 p.m. freestyle session being cancelled. That meant when I got to the rink today I had not skated since Friday, and it showed. I had a good 40 minutes to warm-up, and I needed it. Today's lesson:

• spins -- Anna asked me what I wanted to look at first, and I was tempted to say "anything but that darn Mohawk pattern!" -- but instead I said "spins" since we hadn't looked at them in quite some time, really. So we looked at them. I got a couple of quite good ones, and even evoked a "wow!" from Anna, which made me happy. She did have some corrections, though, mostly involving not trying to lead the initial pivot with the shoulder or arm, but really keeping the body (the box) constant. From there, Anna had me do an exercise consisting of skating an LFO edge with the free leg extended, while trying to have a good knee-bend and really pressing the heel. She wanted to have a really tight curve but I didn't quite manage that. Next we worked on another spin prep exercise, basically learning the entrance; she had me skate a back crossover, then hold the RBI edge and hold the free leg extended while rotating the body CW for the windup. Anna says this is one of those times when we really want to do a "real" rotation, not a "skinny" one. From there is supposed to come a step-forward but I couldn't quite manage that, so Anna left it for homework.
  
• forward crossovers -- we went to FXOs on the circle next. Anna asked if I'd worked on them, saying they looked very improved. I have worked on them, but not that much. Anna pointed out that on the CW ones ("bad" side) I'm not pointing the crossing foot/toe when setting it down, which is part of the reason they feel so clunky. She had me do the CCW ones and then the CW ones so I could see how I'm different that way. This resulted in some improvement. I actually was getting some decent speed on the CCW ones, enough to scare me a little. I guess they are coming along.
  
• forward perimeter crossovers -- since we were looking at the FXOs we went to the perimeter crossover pattern. This is getting slowly better. Anna said this is another place to do a "real" rotation and not a skinny one, but I'm so used to the skinny ones now it's hard for me to do the other -- as I commented to Anna, I've formed (in this case) a "bad" "good" habit. Also I'm still not tending to hold the body position and in general the first one or two are okay and then as I get out of the pattern I get messed up and confused. I guess I just need lots more practice on these to feel more comfortable with the pattern no matter what happens.
  
• FO3s on circle -- for the last couple of minutes we finished up with doing some FO3s on the circle. I'm tending to over-check these way too much, and my trailing arm does strange things even on the LFO3. Still, I'm excited just at being able to do them at all.

All in all it was really a terrific lesson. I am so excited to be finally working on learning a "real" spin, I could just spit!