Woodshedding

Today's lesson was a make-up lesson from Friday since I was out of town and had to reschedule. As usual, the adult session was pretty quiet (2 people plus myself and Anna) and nice ice. Really, ideal conditions.

Surprisingly, Anna wanted to work on 3s again -- presumably because she'd wanted to work them on the circle yesterday and we never got to that. So we worked on the FO3s a bit on the line first; Anna reminded me I need to get a better "lilt" or "down-up-down". As usual the LFO3 was not too bad, the RFO3 less so. I feel like I've been working on these things for about forever, but they certainly have improved a lot.

Next we went to work on them on the circle -- the FO3 --> back 2-foot turn move again that we'd worked on a while back. The LFO3 on the circle is actually surprisingly good; we spent a fair amount of time on the back 2-foot turn. Anna pointed out that like for the other back turns (back Mohawk), I need to press the heel before the turn. She also suggested lifting the toes, and reminded me (as always) to turn the head to see where I'm going. That helped quite a bit but these are still very awkward and, worst of all, I really can't stand practicing them. I guess I'll have to get over that. I was complaining to myself, "why can't I just do a step-forward on this?" but of course this is training for the inevitable back 3s that I'll be learning at some point. Eeep!

We also worked on the RFO3 on the circle; it's a bit rougher. Some of the symptoms are the same as the LFI3, that is, the free leg coming unglued. Anna said that rather than keeping my knees together, I should think of it as keeping my calves together, with the free foot pointed down. This results in less "swing" in the free leg/foot and seems to help. Another good point.

Next we went on to work the back outside and inside edges. The BI edges are a little bit improved but still quite rough. Anna gave me some posture corrections (tending to lean forward a little bit) and also suggested that I need to push from the heel more (how often have I heard that phrase?) on the push-off. It's true, I can hear the toe-scratch on the push and that shouldn't be happening.

We finished up by looking at bunnyhops again. Anna says I'm trying to get momentum from bring my arms forward, and that I need instead to get it all from the ankle motion (the actual hop). She also said I should feel like I get the left leg totally straight in the air before I bend the knee so I land on the right foot/toepick. She also (once again) said I'm not taking off from a straight-on toepick but instead turning my left foot out. She had me pushing onto the LF flat from a RF glide, then doing the bunny hop, so that the right leg coming back would come as a natural sequence of pushing onto the left foot. Anyway that seemed to help some. And with that we were out of time.