Putting It Together

Before the lesson today we had a moment to discuss an email I'd sent Anna detailing our schedule for the rest of the year and some other details. Unfortunately I will only be able to have two lessons in December, due to some minor surgery and Anna's vacation schedule. Still, there is a lot to work on, and the rink will actually have morning ice available during the Christmas break, so I'm very excited at the prospect of getting a lot of practice in. It would be nice to show Anna some real improvement when she returns.

Today's lesson was devoted almost entirely to spins. We started by just doing my regular two-foot to one-foot spin. The first few were kind of ukky, but they improved. From there we went on to work on the LFO edge into the scratch spin. We've worked this exercise before but not with this intensity. The basic thing is skating the edge and get enough edge pressure and actually turning the foot to get into the spin. I didn't quite manage it but made enough progress to know what it should be like. The key is a well-bent knee and lots of edge pressure, as well as keeping the free leg back (extended) until ready to spin.

The next part of our spin work was the back crossovers to RBI edge and step forward. The work I've done on this showed, and Anna was pleased with it. I'm still a little balky on the step forward, even though I know exactly where it's supposed to go. Anna says it's okay (for now) to go and ride the edge until I'm comfortable stepping forward, even if I am at a dead crawl by then. So we worked then on combining the crossovers and stepping forward into the LFO edge. I had a number of passes at this, with some improvement. I'm still not getting into the spin but I can see it from here, so to speak. I was pretty happy with my progress on this.

In the last couple of minutes of the lesson we went over forward crossovers. Anna asked me to skate the APB Moves pattern. I did. It was pretty stinky, at least I thought so. Anna reminded me that I need to push out to the side more. Then she asked me to try (again) to skate in the crossed-over position. After a few attempts I managed a decent example of this. The biggest key to this is to have what feels like an incredibly-bent-knee. Obviously I need to work on this a lot more. And with that we were out of time.