Connecting Moves

At the start of today's lesson, Anna said she wanted to work on connecting moves. ..

• chassés -- we looked at these down the length of the rink (Russian stroking pattern). A lot of corrections here -- I'm putting the chassé too late in the lobe; it should be just before the bottom/top of the lobe, not after. Anna was especially interested in good extension from the push that's the last step of the chassé. She also reminded me that I need to push from the heel to get power out of the chassé, and also told me that the transitions need to be quicker (which was a little confusing at first). By that I think she means that the edges can be held arbitrarily long but the actual steps should be quick.
  
• perimeter stroking -- we reviewed this briefly so Anna could point out that I know how to stroke correctly with the kind of extension she wants :-).
• slalom -- we had not looked at these in a long time, but I use them in my daily warmup. Anna wanted to work on them and especially on getting better knee-work (rise and fall in the knee). She said, "I want your knees to be like jelly!" Of course after a hard workout they are, but not in the way she means. The slaloms are really tiring!
  
• edge work -- after all those slaloms, Anna gave me more exercises. This is skating alternating edges down the length of the rink: RFI, LFI, RFI. LFI, etc. We did all the edges this way, forwards and backwards. Not surprisingly the FI and BI edges were easier. It's like the slalom somewhat in that you need to have good rise and fall in the knee in order to generate power from the edge. Basically they are like 1/2 a power pull; if you can do them and do a change of edge you've got a power pull. So good preparation. Anna suggested I should add them to my warmup right after the slaloms and I think it's a good idea -- it really gets you feeling your edges.
  
• FO3/back 2-foot turn pattern -- we finished up with this pattern. I thought Anna was mostly interested in the back 2-foot turn, but actually we spent most of the time on this looking at the FO3 on the circle. They were horrible; I was forcing/rushing them and not just letting them flow. I've worked this pattern and I was doing it better before; I don't know what the problem was. Very frustrating!
  

It was a tiring lesson!