Waltzmania

Today's lesson was on the 5:10 freestyle. Conditions were awesome! The ice was freshly surfaced and there were only 4 skaters. Would that it were always so! Today's lesson:

• spins -- we just revisited these because they'd been troublesome. After one bad one I managed a couple of nice ones, so we moved on.
  
• stroking -- just a quick lap around the rink, CCW. I really should do CW next time... Anna says that my extension is good when it's there. I am very inconsistent. Again, I was just happy I actually did the end crossovers.... so clearly I need to practice these more.
• chassés -- a few quick turns around the hockey circle on these. They are improving a little and don't feel quite so dorky. On the other hand I was not feeling that nice outside edge like I have been feeling on the FXOs, so I wasn't satisfied.
• waltz prep -- to prepare for working on the waltz, we did some stepovers, some bunnyhops, and some double bunnyhops. They went okay. On the bunnyhops I was looking down and also tending to raise my arms too much. Also, a dumb correction on the double bunnyhop -- for some reason I was trying to jump from the left toepick, land on the left toepick, land on the right toepick, and then push out onto the left flat. Duh! It's not so complicated -- just jump from the left toepick, land on the left toepick, and push out onto the right flat. I don't know WHAT I was thinking on that.
  
• waltz jump -- we spent probably 20 of our 30 minutes working on these. We started by working them from a standstill, then went to working them from a couple of quick pushes (like the bunnyhop) -- left edge glide, right edge glide, left edge glide and jump. Anna says I am jumping too much "out" (forward) and it should be more "up" -- as I said, if I'm moving forward the "out" will take care of itself. We worked a lot on getting more ankle motion a.k.a. spring from the toe (observant readers will note I've been pointing this out as being a problem). We made some good progress, I think.

Anna pointed out a couple of interesting things to me toward the end or after the lesson. First, although I am somewhat hesitant about working these outside of our lesson (Anna observed this and I agreed), she noted that while I didn't make every jump I attempted, I got most of them in some fashion, and I didn't fall, and I attempted all of them.

As I thought about it afterward, I realized that I really am starting to get this. While I tend to think of the waltz jump as "something I can't do", I'm realizing that it's really more like "something I can't do well". That's really a pretty amazing thing for me, for some reason. I think in the back of my mind for a long time there was a fear that I don't think I even fully realized, that I would never be able to jump. I'm realizing that I can jump. That fear is baseless! Of course, whether I will be able to jump well is another question, but that is (of course) something I can work on.

Chesterton said, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." I can think of nothing that exemplifies this so well as skating. Waltz jumps are worth doing, and I'm doing them badly! But I'm doing them!

Addendum: During our lesson at some point I mentioned a comment I'd made on Nerd On Ice's blog about the justification for 2 lessons a week being that I'm not getting any younger and I want to land an Axel before I die. Anna laughed. Later when we were working on the waltz jump and she was pointing out that I need to jump "up" more than "out", she said that if I jump out instead of up, I'll never be able to get any rotation in. And I realized... that's for the Axel! I'd realized this before, but it reminded me that, while I may never actually land an Axel, or a double, at least my training is such that I am learning to do things "correctly" so that I am prepared for those jumps. Another example of why my coach is so great -- she doesn't lower her expectations for me because I'm an adult. I really appreciate that.

Addendum #2: I can't believe I forgot to blog this, but I actually got a "That's perfect!" out of Anna during this lesson. No, not on the waltz jump! Actually, it was on the last time on the chassé. I neglected to mention in my write-up above that I complained that I wasn't happy with my outside edge, so (of course) Anna made me fix it, and I did some that were really pretty good -- thus the accolade. I told her I'd rather have waited 'til later in the year to earn my annual "Perfect." :-)