Jumps & Spins

For some reason I am just never able to have a good night's sleep before these early morning lessons. I don't know what it is but I probably had 4 hours of sleep. Oh well! Today's lesson:

• waltz jump -- still working on getting more lift and bounce off the toe. Anna said I am trying to be light and have lift, which is good, but that I need to get that lift by being heavy and springing up. This was a better way to think about it. She also had me practice just jumping up from the ice and landing straight down, to work on getting more ankle-motion and knee-motion. Bend, jump, land like on springs. It's pretty simple, but I did find that if I did that and then did the waltz jump, wow, it makes a difference. The jump feels so much more free when you get that bit of lift. Anna also said I'm opening my arms up in the air and I need to keep them together until I land.
  
• spin entrance -- this is beginning to feel like Zeno's paradox to me. The key issues we worked on today are avoiding the wide-step, going in with a bent skating knee for the FO edge, getting a good (complete!) push to the FO edge, and keeping the free hip/leg back on the FO edge. I almost, almost did it. Sheesh. I need to work this some more. Maybe we'll spend some time on this in our makeup time tomorrow.
  

And that was it. It was a short lesson (20 minutes) due to some scheduling issues that came up. We'll probably make it up tomorrow at coffee club. I'm going to count that makeup time tomorrow as part of this lesson, so I won't blog it separately in the sidebar.

We decided my lesson schedule will be the same next week even though the FS schedule is changing. It's just as well. The week after I may not have any lessons as I will be out of town and then Anna is going to a competition.