Salchow!

Today's lesson:

• Waltz jump -- I'd told Anna that I'd made some progress on my waltz jump, so we spent a little time on them. Anna was pleased that I am getting more lift. She worked with me a bit on trying to bend the knee and push the toepick harder, and I was able to get the lift-off to be more straight over the toepick and more lift.
  
• Salchow -- I'd told Anna I wanted to look at this since I'd been working on it. I did one from the LFO3 entrance and Anna gave me a funny look. I asked her what that meant and she said she wanted to think about it. So I did it again and again. She really liked that I was approaching it aggressively. We worked on improving the timing -- I'm not sure I can explain exactly what we worked on. It culminated in a creditable (albeit, perhaps, a little cheated) Salchow! I did a couple more, and then Anna wanted to see the mohawk entrance. The trick on the mohawk was to get squared off after the mohawk, bringing the hip forward a bit instead of having it open. I find it harder to initiate the deepened edge from the mohawk, though. We worked on it a bit and then we went on.
  
• Spins -- we spent almost half the lesson on spins. We started with the one-foot spin from the pivot. It was okay. We went on to the spin entrance. Anna says I'm much more comfortable with the entrance, but I need to consistently push into the spin. Sometimes I'm just "leisurely" with the push and that won't work. At one point Anna had me go back to the pepperoni dot and push from there and I could get into it, but from the BXOs not so much. It was frustrating. Anna said when I get to the point where I feel like I'm going to do the 3-turn I need to push the free leg back even more and feel the tension between the free leg and the skating arm, and just hold a little longer and then tuck in. At one point I had a weird fall, I was stepping forward and somehow stepped behind myself and wound up on the ice. It was so silly I just sat there and laughed for a minute. It must have looked pretty funny.
  
• Russian stroking -- just a lap of these. Anna says they are looking much better, but reminded me that I need to get the extension on the stroke into the crosssover; when I do the crossover is much smoother and flowing. She said when I practice them I should try to do a full 2 laps every time. She's got a point; I tend to do one side (or at most one lap) and say enough.
  
• FXOs -- we finished up with these in the Moves pattern. They are improving, but Anna reminded me to push for the extension, especially on the bad side. Her main correction was to really work on keeping the back arm up. When I manage to keep that back arm up I stay turned into the circle and everything else is much better.
  

I am so excited about today, I could just spit. I noticed that my last "memorable entry" (Forward Spin!) was a full 11 months after the previous one (Waltz Jump!). And now I have another one only 3 weeks later! I really feel like I'm at some kind of crossroads or turning point or something. It's very encouraging.