Taking My Time

I had my lesson this morning at 10 a.m. Before the lesson I showed Lucy a trace of a Waltz-8 I'd done before my lesson. I'm still turning the 3 too early and the first two edges are only half the circle together. Bleah! Today's lesson:

• FXOs -- back at these. They are definitely improved. I'm finally getting better extension (even on the bad side). Lucy had me be more deliberate and pace myself more, which resulted in better positions all around. We did them both on the center circle and in the Moves pattern.
• BXOs -- just a brief little time on these, working some more on the ISI-style BXOs and back edges in general. These are still pretty poor and need a lot of work.
• Waltz jump -- we finished up with these. They are looking fairly good. We worked on getting a better back edge and better setup for the jump, and watching the free leg position before the step forward. These are much better than they used to be.

As Lucy said, the theme for today's lesson was "take your time." You hear this a lot from the commentators on TV, and it's true. Another way of putting it is "one thing at a time." When I take my time to really focus on each part of the setup for the waltz jump, for example, I can remember to get a nice back edge, good extension of the free leg prior to the step forward, and good kneebend on the step forward (compressing the spring). I was pretty happy with today's lesson and glad to be making some progress.