Moves Runthrough

I had this week's lesson today instead of my usual Thursday, as Sonya was leaving for Regionals today and won't be back until next week.

I got to the rink a little early and had some time to work through my off-ice jump routine. It's tiring! I still can't jump all the way around (a full rev), the best I can seem to do right now is 3/4. I hope that with practice I'll be able to do more.

I met another adult male skater today, Matthew. Matthew has been skating for about 15 years, he said. I didn't really have time to talk to him but he seems pretty cool.

For today's lesson, Sonya wanted to run through the Adult Pre-Bronze Moves:

• perimeter stroking -- when I'm not distracted, these are pretty good. Main issues are 1) tending to shortchange the extension (lack of concentration), and 2) poor quality FXOs or not enough of them. Still, I'm not worried about these. I have to fix the FXOs anyway, and the other stuff will be there if I'm concentrating.
  
• edges -- these are in fairly good shape, really. Sonya seems pretty pleased with the F edges, and the B have come along pretty nicely.
  
• FXOs -- on the CCW side, when I concentrate these are almost at passing quality. Alas, too often I either chicken out on doing the cross and hold, or I toe-push, or I shortchange the extension. On the CW side I am still pretty terrified of the cross and hold. I need to spend a lot more time working that and realizing that I (probably) won't die :-).
  
• BXOs -- Sonya says I am finally (FINALLY!!) getting a true cross on the CW side. Still a bit scratchy though. CCW still need improvement. Sonya said I actually had good kneebend on these (I think that's the very first time I've ever had a coach say that :-)), but I need to think of getting more flex at the ankles in order to get off my toes.
  
• forward 3-turn pattern -- I had never really learned this pattern, although I'd been exposed to it a couple of times. It's a standard two-lobe pattern, and the second lobe is a lot like the power-3 second lobe except you change feet at the end. We spent a lot of time working on the weight shift after the FO3 (we only worked the RFI3-LFO3 side, my LFI3s are still too weak for this). I need to work these a lot more; in particular the step-forward is a little rough and it will take a lot more work to be able to do both 3s in succession without flailing around, even on the "good" side.
  

We did not cover the waltz-8; I think this was an oversight on our parts, or maybe just that we both wanted to spend time teaching/learning the new forward 3-turn pattern. It was a pretty tiring lesson.