Spins & Salchow

My lesson was moved to the Wednesday PSS timeslot since Sonya had a schedule conflict. As usual, the session was a little crowded but workable. Unfortunately I had not had a chance to skate since my last lesson.

Today's lesson:

• LFI3 -- these were about where I left them. Sonya worked with me to try to hold the entry edge longer and get more control; but at this point I'm struggling just to do the turn at all. I need to practice these a lot more so I'll get more comfortable; then I should be able to get more control.
  
• Spins --Sonya really wanted to come back to these since we didn't get a lot of time on them last week. We worked on most of the same stuff as last week. I'm doing a lot better about bringing the R arm forward, not being too fast, getting more knee bend, etc.; at this point the biggest problem is mostly that I'm not really committing to the spin, so I'm tending to bail out by extending the free leg after about one rev. I need to really just get into the position and hold it!
  
• Toe-loop prep review -- I asked to review this since I'd pretty much forgotten how it went. Sonya had me work against the boards, picking in with the L foot (nice straight leg!), drawing back and crossing the R leg/foot, then pivoting and jumping forward from the toepick. I need to practice this a lot more.
  
• Salchow -- we'd not looked at this in a while. I made some progress; the biggest issue now is that I need to both increase the knee bend (deepens the curve) *and* bring the free leg around/through/up. I seem to be able to do either of those, but not both at the same time :-( -- a pretty common problem in skating, it seems.
  

Next week's lesson will be on this session, although the FS schedule is a little strange next week due to a clinic at the rink.