Freestyle

Today's lesson:

• LFI3 -- We're still plugging away at this, but it is definitely improving. In part that's probably because I am being a bit more diligent about working them in practice. Anyway I'm able to hold the entrance edge a bit longer and have some kind of exit, but they are quite scrapy still. Sonya told me I don't need to come out of the turn with my left hand back so far; I can be more square. This seemed to help me not over-rotate the turn and settle back on the edge.
  
• Spins -- Quite a bit of time on these. Some small improvement on the spin itself, then Sonya wanted to go ahead and work it from the BXO entrance. As I expected, it's really hard for me to set a good LFO edge from the step forward. Sonya also told me she wants me to practice the push-out exit every time -- no more getting away with not doing a pretty exit, no matter how bad the spin. After this we worked a bit on holding the RBI edge as it would be before the step forward (and also for crossovers), and that led into working on holding the LBO and RBO landing positions.
  
• Half flip -- I figured Sonya would want to look at jumps today, and I was right. I've worked these but I wasn't happy with my progress. Sonya told me that I need to start thinking about jumping right after I pick in (while the L foot is drawing in). After some work, I did what I'd consider my first *real* half flip... it was good! So we moved on...
  
• Salchow -- I still don't know when to jump on this thing, and I've also realized part of my problem is that it's a lot harder than I think to get the R leg to swoosh around and in -- I'm fighting the force of the edge and it's harder than one would think. Still struggling.