BXOs & Spins

I wasn't too enthused before today's lesson. I've had some bad stuff in my personal life, so all I wanted to do was sleep; but I reminded myself that I'm supposed to test in 3 months so this is hardly the time to be cancelling lessons. Besides, I usually feel better when I skate. And indeed, after my lesson I felt a lot better.

Today's lesson:

• Wide-step weight shift/power step -- wasn't sure what to call this, but I wanted to work on the back lobe of the 3-turn pattern as I still wasn't quite getting the correct weight shift etc. Sonya reminded me that coming into the lobe, I need to really bend my knee and have the free leg close, then get a good, aggressive, powerful push to the other foot. We then worked on the weight shift (remembering to "rotate skinny") and the BXO and step forward. The BXO is a lot easier and smoother when I do a good weight shift. Fancy that! :-)
  
• Spins -- About 10 minutes on these. They are slowly coming along. I had one really good one, about 1.5 revs (did I say they are slowly coming along? :-)). Grr. Still working on control, but Sonya seems okay with my progress for now.
  
• BXOs - Finished up with these as a good way to tie together some of our stuff. They are really looking a lot better. My initial push is pretty good (when I take my time), the 2nd push is good, and the 3rd (underpush) is improving. I'm getting a much better cross; I just mostly need to work on bending my knees more and getting my weight placed better so that I can eliminate/decrease the scratchiness. These really have come a long way.
  

After my lesson Sonya and I talked briefly about testing. Sonya said that I need to be sure to work on endurance. She suggested I should try to do a moves runthrough everytime I skate, then go back and work on the things that need the most work. She also said we will work on my warmup strategy since I only get either 4 or 5 minutes to warm up and I'm not used to that.