Salchow & Russian Stroking

Today's lesson was on the 7 a.m. FS as usual. It was very uncrowded, just 4 skaters and 2 coaches. In my warmup I made some good progress on cross & hold on the CW FXOs (bad side) but it's still very scary and I still tend to really clunk the crossing foot down.

Today's lesson:

• Salchow -- Sonya has wanted to spend more time on jumps lately, so it was back to the Salchow again. We fixed holding the check after the 3-turn and getting some extension on the free leg. What seems to be missing is some smooth down-up-down knee action and the corresponding bringing-in of the free leg. Grrr. I just don't have a feel for how this is supposed to go, though I can see it in my mind's eye. Grrr.
• Russian stroking -- a.k.a. forward perimeter crossovers. I wanted to work on these because when I worked on them last week they were kind of scary. It turns out I was placing the FXO too early on these -- Sonya says I should START the FXO right after the top of the lobe-- I was trying to place the FXO squarely at the top of the lobe. The other big correction was to hold the arms as they were from the FXO through until the start of the next FXO. It feels very unnatural to be holding that cross-body arm thing but it does make it more natural to move the arms and then start the new FXO. I need to do this more.

After the lesson we talked a bit about how I'm coming along and testing at Valley. It's June 15th, so about 8 weeks away. Lots to do, especially on cleanup on the crossovers. My biggest worry is the 3-turn pattern, still, though. Anyway Sonya reminded me that I need to start doing test runthroughs again. I've been very bad about that. I need to be more disciplined about this or it's just not going to happen. I also have to continue to work to get more ice time, which is always a challenge.