Jumps & Spins

I'd not skated since last Tuesday (bad, bad Gordon!) so my warmup this morning was a bit interesting. I hate being off the ice more than a couple of days! The session this morning (6:30 - 7:30) was very quiet since there's a Kathy Casey seminar at the rink today and tomorrow; there were just 4 skaters and 2 coaches. Skate buddy Amy was having a lesson since she was off work, it was nice to see her there on a weekday :-).

Today's lesson:

• waltz jump -- I asked Sonya to look at these first off since I'd noticed I am not jumping straight off the blade -- as Sonya termed it, I made a "7". So we worked a bit on bending the knee more, and she also suggested a bigger circle (straighter edge) going into the jump. That helped a lot, so we moved on.
• half flip -- we were stroking around talking about something and I did a half flip so of course she had to make some corrections. The primary correction was to have the L hand over more (in front of the belly button, not in line with the L side of the body) before the jump. She had me go into a bit faster and that worked pretty well, which made me happy. I still can improve the height and the draw-through on this.
• toe loop -- I had not looked at these in a lonnnnng time. We worked the pick & draw against the wall (she suggested I work on this "a lot" :-)) and then on the ice. To do the jump correctly (not a toe waltz) is just a big scary; I'm having a really hard time committing to bringing my feet together crossed. I came close once though! And my attempts are a lot better than they used to be, I think.
  
• 1-foot spin -- I'd not worked on these in a while. The good news is that my windup is pretty good (okay, could use a bit softer knee) and I wasn't scared. I'm still tending to leave my R side behind in the spin and not really bringing my foot in very well. Lots of room for improvement here. Sonya suggested I consider getting a spinner to practice with; I'll give it some thought but the only place I can think of offhand that I could use it would be the gym at work since you have to put it on a hard surface, not carpet, and you need some room around it. Something to think about.
  

All in all a pretty good lesson. Sonya reminded me that I need to work my moves in my warmup etc., so that I won't have a lot of rework to do before I test again.