Spins & Salchow

Today's lesson was on the 6:30 a.m. FS as usual. Beautiful ice (we are SO spoiled here, really). The new lights were ALL on, and actually with all of them on it's not so bad as I feared. 5 skaters and just one coach.

Today's lesson:

• BXOs -- Sonya wants to continue working on XOs (alternating weeks FXOs and BXOs) even though we are concentrating on FS right now. She's afraid we will lose the progress we made in the month or so before the test, I think. Anyway the CW ones (good side) are actually not too bad; at least, just a small scratch. The bad side ones are so different though. We did work them a bit and they did improve. Still working on sitting back on the heel more. It seems so ironic that Anna told me all this soooo long ago and I'm still trying to do it. Oh well!
• spins -- still having issues with my step into the circle being strange. I think this is because I'm trying to slow down the entrance to try to get my technique better. Also having issues still with the R side not coming along for the ride, and remembering to bring my hands together. These are kind of stuck. I need to spend a lot more time practicing them, I think.
• salchow -- hadn't looked at these in a while. We actually made some good progress. When I wait too long to jump (which is often), I go up on the toe, then off it and up on it again. So the key is to jump when I first go up on the toe, which is actually pretty much the right spot. I did one where I pretty much jumped at the right place. The rest of it wasn't so great but it was a big improvement. Unfortunately I didn't get any more like that, but we were almost out of time at that point.

All in all a good lesson. Now that I've had some time off I really need to start getting more ice time.