Serpentine

Today's figures lesson at 7:30 a.m...

• Serpentine -- I laughed at Kelli (really, I did) when she told me she wanted to work on the serpentine. The serpentine is a 3-circle figure where you skate a half-circle on on one foot, change edge (but still same foot!) and skate another complete circle; then switch feet and repeat. So you are skating 1.5 circles on one push -- which is why I laughed, I can't even get around one circle on one push... what Kelli was most interested in was the change of edge, though, so we worked on that quite a bit. FOI (that is, FO to FI change of edge) is not so bad and I can pretty much do that. FIO... eeeep! Scary and hard!
  
• Push -- per my request we spent some time just working on getting a better push. Kelli suggested that rather than bend the knees, think, and the push (I think before everything) that she'd rather see me think, then bend-and-push in one nice smoooth motion. We worked on it for a bit. It's so hard for me to keep my weight placement consistent and to keep the hip up all the way around! Grrr.

Kelli is going to be teaching a figures group lesson Saturdays at 11 starting in February. I've pretty much decided I will take it as I need more time on this stuff if I'm going to make any headway; plus Kelli has said they are going to spend some time working on how to prep for a competition etc., which will be helpful. I figure (pun intended!) that it might help to be around other folks working on this stuff, though of course they will all be better than me.