Bronze Moves

Today's lesson was at 7 a.m. Ice was a bit busier than it has been, probably 8 or 9 skaters. This is my last week of jump/spin restrictions... yay!

Today's lesson:

• BXOs to landing position -- I had some questions about arm position on this etc. Sonya wants my BO edge to be just a standard landing position, so arms straight out; then transition to free arm back and skating arm forward to transition into the BXO. I'm still up on my toe too much on the BO edge but we did some good work in sitting on the edge a bit better.
• Forward Perimeter XOs -- we did some good work on these to get me over my skate a bit more before/during the FXO. In general the pattern looks pretty good on these and they don't feel too uncomfortable.
• Back Perimeter XOs -- we mostly worked on getting a better power push ("bay window"). Sonya had me practice what I'm calling "Twist and Shout" (lol) -- BXOs around the hockey circle, then power-push and hollllllddddd around the other hockey circle, lather, rinse, repeat :-). It seems to be the RBI power push (I guess that's how I'd label it) that seems to be most problematic as far as really getting the weight over, getting the "twist" and locking the inside leg and getting a good bend on the outside leg.

In general I think I'm making good progress on the Bronze moves but they are definitely lacking the power that they need to have. Also I do feel too much like I'm skating "on" the ice not "in" it.

A milestone: I didn't mention it to Sonya but today's lesson was a milestone -- our 130th lesson. This means that after all this time I've finally had more lessons with Sonya than with any other coach (I had 129 lessons with my first coach, Anna). Since I've usually only had 1 lesson a week with Sonya it's understandable that it took us more than 3 years working together to get to this point (with time off for injuries etc.).