Trial Lesson With JJ

I had my trial lesson with JJ this morning on the 6:45 FS (lesson at 7) at Gilbert.

The morning didn't start off too auspiciously -- I didn't sleep well (why is it that when you have to be up at 6 and are sleepless, you start to feel really sleepy at 5:30? Grrr), drove to the rink, got there at 6:25... and there was no one there! It wasn't open and the lights were off. To say I was perturbed would be putting it mildly. All I could think was how at Sherwood the place would be buzzin' at that time of day. I went ahead and warmed up and stretched and put my boots on sitting on the bench in front of the rink. Finally at 6:45 someone (the skating director I think) showed up and opened the door.

I have to say I was more than a little surprised there were not more people there -- SWP Regionals is this coming weekend and I expected there would be lots of competitors there getting all the ice time they can before the competition. Maybe it's too close and they don't want to tire themselves out?

I got on the ice and warmed up (by this time there was another skater, a high level girl who had a lot of power -- nice). The clock was not working either but JJ came and we started our lesson:

• stroking -- yep, every coach starts with this. Just one lap; I cleverly did it CCW and he didn't ask me for CW. I thought I did pretty well and he was happy with it.
• BXOs -- I don't quite remember how we got into to this. JJ asked me for alternating BXOs and I did the Bronze move for him, but he really just wanted alternating BXOs so I did those for him, then in the APB move, and then we continued working just the BXOs to unscratch them. He had me work them at the boards and out on the ice to do a number of things -- feel the thighs pressing together, flex the foot before lifting it off the ice.
• waltz jump -- I wanted to move on so JJ suggested we look at my jumps. I did a nice waltz jump (I was pretty pleased) and he liked it so we moved on.
• half flip -- the first one I did, didn't have much *jump* to it so I did a second that was much better, more jump and a nice landing position ("Buns of Steel"). JJ suggested that if I trust the toe more I will be able to do this jump with more speed.
• toe loop -- some good time on this. We worked a lot on the wall with the BO pivot position, JJ had me work the BO pivot and turning it into FI pivot (i.e. turning the moving foot on the ice from BO to FI). The idea being to get comfortable with that motion because it's the same as the jump, only you pick the foot up before the foot turns forward. The other point he made was to think of turning in the air with the L foot winding up in front. It doesn't look that different from what I've been doing but is correct and will result in more jump. I had some small success with this.

And with that we were out of time (we actually ran long by 7 minutes or so). I was quite pleased with this lesson, although I have to say it's a bit different having a male coach. I told JJ I wanted to schedule some more trial lessons (well, at least one more) and I would let him know. Besides freestyle I am also looking for a figures coach.

I spent a little time reviewing the trial lessons I'd had when I was looking for a coach last time. Wow, it seems so long ago! I spent so much time with Sonya and she was such an amazing coach -- it's really hard to start over :-(.