Speed, Spins, Jumps

Today's freestyle lesson with JJ on the 7:30 a.m. FS at Gilbert as usual.

Today's lesson:

• Speed trial -- JJ had threatened... er, warned me last week he wanted to do this this week, and so he got his stop watch and off we went.  The format is start at the blue line, one lap forward and one lap backward without stopping.  My time today was 1:24.  I am not impressed by that but oh well, one has to start somewhere.  I slowed myself down a little bit to do the mohawk after the first lap.  I know I *can* skate faster, I'm just afraid to.  Grr.
• Spins -- same old stuff.  Got one that was okay, the rest not so much.  I know what I need to do I'm just pretty crappy about being consistent.  Grrr.
• Backspin prep -- just a couple of minutes on this, basically working on the RFI3 but keeping the weight forward on the blade and the hip position is different, and the free foot stays in front.
• waltz jump -- JJ had me work to fix my issue with not coming off the toepick straight (this is caused by the R side coming through early).  Mostly he had me working on trying to keep the L side leading into the takeoff.
• salchow -- my timing is improving slightly on this.   JJ told me that I am bringing my arms in too early.  He said I really don't need to bring them in at all if I don't want -- it's only a single! :-)  I tried to keep them out a bit and it seemed a bit better although it threw my timing off a bit.
• toe loop -- a couple of things we worked on (JJ was very generous with his time and gave me like 10 extra minutes) -- keeping the R hand/arm/shoulder back before the jump and also bringing the R foot in before the takeoff.  Keeping the R side back is tough -- JJ had me turn my palm out (it had been down, he had me rotate it to facing out), this helped me keep the shoulder down and back a bit.  The rest will come I guess.

All in all some solid work but tiring.  Afterward I stayed 'til 9 and worked on moves and spins and also a bit on waltz-8.