Spins, Toe Loop, Half Loop

Today's lesson on the 7:30 a.m. FS at Gilbert.  As usual pretty nice ice and only 4 or 5 skaters and 3 coaches.  They have moved us over to the "North Pole" side this week, presumably until next summer.

Today's lesson:

• spins -- just a few minutes on these.  Still working on slowing it down a bit.  JJ wants me to push into it more.  I've been resisting doing that because that tends to be part of me rushing things, but he says I need more push if I'm going to get more revs and make it happen.  Also working to open the skating side more and then bring the free side around.
• toe loop -- we worked quite a bit on these.  We went back to working the RBO pivot and JJ told me that I need to work on keeping the L shoulder forward a bit more, and then to open the hip as the pivot progresses.  After some work on these we went back to the toe loop and I was able to get one that was only very slightly cheated.  YAY!  It felt very different though!  Alas I only got that one, and a couple others that were somewhat less good, and several that were the same as ever.  It's progress though.
• half loop  --  JJ wanted to start on a new jump so he introduced me to the half loop.  So far it's just an RBO edge (hold free foot in front) then turn on the skating foot (as JJ pointed out, turn on the ball of the foot, not the back of the blade, so it's not the same as a BO3) 180 degrees and then jump.  If you can do the turn on the RBO edge the actually jumping part of it is pretty simple.  We worked these for a while against the boards but didn't try one out on the ice.  It's kinda scary.

After my lesson I skated the next session (had the ice to myself for 15 minutes and then shared it with one other skater).  Worked a bunch on moves, toe loop (got one more good one!), spins, waltz jump and a salchow or two.