Spins & Jumps

My freestyle lesson with JJ this morning on the 6:45 a.m. FS at Gilbert.  JJ had texted me last night asking if we could move my lesson up from 7:30 to 7 so there we were.  I was actually awake and doing fine so yay me! Before my lesson we spent a little time reviewing my updated skating plan -- this is a document I update about every 6 months that outlines my weekly training schedule and my goals for the coming months -- tests, competitions, etc.  Right now those goals are:

• Pre-Bronze FS test -- November?
• New boots -- December?
• Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals -- Feb.
• Bronze Moves test -- May?
• Preliminary Figures test -- June?

Obviously there's a lot of work to do to make all this happen!

Today's lesson:

• spins -- still working on these and they are just really bad right now.  I just need to relax and not rush, open up the L side.  Seriously I need some kind of chill pill or something! Grr.
• salchow -- just a little bit on these.  I'm still doing them from a waltz jump-like entrance (BXO & step forward into the LFO3).  This really gives me a nice rhythm.  JJ had me work on getting better kneebend on the step forward (gee, I need to do this in the waltz jump too! :-)) so I can more height.  It helped... but there's still precious little "jump" in this jump right now.
• plyometrics -- we took a moment for JJ to mention that he wants me working on some plyometrics (jumping exercises).  I was doing these as part of my workout but haven't in a while.  He specifically wants10 reps each of:
• jumping up to the left side
• jumping up to the right side
• jumping backward (eeek!)
• jumping up astride to feet together
• jumping up astride to R foot
• toe loop -- we worked on fixing my toe loop some more.  I am starting to understand what I need to do (so that's progress).  It's all about opening up the L hip and leading with it so that the R foot is on the ice until it's even w/the L foot that's in the ice.  The difficulty right now is that when I do that all my weight is still on the R foot, so I can't jump off the toepick.  Yet.
• BXOs -- we finished with a couple of minutes on these, working on descratching them (it had me flashing back to endless time with Sonya working on these).

All in all a pretty good lesson.  I never cease to be amazed at how much you can do in 30 minutes when you really are focused!

After my lesson I skated another 45 minutes and worked on some of these things but also a lot of time on Bronze moves.  My R-side power-3s are really, really bad!  Eeep!  And I spent some quality time just doing the L side of the 5-step mohawk around the big circle.  My BO edge is not so great there.