BO8s!

My figures lesson with Lynne on the Chandler coffee club as usual.  Ice was freshly surfaced and pretty nice!  I had a good warmup -- my FO8s were not bad and edges, FI8s also pretty good.

Today's lesson:

• BO8 -- after a somewhat ukky start, I proceeded to do the best BO8s I've ever done!  I was really on a roll.  The RBO has usually been good, but even the LBO was quite good.  I was doing a much better job of getting the free foot in front, and holding it steady, and on the LBO in particular I was finally really leaning into the edge!  I was really happy.
• Waltz-8/FO3s -- went through these and the turns were pretty crappy, the BO edges were pretty good and the steps-forward were better than they have been (stepping to a good edge, although I wasn't stepping around as much as I should).  After a few repetitions we spent some time just working on FO3s because I'm so annoyed at how rotten they are.  We got some improvement out of them.  I think the keys in general were to be sure not to start the new circle on a diagonal (i.e. a better edge, not a flat); roll up on the toe more (how many times has Lynne told me that?!) and a certain quickness.  On the LFO3 I was tending to be too forward going into and after the turn so I made a concerted effort to hold my head up going into the turn and that helped a lot.
• BI8 -- just a little time on these.  Lynne pointed out that I am making my circle too small to start because I'm not getting the foot turned out enough when I step to it -- I was able to fix this pretty well.  I am not getting enough power on the subsequent pushes either; Lynne and I worked on it a bit (I think we talked about this a few weeks ago also).  It's a bit tricky, really; coming into center one wants to then turn the skating foot out and push while striking onto the new skating foot.  Geez.  I think I will get this eventually.

All in all I was really pleased with my progress today!