Step Forward; Toe Loop

I am in Portland for work and had a lesson this morning with Sonya at WSC.

I skated the 7:15 session and warmed up a bit.  I had a heck of a time though as I had neglected to pack skating socks.  I tried to put my boots on over my regular socks but they were just too thick, so I gave up and had to skate commando (no socks).  Eeep!  A weird feeling.  I know some people like it but I really don't ever want to do that again!

Sonya decided to take me for the last 15 minutes of the session, and then we finished after the ice cut.   She was very generous with her time today.

Today's lesson:

• step forward -- I told Sonya I really wanted to work on these as they are really holding me back.  We worked them on the wall, then on the ice, and then in the waltz-8 context.  I could do reasonably well just skating backward, but when I did it in the waltz-8 it was really bad.  Sonya had me work to make it more structured -- back edge, nicely bent knee, free leg extended, then bring the arms around, straighten the knee, bring the free leg close, and then push onto the new skating leg with the free hip up.  Down, up, down.  It seems like so many things in skating are down, up, down, and this is one of them. Eeep.  I realized in thinking about it later that if I can improve these it will probably also improve my spin entrance (stepping forward to LFO) and also my waltz jump entrance (duh, same thing).  It shows up everywhere!  Hmm.  I'm going to try to work that exercise every time I skate.
• toe loop -- we worked a bunch on these also.  We started with Sonya drawing a circle on the ice and having me skate into it backwards and do the RBO pivot.  After that we worked more on the jump itself; on the wall we practiced the pick and draw and step through (I swear I remember working with Sonya on these like 5 years ago!).  She also reminded me to keep the upper body strong in an "L" with the arms until the draw; then bring the arms around strongly (like in the pivot).  While I didn't do any particularly good ones, I did make some good progress.  One thing Sonya noted was that I tend to want to pick too far to the right, instead of (more or less) straight back.  Then I get myself all blocked.  It's true.  Anyway I'm really pleased with this, just need to work them more.

That's all we had time for... oh well!


A special bonus today was getting to see Karly, Madison and Sierra.  I really miss my PDX homegirls!  It was good to see them :-).