Waltz-8, Serpentines, 3s

My figures lesson with Lynne on the Chandler Ice Café.  This session was pretty hoppin', as there were a couple of skaters from Scottsdale who joined us (big hockey tournament at the rink there so no ice time); a total of 8 skaters and 3 coaches.  For me it was a little problematic but it worked out okay.

I warmed up with edges and some crappy FO8 and FI8, and a BO8.  Ugh.

Today's lesson:

• waltz-8 -- we skipped these last time... so... no more excuses.  Actually we made really good progress!  We worked on keeping the free leg in during and after the turn and this time I actually was able to more or less do this.  It helped a lot more than I expected!  Still need to work on not leaning out of the circle on the BO edge and step forward, and to keep the feet closer together (and BEND) on the step forward.  Still, these were better and that's very encouraging.
• serpentines -- we'd not looked at these in a while.  The FOI was okay, but the FIO... yikes.  This is really bad right now, and it didn't used to be. And of course my pushes are horribly inadequate right now.  Oh well.
• 3s to center -- just a few minutes on these.  I'm really tending to force these.  Lynne says I'm not turning into the circle with my whole upper body, though of course I think I am. Grrr.  I was able to retain some of my progress in keeping the free leg close, so that was something.

I talked with Lynne briefly about working on my pushes. She said I don't have to practice them on a circle, I can just push to the flat if I want at this point to just work on increasing my power. I need to spend some time on this every time I skate, I think.