Waltz-8

My figures lesson with Danette on the Chandler Ice Café.  6 skaters and two coaches and generally nice ice, except that apparently there's a thin patch near the lobby that someone on a previous session had picked clean through to the concrete!  Ugh!  If those were my blades I'd be pretty upset.

I warmed up with edges, scribed some circles, then went on to work on FO8, FI8 and BO8.  They were about the same as Sunday (minus FI8 issues).

For our lesson today (after a quick competition debrief) we worked on waltz-8.  Specifically we worked just on the turn, getting it placed better and doing a better turn.  One trick we used was to make me count out loud (so I would actually count and not forget). I have to use a 4 count to get proper placement.

The next trick was to work to get me to bend my knee more and press into the ice more going into the turn.  We did this by modifying my 4 count to be "1-2-DOWNNNNNN-UP" with the 3rd count being held out to emphasize keeping the knee bent until the turn.  This actually helped quite a bit.

Believe it or not that's all we had time for.  Hopefully these improvements will stick.