Posture!

My figures lesson with Danette on the Chandler Ice Cafe.  Nice ice and just 4 skaters.  For most of the session it was just 3 skaters, all male!  How bizarre is that?

I had not skated patch in weeks and boy did it show!  Eeep.  I warmed up with edges, scribed circles, then ran FO8 (yikes, this was rough), FI8 (better) and the BO8 (eeep!).

Today's lesson:

• posture -- Danette wanted to work on FO8 and FI8 with an emphasis on posture. She's really trying to help me fix my tendency to slouch.  So now it's "King Gordon" posture (stand up straight, head held high :-) ).  She had me skate along the end line so I can watch my posture in the glass reflection.  Eeep!  All I could think of is how chubby I am right now :-(.  From there we worked on FO8 and really trying to stand up straight and bring those hips forward.  When I can make that happen it really does help, and I'm sure it will help fool the judges into thinking I know what I'm doing :-) .  After a bunch of time on the FO8 we moved on to FI8 which was better although still challenging.
• BO8 -- just a couple of minutes on this.  Danette wants me to fix my initial push so that I turn my soon-to-be-skating foot out all the way to start on a true RBO.  This didn't used to be a problem, that I recall, but it is now.  Anyway we worked this at the boards a bit.  She wants me to really bring the knees together and then turn the foot and place it down without widestepping. Eeep.  We made some progress, then came back and did it on the scribed circles.  Hmmph.

It was nice to get to work on this stuff more.  I need to find some way to get more ice time in but doesn't look promising until the school semester is over :-(.