Backward!

 My lesson with Danette on the Chandler adult skate.  Ten skaters.  Unfortunately due to overnight thunderstorms the rink was quite foggy and the ice was pretty bumpy.  I warmed up with edges.

Today's lesson was all backward stuff, mostly BO.  We started out working on the BO8.  Then we spent some time just pumping around the circle while trying to hold that skating shoulder back and the free foot in front.  From there we went to holding the hockey stick (yay) while doing the same thing, then back to BO8 with the hockey stick and then without.

This really emphasized to me how much more I need to engage my core, and how much I need to watch the upper body position -- not just arms/shoulders but also where I'm looking.  We did make good progress on getting me to (duh) look where I'm going.

Forward!

 My lesson with Danette on the Chandler adult skate.  Nice ice, 7 skaters.  I was running late so just had time to scribe circles.

Today's lesson:

• F edges -- the FO edges were really rough.  Partly because I hadn't skated in two weeks (and, no warmup) -- so we spent a lot of time fixing them.  We also did some FI edges, which were fine.
• FO8 -- Mmph.  The RFO is not so bad, but we spent a lot of time working on the LFO to both fix the diagonal start of the circle and stay off the front of the blade.  Eeep.

Edges

 My lesson with Danette on the Chandler adult skate. Nice ice, 7 skaters.  I tried to scribe circles but the pen on my scribe is kaput.  Oh well.  I did manage to warmup forward edges.

Today's lesson:

• back edges -- most of the lesson.  We made some good progress on improving posture and flow on these, and getting me to actually hold the free foot in front and keep turned into the circle. Some real improvement here.
• waltz-8 -- just 3 or 4 minutes on these.  I just could not get myself to actually turn. Uck.