Lesson Time

Today's lesson was all about proper technique. We worked exclusively on three things - The crossover pattern, perimeter stroking, and backward edges.

Crossover Pattern - interesting comment from Christopher was that I seem more comfortable with technique on my bad side than on my good side. Go figure. We worked on emphasizing the underpush on the forward crossovers and on making my backward crossovers wider and stronger.

Perimeter Stroking - So, I made the necessary fixes in terms of the number of strokes and crossovers. Now, I need more knee bend! I need to be down in my knees more going down the length of the rink. Oh! And hold my arms out in front slightly more rather than a straight line out to the sides while stroking and hold that back arm higher on the crossovers.

Backward edges - Again with the arms. If I could just remember what do to with my arms I think I'd be okay.

Next week, since it's spring break, they replaced the regularly scheduled freestyle sessions with drop in sessions (I'm still not quite sure why they do it that way but I have to pay for the drop in session where my pre-paid contracted session should be). So, I'll be skating on Friday morning instead of Thursday and we'll be having our lesson on the blue rink instead of the red rink. Anyway, I made mention of how disorienting it is to learn the choreography facing one way on the red rink and practicing it facing the other way on the blue rink so he said from now on, we'll run the program facing the same way on both rinks to avoid confusion. On Friday, we'll run the program and we'll see where we're at with it. I've actually never skated my program to music on the blue rink so it will be neat to see how that feels/sounds on the big rink!