Rainy drive to rink
But I landed a loop jump
From back crossovers
Warm-up: Standard warm-up included stroking, slaloms, and forward/backward edges. Once I got blood flowing to my legs I started in with Bronze MIF. I mostly worked on that LFO edge of the circle 8 and, if there was any progress, it was slight. At least it's not getting worse. Five step mohawk, power threes, and power stroking also got some attention. I'm finding it difficult to work on the BO edge pattern since the sessions I'm in are always so crowded, including a girl who is very much a beginner and about 4 years old. Maybe it's me but I feel it's a bit dangerous to have her on a freestyle session. She really should be in group lessons until she can at least learn to be aware of her surroundings. At least her coach does a very good job wrangling her but it still makes me really nervous not so much because I think I'll run into her but because I'm afraid someone else will. I moved on to spins; one-foot, two-foot, and then some backspins to get me ready for jumps. I ran through the standards; waltz, toe loop, salchow, half flip, then loop. I spent a lot of time on the loop jump because I was determined to show Christopher that I can make progress on this without the use of the harness. After a few nice loops from a standstill, I gathered every bit of courage I had and tried the backward crossover entry. You know what? It happened! It's like my body just remembered what to do and it happened! Turns out, if I don't think about getting hurt and just do the thing, the thing will happen. I landed a bunch from back crossovers and fell on the last one. Wouldn't you know, that's the one that Christopher saw as he was getting on the ice for our lesson. Sigh.
Lesson - Immediately, we started in with loop jumps by the boards with an emphasis on proper body alignment, arm position, and strengthening my core. Then I went out to open ice to apply what I've learned. He was pleased with the progress I made with getting over the fear of the backward entry so we spent a lot of time just polishing it up. I have a tendency to flail my arms over my head so we spent some time on arms. Since he had the dartfish video out I was able to see that I am doing this more on the backward crossover entry than I am from a standstill (although I do it sometimes here as well). Also, by watching the video, I can see my leg crossing properly in the jump and that makes my heart smile. His one criticism with the crossed leg is that I need to bring it in closer to my skating leg during the jump and align it better with my skating knee. It's very open right now but hey, I'm just glad it's happening at all :) Pleased with my loop jumps, we moved on to flip jumps. I...haven't practiced these. At all. It showed. I two-footed every landing except for one but even that one was sloppy and unrecognizable. Again with the flaily arms. We tried slowing them down considerably and that seemed to help but I still have this ugly habit of bringing my pick-in leg up pretty high before I pick-in for the jump. So I have a lot of homework to do on this jump for sure. I need to slow it down, not bring the leg up too high behind me before I pick in, not lean so much to the side in the air, watch my arm position, and somehow do all this and still land on a nice BO edge. This will need some more time on the floor before I transfer it to the ice.
So, I'm now officially back to where I was before I broke my leg. I essentially lost a year but I have worked so hard to get to this point. I'm ready to move on from here :)
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