Apparently, over the holiday, our rink experienced some issues with whatever the system is that keeps our ice cold. From what I hear, the Blue Rink was riddled with puddles. Maintenance crews worked over the holiday to get everything back up and running. When I showed up this morning for my contract session, I was treated to a perfectly smooth fresh sheet of ice on the Blue Rink. It was lovely :)
Warm-up: Laps, edges, and Bronze moves for the first 10 minutes. The next 10 minutes consisted of spins and lots and lots of jumps. I'm still trying to get my waltz-falling leaf-half flip from looking less less skippy and more hoppy and then eventually a bit more jumpy. You know what's hard, though? Switching back and forth from the falling leaf to the loop jump. My mind gets stuck on one or the other but can't easily switch between the two. If I do a nice falling leaf and then follow it up with a loop jump, the loop jump ends up being a falling leaf and vice versa. I need to figure out a way to reset my brain in between the two. I spent quite a bit of time with the toe loop at the boards. I'm determined to fix this jump. I'm tired of cheating it! I also did some salchow-toe loop combos. I had a couple more minutes before my lesson, so I did a couple of passes of Five Step Mohawks.
Lesson: Christopher started off by wanting to see my program jumps in isolation where they would occur in the program. He really wants me to lift my free leg knee up higher on each part of the waltz-falling leaf-half flip sequence so we worked on that for a bit. Next up was the loop jump. The first one I did was meh (mostly because I still had "falling leaf" brain) but then the second one was nice with a crossed free leg and everything. Moving on to the salchow-toe loop. He was actually okay with this! When I asked him if the toe loop was waltzy, he said no! It was a right proper toe loop! YAASSSS! I'm going to keep working on it though to make sure it sticks and I don't fall back into bad habits. His main criticism with the salchow-toe loop combo was to make sure I hold the landing on the salchow a smidge longer before I pick in for the toe loop. Finally, I asked him about a fourth jump. We pulled up the rule book and he agreed that a fourth jump would be best. So, we changed the ending of the program to include a single toe loop at the end followed by a wind-up into a one-foot spin. Cool. I really need to work out the timing on this because I don't want to finish after the music. He also mentioned a loop-loop combo in place of the single loop but I think that breaks the rules. I can only have two combos/sequences and if I do a loop-loop that will put me at three. Once we got everything worked out with the new additions, he wanted me to skate the program with the music. Yikes! Wasn't ready for that. I had to get off the ice to fish the CD out of my bag.
Program: As expected, I ended after the music. In fact, I didn't even do the final spin because I ran out of time. I just landed the toe loop and did my finishing pose. Ugh. However, I managed to skate relatively clean with everything else. I got a little turned around after the salchow-toe loop but all in all, it was ok. It needs a lot of work, though! He was musing about spins and mentioned replacing the two-foot spin with a sit spin (because two-foot spins are boring) and I suggested entering it from an RFI three-turn with a step forward to hook the spin. He seemed pleased with that and now I have something new to work on. I dabbled in sit spins before I got injured and wasn't very good at them back then. I bet they are truly horrendous now. Thankfully, we ran out of time so he didn't ask to see it but now I've got to really spend some time on this so it doesn't look like a squat spin instead of a proper sit spin.
So.much.homework.
OH! I almost forgot to add that I got a really nice compliment from a fellow adult skater this morning. He knows how I've been struggling mentally with the loop jump but, as we were taking our skates off at the end of the session, he said how nice my loops were coming along. HUGE SMILE :)
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