Lesson today! I knew Christopher would ask to see any progress I've made on the flip jump and I was fully prepared to admit that I am unreasonably scared to work on it. Oddly, I'm okay attempting it when he's there so I was also hoping I would at least make progress on it today in his presence. Here's how the lesson went:
Spinz: When he got on the ice for our lesson, I was in the process of working on the attitude spin. I feel like I've made some pretty good progress with these in my last few practices. I've really been focusing on getting that free leg higher. Since he saw me working on it, that's what we started with. I think he was pleased. He would still like to see the free leg higher but it's much better than it has been. He wanted to see it with both arms overhead and, seeing that I was able to do this in a decent position, he moved me on to working on a...wait for it....LAYBACK SPIN! Hells yeah! I've always loved this spin! We are starting slowly, of course. I'm nowhere near a layback position but now that my spins are consistently centered and I have a feel for spinning with my free leg up and behind me, it seems like a logical next step. For now, he wants me to work on a two-foot spin with my hands on my lower back pushing my hips out and with my head looking up but eyes looking forward to get a feel for what it's like to do a layback (I hope that makes sense). Anyway, super dizzy but super excited for this next step! I'll have to work on some back flexibility exercises to get a nice arch in my back. Next, we moved on to the sit spin. I'm getting the rotations in position, my back is straight, and arms are in front. It would be a nice sit spin if I could get lower. Again, I have to work on being able to bend my left leg (always a struggle). But, it's a good start.
Jumpz: Straight away he asked to see my flip jump and straight away I told him I'm scared. So, he said "do one" and, of course, I was able to do it just fine with him there. I think we did about eight of them and I would say that only two of them felt like they were proper flips where they actually did kind of feel like a loop jump with a different entry and I could feel my free leg "unwrap" on the landing. He also pointed out that I'm over-rotating both my flip and my loop so that might be part of the problem. My arms check out but my body is still rotating. This lack of control may be a contributing factor as to why I'm so fearful on these. If I can get my body and my arms to talk to each other and decide on when to end the jump, I'll be in a much easier state of mind and things will fall into place nicely.
So, I'm committing myself to working on flip jumps during each practice, whether my coach is there or not. It needs to get done and I can't procrastinate anymore or I'll never see progress. So yeah, I've got a bunch of new stuff to work on and it's all very exciting but it's never going to work unless I do :)
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