Compulsory Revamp

Lesson today!

As a departure from our usual lessons where we have been focusing on the free skate program, we focused our efforts today on compulsory moves!

Compulsoriez - We started by looking at the original choreography so I ran through the whole thing from beginning to end while he timed me. When I finished, I skated back to him to discover that I only took up 1:15 out of the allowable 1:30 so we talked about ways we could beef this up a little. Obviously we can't really change up the elements because those are required but, because I'm a "stronger skater now" (according to him anyway), we made some of the existing elements more dramatic. The main difference in this newly revamped compulsory moves program is the spiral. He wants a more exaggerated outside edge and I'm to hold it longer. To do this, I'll be attempting to gain speed and power going into it, start it earlier, and EXTEND! I feel like I did some of my best spirals today! Holding it longer gives me more of a chance to really bend forward and extend that free leg. It felt good for once when usually it just feels scary. I even elicited a "nice" from Christopher. With improvements in place, we ran the thing again from start to finish and my time was 1:24. So, yay! I added more time, I increased my power, and I'm skating stronger. Progress!

Toe Loopz - At the tail end of our lesson, we had some time to work on my toe loop. During the past few months, I have regressed and fallen back into bad habits by toe waltzing these so, when we were done with compulsories, I asked him to please look at my toe loops and basically "fix me." We started from scratch and just did them slowly with a focus on really bringing the heel through. When I do them like this, all slow and such, they become proper toe loops. It's when I go into them at speed that they get wonky and I cheat them. Once the single toe loops started looking like toe loops again, he had me do some toe loop-toe loop combos. With these, the first jump was good but then I waltzed the second one. But...this is a really good exercise to work on because it proves that I rush things (duh) and it forces me to really slow things down and be consistent. This is something that I'm determined to fix. No more toe waltzes for me :)

Overall, today felt better and I feel a bit more confident about things now. I think I'm on the upswing :)