Give & Take

Lesson today!

He started out by commenting on how much better my toe loops are now that I have finally fixed them. They feel easier and I don't feel as though I need to force them to happen anymore. Now that it has finally clicked for me, I don't think I could go back to doing them the old way. So, yay! I finally have a REAL and PROPER toe loop!

But, as things always turn out, it's a give and take. The skate gods have bestowed upon me an uncheated toe loop but they took away my ability to do loop-loop combos. Alas. Christopher commented that the first loop looks okay enough but that I need to "try less" on the second one. They should just flow naturally but here I am trying to force things...again.

We worked a bit on spins and at this point I was having quite a bit of leg pain but I really didn't want to complain. So, I powered though it. There were times when I couldn't hide a wince here or there but hopefully he didn't notice. I know my limits and if it were real honest to goodness pain, I would speak up. But it was just the typical "sore" that I experience when it gets really cold outside. Outside of the pain, I was struggling with not checking my left arm enough going into the spin and swinging my free leg around too soon. Spins are definitely not my strong suit so I can't just...spin. I need to be mindful of all of my body parts going into them or they travel every time.

Programz - We did two complete run throughs of the program and, overall, they were decent. Jumps were landed, spins happened, footwork worked, and I ended on time. At this point in my training, we are just polishing things up. We spot checked a couple of little things (like making my swingroll in the footwork sequence more pronounced) but I think that the program is strong enough for competition. For me, I still feel like it's messy but it feels more comfortable as a whole. Hopefully, I can get confident enough with this that I can throw some emotion into it. Right now, I'm going through the motions and getting though it, but there is no feeling.

In a couple of weeks, Christopher will be busy with a ballet, so he arranged for another coach to sub for him. The last couple of times this happened, I really didn't work well with the coach he arranged for me. I worked with her twice and, both times, she kind of killed my spirit. When he offered to have this same coach work with me again, I told him that I am open to working with another coach, just maybe not with this particular person. So, on the 24th, I'll be working with Michelle and I'm glad for it. He introduced us and I'm excited to work with her! It will be nice to have a different set of eyes on this program before I head into competition. You know, a fresh perspective.