Back to the grind

Alright, first practice after the competition and boy do I have a lot to work on! I divided my time evenly among three major areas:

Edgez and Movez - My forward edges are just fine because I use them as part of my warm ups but I honestly can't tell you the last time I did backward edges. I know way in the future I'm going to have to start working on the backwards circle 8 so becoming reacquainted with my backwards edges will help. Ooof, these were bad! But, after a few passes, I started to get the feel for them again. After those felt more comfortable, I ran through the entirety of my bronze moves making sure I do each move at least 2-3 times. Everything felt fine as usual but I think I made a slight improvement on my power 3 turns on my bad side. I realized that if I look straight ahead while doing the back crossover right before the step forward, it flows better. I'll have Christopher take a look on Saturday to make sure this is an okay thing to do.

Jumpz and Spinz - I ran through all of my program jumps and then added some fun new ones for variety. I worked on a split falling leaf and a stag jump from a falling leaf. Both were gross looking but it was fun to try. No flips today but I did some flip prep exercises. I hate myself for chickening out on the flips, though. Next, I worked on my program spins, particularly the sit spin to see if I can force myself to get lower (I can't) and the attitude to see if I could get it more consistent (I did). Since Christopher mentioned camel spins in passing while we were at the competition this past weekend, I decided to throw a couple of camels in my practice to get a head start. I'm able to get about 1 1/2 revs out of this but it's nothing spectacular. The tracings look like big circles so I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong here. Backspins got worked on as well. I had a bit of an epiphany while working on these! When I pull my arms in over my right boob instead of bringing them in to the middle of my chest, I have more control over the spin and end up with more revolutions! I guess doing it this way prevents me slightly from ending up on an inside edge and falling out of it? I don't care...it works! And I'm going to keep doing it!

Skillz - Since my spirals were so crappy on that weird ice, I wanted to make sure it was the weird ice and not just me being an unskilled pansy so I did a whole bunch of spirals making sure to lean way forward and press the heel. Hey, guess what? I had no problems today with these so I'm totally blaming the weird ice, lol. Next, I tried some backward 3 turns with very little success. Why are these so hard for me? So frustrating! I did some twizzles and fell a lot so I decided to call it a day before I hurt myself :)