Feelin' Good

Tuesday was a disaster but today felt so much better! I guess it's expected that I'll have a really bad skate day every now and then. I'm glad I got it out of my system now rather than right before a major competition or test.

Warm upz - I polled the greater hive mind to see how some of my other adult figure skaters conduct their warm ups because I've grown particularly bored with my usual routine. So today, I did about 10 laps instead of my usual 3 or 4 and each lap consisted of something different: stroking, power stroking, power 3 turns, BX-BO edges, forward slaloms, cross strokes, edges, twizzles, consecutive waltz jumps, and some backward slaloms. Whew! Tired! I moved on to the Circle 8 and did two patterns of that before moving on to Moves in the Field.

Movez - Since I did the circle 8 as part of my warm up I only did the other four moves. Everything is starting to feel a bit better. My BX-BO edges down the center of the rink also felt pretty good now that I'm paying more attention to the timing and making the BX more equal to the BO. All in all, things are looking acceptable.

Jumpz - I tried to spend equal time with all of my jumps while really focusing on technique. I tend to skip the jumps that need the most work but if I divide my time equally I feel like it allows me to pay more attention to each one. I think I made some progress on my salchow by riding that LBI edge longer before I swing my free leg forward. I also did a bunch of flip jumps. These are still tiny and pretty flaily but at least the fear is gone and I'm landing them on one foot. These can only get better from here (I mean, because they certainly can't get worse, right?!)

Spinz - I focused most of my time on the backspin and the camel. I took video of myself doing the backspin to see how many revs I was getting and I'm consistently getting about 5-6 but they are still all in the flamingo position. As soon as I try to cross my leg over, the spin just dies and I barely get 1 revolution. This is such a struggle because I know I can do a backspin, it's just not pretty. It's speedy but it's not proper. Ugh. I moved on to camel spins and I had one really good one (and "good" for me means about 2 solid revs). It's getting there. This is one of those skills that the more experienced skaters make look so easy (kinda like the circle 8) but it's totally not easy. Not even a little.

At this point, my 1 hour session was up so I didn't get to work on backward 3 turns or run bits of my program. I need more ice time!