Reset, Relax, & Refocus

I said I would step away from this blog to give myself some space but I guess I'm a liar because here I am again writing in this damn thing. But! I did try this whole new thing called relaxing and that has helped. On the way to the rink this morning, instead of blasting upbeat music in the car in a desperate attempt to wake myself up, I played some peaceful piano music. I mean, yeah, I almost fell asleep at the wheel but my skating was better. Priorities.

After my typical off-ice and on-ice warm ups I started right away with backward 3 turns. I actually think they are just part of my warm up now. These are getting better. The RBI turns are nice most of the time and the LBI turns are slowly catching up. My goal today was to get at least one run through of my compulsory moves with clean BI 3 turns (no foot down).  More on that later.

Jumpz & Spinz - I ran through all of the jumps I'm doing in both programs and the toe loop-loop combo from my free skate feels a lot better. The flip-toe combo from my compulsories, not so much. I really need Christopher to work with me again on the flip part of it. I feel like I'm two-footing the takeoff. I did some attitude spins to try to get a better position with my free leg and I think I made some progress so yay. I also worked on sit spins a bit to try to improve those as well. I had one really nice one but the rest were the usual meh.

Free Skate Programz - Once I felt I was properly warmed up I got the sash on and ran the program. All went well (even the sit spin) but there was a little girl in my way during my spiral who wouldn't move so I had to abort and then my salchow was rushed as I tried to get back into the music. Footwork was nice and comfortable and I still ended on time. No falls. I'm looking forward to when I can do this program for the test without a bunch of little girls on the ice. I wanted to run it a second time later in the session but the ice monitor stepped away and I had nobody to run my music for me. Sigh.

Compulsoriez - I ran this a few times because I had to abort certain elements as people got in the way. I also ran it (or tried to) on the opposite half of the ice so I could get a feel for if I start at a different end for the competition. I think Bronze Compulsory Moves are held at the opposite end from the Pre-Bronze and they are run at the same time. I just want to be ready for either scenario. I had a couple of run throughs where my BI 3 turns went smoothly and I didn't put a foot down. The LBI was still unsteady but at least I did it on one foot! Progress! I also remembered what Christopher said during our lesson on Tuesday about holding an extended pose after each BI 3 turn. I had a tendency to rush all 5 of the 3 turns in this section (yeah, you read that right, five!). Coming out of the salchow landing, I do an LFO turn (hold), RBI turn (extend and hold), RFO (hold), LBI (hold and extend), and finally another LFO turn. It's really hard to not lose momentum here. After the 5th 3 turn I feel like I'm practically at a stand still. But, I have another month to polish things up here and get them up to speed.

The next two weeks are drop-ins only so I have to stop by the rink tomorrow and buy a punch card and then a week from tomorrow I'm testing Bronze Free Skate. What?! How is the summer over so quickly?