Stepping away

I debated even writing a blog post this morning since my lesson today was so bad but part of the reason I have this blog to begin with is to record not only my achievements but also my struggles. I've been so much in my head lately this past month that I've just been really inconsistent with my practices. I'll have practices like the one I had on Sunday where mostly everything went well and then I have days like today where nothing seems to go right at all. The more I struggle, the more my skills deteriorate. It's incredibly frustrating because I'm doing everything I can on-ice and off-ice to improve. I'm using my practices wisely and working hard on the ice, I started ballet to improve my core and help me be more musical, I'm running, I'm stretching, I'm reminding myself to stay positive, I'm studying, I'm picking things apart, I'm slowing things down, I'm speeding them up, I'm running my program off the ice and on the ice any chance I can get. So why...WHY am I getting worse and not better???

Today before my lesson I had a good warm up and then then decided to run the program. I fell twice! Once on the sit spin and one more time on the twizzle. Both hurt more than they should. I worked a bit more on the sit spin before Christopher got on the ice for our lesson to try whatever I could to get it to work so he would have something to work with here. But no matter how I tried to hold the entrance, fix my arms, get lower, center...nothing worked. They just deteriorated more.

Lessonz - We started with compulsory moves. The back 3 turns were not placed were they should be, I replaced the flip-toe combo with a single toe loop, and the sit spin was a disaster. We spent some time working on the sit spin and he gave me every correction he could think of but they just are not happening. I was making such good progress on them about two months ago and then the progress just started going in reverse! How is that even possible? We moved on to the free skate and I put on the sash and just prayed to the figure skating gods to just let me have one victory today. It went ok. There were moments that felt good like the footwork but then there were moments that were just gross, especially the spins. I mean, the only good thing was that I stayed upright for the most part. He could totally sense my frustration and he really did try to pep talk me back to a better head space but I'm just so far deep in the suck right now that I'm not entirely confident that I'll be able to recover in time for the test. We ended the lesson with working on the toe loop a bit and then I got off the ice to lick my mental wounds.

What am I doing wrong here? This is the hardest I've trained since I started skating and the more I do, the worse I get. Should I be backing off a bit? Is this a purely mental thing? You know, with the whole ballet thing, I'm being challenged because, although it's a "beginner" class, I'm the only beginner. So I work hard during the week watching videos and practicing so that when I come back to the studio next time I'm better. Yesterday evening when I was at class, things started to actually click! Progress was obvious! So yeah, I'm just really frustrated that my hard work and efforts pay off in the studio but not on the ice.

I think I probably just need a day off. I've been working 7 days a week non-stop for I don't know how long and then I went ahead and added ballet to an already packed schedule full of on-ice lessons and practices. My body hurts every day and then I mentally beat myself up when things don't go right. I think I'll just kind of step away from this blog for a week or so until my test is over. Although it's therapeutic to keep records of my practices, failing on the ice and then writing about my fails probably doesn't help.