Bungee Cord of Doom

Lesson today! Christopher just got back from a Skate Camp in Vail this past weekend and was eager to try out some new coaching techniques with me! Exciting. We decided (well, I decided because I haven't had a jumps lesson in forever) to just focus on jumps today. I told him of my waltz jump woes so that is what we started with.

Waltz - It actually wasn't as bad today as it has been but it obviously needs adjustment. He gave me as exercise that has me doing alternating jump preps down the blue line making sure to bring the free leg up into a nice "h" while at the same time bringing my arms up and out and meeting in an upside-down "v" with my hands. After two alternating preps, I jump. This helped rewire my brain about how I approach this jump and it's so needed right now since it feels so different with these new skates. I'll keep at it. I feel like this is good prep for an eventual axel (#AxelBy50).

Salchow - He then asked to see my salchow and, since it has pretty much always been garbage, we spent a lot of time trying to fix it. As always, I'm relying on the spin to get the jump going so we worked on flattening out the three turn and holding the exit of the turn for as long as possible before swinging the free leg around for the jump. It's a weird feeling for sure.

Toe Loop - We skipped this for some reason and went right into...

Loop - He watched me do one and said it wasn't bad but he wanted to fix my arms so he gave me the "bungee cord of doom" (my term, not his) and told me to grasp both ends. Then, I'm to do the jump while holding it out in front of me and not letting go. Holy $hit this was scary! Even though I was holding on to the thing it felt like I didn't have arms. I didn't realize how much I relied on my arms to help the jump until I didn't have my arms anymore! Whoa.

Flip - We worked on this briefly. Mostly, he still wants me to get a better "pick and draw" and learn to vault off of my toe pick. I'm still two-footing the takeoff somehow.

Backspin - We spent a hot second looking at my backspin progress. I told him of my eureka moment of realization regarding the twisting of my upper body so he had me position my arms a bit differently (basically holding them out in front of me like I'm hugging a giant beach ball instead of bringing my arms in under my right boob). This seemed to help keep my upper body from twisting in the opposite direction so I'll keep doing it this way in practice. I've determined that this is the reason for my lack of progress in the cross-legged backspin. I can clearly do a backspin in the flamingo position but when I cross, the weight of my skating leg is different and my upper body is trying to compensate somehow by twisting in the opposite direction. So, if I can train my upper body to not do that, I think my "proper" backspins will start to improve.

It was a jam-packed lesson but I learned a lot. I have some new techniques to try and some new insights into why some things work while others don't. Neat!