So many jumpz, so many spinz

Today's lesson was just focused on jumps and spins. I feel like he gave me some good exercises to keep get rid of all some of those pesky bad habits I have.

Jumpz - We started with loop jumps. He saw me do a really nice loop jump while he was working with another student earlier in the session so he wanted to see it again...and I flopped! Ugh. I was overthinking yet again and things got wonky. The best ones I did were the ones where I focused on what my arms were doing. He also wants me to get in the habit of finishing the jump off nicely after the landing - step forward and extend. Usually, I just do a push under, step forward, and go about my way. No more of that, I guess. With loop jumps out of the way we started on some flip jumps. I'm still two-footing the takeoff so we worked a bit on getting me to pick up the free leg in a nice "h" position when I pick in for the jump. I feel like I was better at remembering this earlier this year when I was doing the half flip into the flip jump. Interestingly, this is practically the same exercise he gave me to work on to get that nice position back. We worked on some toe loops per my request because I just can't get myself to stop toe waltzing them. So, no surprise, there's an exercise for that! Back pivot into a waltz jump!

Spinz - He asked me how my change foot spin was coming along and I expressed how damn frustrated I am with these. I think my scratch spin has gotten better and maybe a tad bit faster and so, when I switch over, my expectation is that my backspin will be equally so. It is not! When I do the transition into the backspin, I'm going in with speed and my backspin is like " oh, hell naw!" and just comes to a stop. So, he recommended pumps. Instead of pushing right into the backspin, I can do two pumps into the backspin. That seemed to slow me down a bit and as a result my backspin was bit more controlled. We had some time to look at my camel spin before the session ended. Basically, I'm not leaning forward enough right at the hook of the spin so my leg never reaches hip height. It's easier to go in already leaning forward than to try to raise the leg during the spin. This still needs quite a bit of work. Sometimes I surprise myself and I get a camel that has three revs but most of the time, they are just wonky one rev camels.

Our next lesson will just be choreography. Woot!