Tricky tricks

Today happened in two parts - My practice/lesson and the Strength & Conditioning class I took from Christopher afterwards.

Lessonz - My practice before my lesson was nothing special so I'll skip ahead to the lesson. We ran through the program to see what I have so far and then we moved on to choreographing the final jump (we'll leave the final spin for our next lesson). I knew I wanted to put a loop in as my fourth and final jump but I wasn't anticipating Christopher making the entry so damn difficult! Remember those backward power 3 turns from a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, those came into play today (good thing I have been sorta practicing them!). So, coming out of the salchow, I do some cross strokes and forward 3 turns to get to the other end of the rink and then... a mohawk - RBO power 3 turn - loop jump. Yeah. Tricky! I actually surprised myself and was able to do it but very slowly for now. Later in my practice after the lesson I did a bunch that had a bit more speed but man, so challenging! If I can pull it off during competition, I think it might be impressive but there is a lot more work to be done until then. We also cleaned up some other areas in the program where the transitions were a bit sloppy. When I exit the backspin, I should be facing the far away scoreboard, step forward, cross stroke, step forward, mini spread eagle and continue on with the step sequence from there. I was having a hard time getting from the backspin exit to the "mini eagle" (that's what I'll call it now) so this fixes that and makes the flow much nicer. He had a lesson with another student right after me so I asked him if he could just hit play on my music before he started with her so I could run it one more time. Ugh, it was bad. I'm having a hard time with the timing. It will get there, though.

Strength & Conditioningz - Right after my session, I had enough time to get my skates off and run up to the promenade above the blue rink for Christopher's off-ice class. I was told to bring a theraband, a yoga mat, and some hand held weights (which I didn't bring because weights are impossible to find these days). This class kicked my ass a bit. It was me and two other young ladies (emphasis on "young") but I feel like I held my own. It was tough and I know I'll be sore tomorrow but, like all of Christopher's off-ice classes, they are well done and I always feel stronger for having done it. Since my schedule at work changes every other week, I will only be able to go every other Wednesday.