Friday, August 21, 2020

Stronger than my fears

What a wonky week! It started with a one hour drive up to Fort Collins on Saturday for some extra practice (because my rink doesn't offer Saturday sessions anymore). I got all the way up there to discover that the rink was closed due to an ammonia leak. Sigh. No Saturday skating for me. Then, Christopher informed me that there were no Monday slots available for our lesson (because my rink drastically reduced ice time for figure skaters but gives plenty to hockey...I'm a little bitter) so we had to move our lessons to Wednesday and Thursday. 

Braveryz - I needed to get some practice in so I did a thing: I went to the dreaded Sport Stable. As I've mentioned many times in this blog, the Sport Stable is a cursed place for me. It's where I broke my leg three years ago and it's just not figure skater friendly. Their main focus is hockey and the ice shows it with deep ruts everywhere (a likely contributor to my broken bones). When I checked in, I was told I would be skating on the East rink. This is the very same sheet of ice where I broke my leg and I haven't skated on it since that day. I usually skate on the West rink when I go there for practice. So, I had a little bit of a PTSD/panic attack but then I pulled myself together and got on the ice. I must say, the ice was actually nice! I guess because they use that sheet of ice for curling they have to? It was so smooth! After spending 45 minutes on just Silver Moves, I moved on to jumps, spins, and program practice. Toward the end of my practice there was one thing I really needed to do. I wanted to land the jump that broke my leg in the spot where it happened. For closure. I lined up a loop jump and landed it and it was beautiful. Now I feel like I can finally move on. That was the last thing to mark off on my fear checklist. Achievement Unlocked. 

Wednesday Lessonz - We spent most of the lesson working on the camel/squat combo spin and then we worked on the flip jump. Both of these elements are back-to-back in my program and they are the most difficult elements I'm skating so I'm glad we spent a chunk of time looking at them. We fiddled around with my arms on the camel and that seemed to help a bit. With the flip jump, I'm still pre-rotating and forcing the jump. It's getting landed but damn, it's not pretty. I'm really just scared to vault off of my toe-pick which is exactly why edge jumps are easier for me. I need to fix this because we've been starting to work on the lutz jump and if I can't get a flip down with proper technique, there is no hope for a lutz in my future. At the end of the lesson, we ran the program and all went well until I got to the flip jump into the combo spin. I ended up doing a half flip and then the spin flopped. Ugh. The rest of the program was lovely besides that. I have three weeks left to polish this up and get it consistent. 

Thursday Lessonz - We spent the entirety of the lesson working on field moves so it was a nice break from jumping and spinning. He caught me working on the Spirals so that's what we started with. The outside spirals actually look pretty good. He said they were passable. The inside spirals need work. I'm having stability issues on these. I can do them with control but I'm taking my time getting that leg up. It needs some more time to improve for sure. After that we looked at the Cross Strokes for a bit to clean them up before moving on to the 8 Step Mohawks. My good side is nice and has good flow. The bad side is a different story. Mostly, the outside mohawk on my bad side is still a bit rushed. He gave me the pole part of his pole harness to hold onto while doing it in an effort to keep my arms from moving around too much. This seemed to help a bit as my outside mohawks improved slightly after that. Lastly, we looked at Power Pulls. Again with the "stability bar." He had me hold on to it and focus on how my upper body and shoulders are supposed to move in relation to my bottom half. Tricky.

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