"Stop pushing me away"

 Friday lesson - So much SWING! We spent pretty much the whole lesson working on the Swing Dance per my request. I feel like I am doing well enough on my own when I practice it solo but I need some work on the waltz hold and the placement of both end patterns. The good news with this is that he said my chasses and swing rolls are pretty decent. The bad news, I'm really terrible at coming back into waltz hold after the end patterns. At one point, he said "stop pushing me away" because I had a straight left arm that blocked him from coming back into waltz hold. I have anxiety about touching people and people touching me (which makes ice dance super interesting, lol) so I'm not surprised that my basic instinct is to block him from getting as close as he needs for a proper waltz hold. Overall, the dance is getting there but I really need more practice with partnering on this. 

Monday Lesson - A couple of hours before my lesson, I got my first Pfizer vaccine for COVID. Yay! Except...by the time I got to the rink, my arm was really sore and I was hella fatigued. All I wanted to do was lay down somewhere and sleep. Needless to say, I was not at my best during our lesson. We worked on the flip jump (again) and I think at this point he wants to just have me start over with this jump and break it down bit by bit from the beginning. When I do the "pick and draw" exercise, things look good. When I add an actual jump onto the pick and draw, I fall back into bad muscle memory habits. So, he has challenged me to do 500 pick and draws (picks and draw?). He wants me to do at least 10 per practice until I get to the point where I can add the jump rotation without it looking wrong. Next, we worked a bit on the 8 step mohawk. The "bad side" outside mohawk is really bad. I'm stepping wide and it looks frantic so we picked a hockey circle and just worked on the turn and holding that edge after. Again, this is another one of those things where I'll have to do over and over slowly to break bad habits. 

That Monday lesson was one of the worst I've had in a while. I really hate how my brain understands a concept but I cannot get my body to do the thing. I'll just have to work extra hard to fix some of these things. Sigh.