The 27 Program Challenge (11/27) - Ok, so first let me start by wrapping up my Sunday practice at the Y. Nothing exceptional happened. I ran through all of my Moves (a few times), I ran my program and it went well for the first time in a few weeks, and I finished up with some dances. I showed up and work got done.
Lesson - Today I had my lesson with Christopher and we did another mock test. This time...I passed! Even though he gave me a pass, there is still work to be done. I only passed with a 0 and that was after having to reskate my FO-BI 3 Turns. First up was the 8 Step! I made some noticeable improvements! He actually gave me a 0 on this which is nice considering he put me a -2 last week. I'm still having some issues with pattern placement. My good side is a bit bigger than my bad side so I tend to come up short when coming back to center. This is totally fixable though. The Cross Strokes were also a bit more improved from last week. Even though the backward strokes were still slightly steppy, they were better than they were the last time we ran a mock test. The FO-BI 3 turns are usually my better turns but I was struggling today on the bad side. I put a foot down every time. The good side was good though. Christopher warned me that this might be a reskate. Up next were the FI-BO 3 Turns and he noticed improvement on my bad side with coming back to the axis. Yay! Spirals were up next and I improved on those as well. He gave me a +3! That's awesome because I need all the + points I can get. Finally, the Power Pulls. These have also improved but he really wants the judges to hear rips. He passed me on them, though. So, the reskate. He asked me to reskate the bad side of the FO-BI turns and I put my foot down on on 1 of the 3 sets I did. Ugh. So, overall, he gave me a pass but I'm still not really comfortable with the score. He said he wasn't just being kind and that I actually earned the pass but man, it sure didn't feel like I earned it. I still have a lot to clean up and a few weeks to go before August 20th. I think if I just keep doing what I doing, I'll keep moving in the right direction. Christopher did say that this is the closest I've ever been with this test so I think there is hope for me yet. Thank god for spirals or there would be no hope for me. Come on Spirals! I'm counting on you!
We spent the rest of our lesson on trying to get rips on the Power Pulls. So, he had me just skating on the inside edges of each foot to really dig into the ice and get a sound. Then we did the same for the outside edges. Once there were rips, he had me put it all together and I did pattern of forward pulls and guess what? THERE WERE RIPS! I think him isolating the edges like that really helped. I'll need to dedicate some serious time to it in my practices because with this move, it's important for the judges to hear it as well as see it.
On a side note, I never really had rips on anything until I started working on Silver Moves. Now, I'm getting them consistently on my cross strokes and sometimes I hear them when I'm doing my 8 Step...and now I'm getting them on my Power Pulls. It's a beautiful sound.
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