Axel Progress

 Busy day today!

I started my day at Apex for my morning practice session. I was able to run my Free Dance a couple of times, I worked on my Silver Compulsory Moves and I ran my Free Skate

The 24 Program Challenge (5/24) - I'm starting to think I might not meet my challenge goal this time. I've missed some practices due to weather and then I'm missing an entire week for an out-of-town work thing so I'm either going to have to grind during my remaining practices and start doing double run throughs or I'm just going to have to face that I won't meet my challenge this time. I still have a full month left so I'll see what I can do. My run through this morning was pretty good except that my opening jump combo felt unsteady. This isn't usually a problem so I'm not going to fret about it. I'm in maintenance mode at this point and feel pretty comfortable with things. 

Afternoon Lesson - We started off with some field moves. I admitted that these have been neglected because I'm focusing on so many new skills and programs right now. I really need to make time for these again in my practices. We started with Forward Power Circles. These tend to have proper technique until I start getting faster and then two things happen 1). I don't get any faster and 2). I get hella steppy and lose all proper technique on the crossovers. Christopher gave me a drill to practice where I do two quick forward crossovers in one direction and then two in the other direction down the length of the rink. We moved on to the Backward Power Circles and these seem okay. I have the opposite problem with these. The slower ones are more difficult than the fast ones. Next, we worked on the FO-BI Double 3 Turns. My biggest issue with these is patience. I can do the turns but I'm turning the first one too late and then the backward one is turned too early. Maybe I should start counting in between them. After working on the field moves, I got strapped into the harness for some work on Axels. I'm landing them more often than not but the technique is still iffy. At one point, he told me to go full out, so I did and I landed it (it felt like a struggle and the landing was really rough). That's when he said "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I was going to hold back on supporting you this time!" Agh! That's why it was so hard! I was doing most of the work! But this is good! At some point I have to stop relying on the harness and land it myself. He said once I can land a couple of Axels in a row with minimal support from him, then I can move off the harness and start doing them out on open ice. Scary! Finally, to round out the lesson, we looked at my Swing Dance since I'll be competing that next month at Funtastics. He said the timing looks great but I need to fill out the corners of the pattern more and lean back more going backwards. We'll figure out something pretty to do with my arms later. 

So yeah, things are progressing nicely in my Axel journey. My off-ice Axels are feeling better (and I'm even starting to get some extra rotation on my off-ice loop to the point where I feel like it could be a double someday!). My backspins are finally getting the cross-foot too. The free leg is still too high up but I'm just happy that it's crossing at all. I feel like if I keep working at things the way I've been doing, I might get my Axel sooner rather than later (and by sooner I mean within a year?). Honestly, I feel more comfortable with the Axel process than I ever did with the Flip or Lutz. Why are those so much more difficult?!