Afternoon practice today and I feel like I've turned the corner with these new skates. Things are feeling quite a bit more as they used to. That's a huge relief!
Moves - I made sure to work on everything (except I forgot the backward Double 3s for some reason, damn). Power Circles (aka Power Snails) are oddly better in my bad direction going both forward and backward. Not sure why that is but I was able to do forward and backward snails without bailing but on my good side, I struggled. I'll keep working on it. Backward Circle 8 was still a mess with the inside circles. I'm just having a hard time getting a strong push and then staying true to the inside edge. I did my Forward Double 3s on a hockey circle working both directions. They aren't pretty but considering I haven't been able to work on them at all since getting the new skates, I'll take this as progress. Finally Brackets. A skater friend of mine blew my mind last week when she saw me struggling with these. She took me to the blue line and told me to do a 3 turn and keep it as straight on the line as possible. Then she had me look at the tracing and asked me "if you hadn't known you had just done a 3 turn how do you would know that it wasn't a bracket?" Huh...she had a point. So, those FO Brackets I've been too scared to do away from the boards are really just inside 3 turns on the blue line. Little by little start adding the correct edge to make it a Bracket and over time, you'll have a bracket! It's just a 3 turn with a different edge! So today, I was working on FO Brackets on the blue line and little by little was starting to add the curve to it with the proper entry and exit edge. I was able to do several LFO Brackets this way! Away from the boards! Without Christopher holding my hands! Mind blown!
Jumps - I spent a bit of time working on getting my loop jump back. It still feels unstable on the takeoff edge but it's getting there. I even did the opening jump combo from my old Free Skate program (Salchow-loop-toe loop).
Spins - My scratch spins are so nice and my camels and sits have improved a bit too. In fact, I did the best sit spin I've ever done! I got that sweet spot right away and because the blades have such a pronounced rocker, I was able to push a bit to get lower than I ever have! Unfortunately, I didn't get it on video but my husband was in the stands and he saw it and can vouch that it was LOW! This is promising!
Free Dance - I couldn't play my music because they were piping in music from the outside and I didn't want to interrupt my practice to get off the ice and tell them to turn it off so I just ran my program without the music. It was okay.
Bronze Dances - I ran through all of my Bronze Dances (without the music, of course) and these are feeling pretty good. These blades are magic for dance. I feel like I can lean back on some of these backward edges. Cool.
So yeah, it was a good practice and I'm starting to settle in with these skates. And it's only going to get better. How exciting :)
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