Twirling

Sunday Practice - Today was Fright Fest and I'm here at the Y practicing instead of competing. I ran my Free Skate program and it was clean and I felt great doing it too. I know I did the right thing by not competing this time since it would have been difficult to tell how I would feel the day of but I'm having some serious FOMO about it. Sigh. Anyway, my practice went well. I'm making it around all of the time on my Backward Circle 8 so now I'm going for consistency, bigger circles, and stronger pushes. I worked on the rest of Gold Moves before moving on to Dance things. I ran my Free Dance (it was lovely) and then I worked on Willow Waltz and Hickory Hoedown (those are okay). I did not even think about the Ten Fox today. I'll work on it next time. I just really hate that mohawk in the end pattern. It feels like I'm going to die. 

Monday Lesson - I was working on camel spins when it was time for my lesson so that is what we started with. We even dabbled in some camel-sit combos which need a lot of work. Ew. Next up were backspins to get ready for Axels on the harness. I'm getting better at crossing my leg over in the backspin (although I get fewer rotations when I do) but my free leg is still too high. We worked on crossing at the ankles instead of up by my knee and man, things get speedy when I do. It's unsettling. After he was satisfied with my progress on these, I got strapped into the harness for some Axels. I'm landing them from a standstill but my snap is just not....snappy. That will come in time when my backspins improve, hopefully. Up until now, we have only been trying them from a standstill and I feel like I'm getting enough power into the jump so Christopher wanted me to try the step forward from a backwards edge. All my power? Gone. This feels totally different. Maybe I would need more speed which I'm sure I would get in the fishing pole harness but I'm not ready for that yet. Anyway, it's progress. There are so many moving parts that go into an Axel and it's not something you can go into lightly. You really have to throw yourself into it. I'm okay for now doing this on the harness but I know someday in the next year, I'm going to have to start doing this unassisted. Yikes. We moved on to Dance to round out the lesson. I've been working on the Willow Waltz so I requested that we take a look at that. You know, I really love this dance. It's so twirly and honestly makes me feel pretty (when I'm not panicking about taking that 3-turn at speed). We partnered it without the music, spot checked some things, and then partnered it with the music for the first time. It's speedy! Oh! And I forgot to mention, I was working on flip jumps in my warm up before my lesson and I did a weird thing that resulted in a right proper flip. Of course, because it was a fluke, I wasn't able to repeat it but I think it was a real flip! Christopher has me doing this exercise where I do 2-3 half flips in a row followed by a full flip. On one of the half flips, I picked in hard for the half but did a full flip instead. It had height and my free leg did the "h" position. So mad that I can't get myself to repeat it so I'm stuck with cheated flips until I can figure out how to will myself to get a proper one again.