New Things!

Lesson today and I was ready for it. I've had so much confidence lately. I think passing my test, getting my Flip jump under control, and spinning well has really helped me feel capable (and when I feel capable, I skate well). First of all, I had a huge fangirl moment when I got to the rink. It's National Pairs Camp at  the Promenade and there were some amazing people there. I got to see Chris Knierim, Timothy LeDuc, and Nathan Bartholomay! It was so cool to see them skate in person!

Lesson - I was first lesson so I did one lap for warmup and then we got right to work discussing the new Free Dance. I did an attitude spin for my Dance Spin element in this previous program and would really like to challenge myself this time. Last year, I was working on a catch foot camel spin and it just didn't come together in time to compete with so that's why we went with the attitude. But now I feel stronger and think I can make it happen. My camels are stronger, yes, but my back flexibility is not. I tried a few and only one of them worked. I spent a lot of time reaching back trying to blindly find my foot to grab. So...stretching. I gotta work on some back bends or something. He had me try what I'm calling a broken leg camel and he really liked it. I go into the camel and bend my free leg as if I'm going in for the catch foot but don't. It was nicely centered and it felt like a lot of revolutions. I don't know. He likes it but it feels like a mistake spin. I'll keep working on it. Next up was a broken leg sit spin. My sit spins were gross today because I really have not been working on them but I had one broken leg sit spin that was actually good! I did it slowly from a standstill on the blue line and he told me to go down so low that my "broken leg" drags on the ice. It was REALLY low! I think being able to anchor myself like that helps me get lower. Something else to work on. We worked on some Twizzles with different arm positions and that was about as expected. These are getting better but slowly. Finally, I told him I wanted to expand my turn vocabulary for this next Free Dance. My FI Brackets are a good contender so he had me work on those with an extended free leg on the exit edge. We touched on Rockers and he introduced me to BI Loops (my attempts were either just really big circles or backward 3 turns. These are HARD). 

Knee Slides - We talked about adding a knee slide so we worked on these for about 10 minutes. My old lady knees hurt to begin with so this didn't feel lovely. I think I got the hang of it but I'm reluctant to go down quickly because of the pain. Time to invest in knee pads, I guess. 

So, it was a good lesson and seeing amazing skaters on the ice helped inspire me as well. Yay for feeling fantastic!