Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-22

Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-22

It's a new week of skating, and we want to know whether your performance is great (blue ribbon) or could be better (booby prize). Let us know all the details!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

Booby Prize - Woke up at 6am to discover that this on-again, off-again "malaise" that I've been having was hitting me hard, so I not only didn't go skating, but I took the day off work and wound up sleeping until 2PM!! The doctor said it's a low-level pneumonia and I've got some medication to try to knock it out for good. I might be able to skate tomorrow; he said I should play it by ear. So it's back to laying around for me, because I am SO ANXIOUS to get working on my freestyle program!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

Cindy, feel better really soon! I hope that it doesn't get to be more serious. Until you're better, take good care of yourself, and know that I wish you a speedy recovery!

<strong>Booby Prize:</strong>I finished skating last Tuesday, and I won't be back on the ice until I go for a coaching course in mid-July. Until then, I'll have to watch my skating tapes over and over again.

<strong>Blue Ribbon:</strong> My last day of high school EVER is on Wednesday. I'm so excited that after 5 loooooooooong years, I'll actually be out of that hell hole! Then it's 2 months and 10 or so days until I move out!!! I can't wait!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

<strong>Starshine</strong> - ohmygosh, mid-July, I'd be crawling the walls. I can no longer even travel for work for a week and feel comfortable with not skating! On the other hand, GOOD LUCK and congrats on your last day tomorrow. I still remember the last day of high school like it was yesterday! I could tell you what I was wearing, who I was with, and what we did and said. It's just burned into my brain. You've had quite an awesome year and accomplished a lot, so I hope you enjoy every last minute and then get the heck out of there!

BLUE RIBBON - Oh, glorious, glorious practice this morning. After inhaling my medicine last night, I thought I'd have a very restful sleep, but instead was totally bonkers all night long with the most bizarre dreams, mostly about skating. In fact, I "skated" the entire night long, going over and over my program, with weird twists and turns that made it seem like I was Alice in Wonderland. The oddest thing is that I was working on the ACTUAL footwork from my program, and when I woke up this morning, I had memorized the whole thing, exactly as I have it written down!

I thought I'd be all dragged out and tired, but felt pretty chipper and since the doc didn't tell me NOT to skate ... well, ok, so yell at me, but I went to the rink because I just couldn't BEAR not to try out the program, and I had just an awesome skate. I made lots of progress and had read a book (just before bed, of course) on the way to attack a new program. (If you don't care, just skip over this to the next paragraph.) What you do, is you divide your program into small segments. Then you label the middle one as "A", the one just before it as "B," the one just after it as "C", the one just before "B" is "D", and so on. Then you practice the segments in the order A through ??, with most attention being paid on "A", a little less on "B" and so on. What this does over time, is it allows you to get really, really good at the middle part, so now as you do your (at least) two run-throughs a day, is you have something to look forward to (oh good, I'm almost at the middle, where I'm really good), and then after that part you can say, wow, I'm nearly done here and look how good I'm doing. It was a blast.

I felt pretty good the program and once I'm feeling better, I should have more endurance. But it was just fun. I also concentrated on the Gold Moves that need the most work (power circles in the clockwise direction and the power stroking with 3s on the ends) and I was pleased with them. My back spin was ON today, which is always a pleasant occasion.

BOOBY PRIZE - Dang, this sickness just saps my strength and right now I'm going to have a long lie down on the couch -- possibly for the rest of the night, because I want to skate again tomorrow morning and can't be coughing the whole time I do so.

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

Cindy, sounds like that program of yours will be fabulous by the time test day rolls around. The way of practicing your program is interesting, I've never heard of it before. If it works, all the better. Keep up the greatness with the Moves too. They'll be good to go in no time! Also, take care of that mystery ailment. We want you in perfect form for the test!

And about not skating until mid-July, I'm going nuts and it's been a week since I skated last. I got the information today in the mail for the coaching course myself and Paul are attending. It's 3 days long, and has many different components to it, both on the ice and off the ice. After completing the course, I'll be a certified Canskate Coach, and will have more stuff to complete if I want to be a certified Professional coach. I'm getting excited about the course, and it's nice that I have a friend there doing it with me.

That's it for me for now, so Happy Skating! (you lucky devils!:evil: )

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

All blue ribbon..

Waltz jump is really nifty now. The speed is picking up and the height and distance is really improving.

Salchow, while still in it's infancy is getting it's act together. I am pulling it all together and actually showing some consistency.

Toeloop. Today we started the toeloop and actually I seem to have gotten it down quickly. I think it is easier than the salchow.

Funny sidelight. I amusually the only male and the oldest person out in the rink. I noticed that a few of the younger ladies were watching my efforts, especially when I did a waltz jump/side toe hoop/waltz jump combo together. maybe thry found it fascinating to watch an old guy do jumps.

Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices

Figureskates - I've always liked the toe loop better than the salchow.

Cindy - Please be very careful - from someone who has dealt with pneumonia trust me - it is not fun and it will keep you off the ice for a long time if it gets worse.

Starshine - Do you lose your local ice? What a bummer. I guess I shouldn't complain about losing only my Saturday ice . I hope that your seminar is great.

OK - here's mine:

Blue Ribbon: This is a new session for my lesson, and it was pretty empty. It is at a club that I don't belong to, but they allow other club members in the summer and they are letting my coach guest coach.

Worked on the Intermediate MIF's for most of the lesson. Coach has shown me the proper exits for the power circles, which tells me that I'm doing the body of them correctly. (BTW, Cindy, you would not believe the difference in the standard applied to the Intermediate as the Gold MIF's. When I tested, because of the deadlines we were facing, we did the bare minimum. The Intermediates are a whole different story).

He's quite happy with my power 3's around the end (again, Cindy, after the 3's on the Adult Gold test, these are fairly easy). For those of you who aren't familiar with the Adult Gold test, the 3's on the end on that test are from the standard Novice test and are quite hard.

Axel is improving - in practice they are feeling better. We only got to waltz jumps today (ran out of time), but I know that his corrections to the entry will help my axel. I've had some problems with it (mostly pre-rotation), but because I was so gung ho to compete at Adult Nationals (injured no less), we never had a chance to work on improving my 21 year old muscle memory . Didn't do any doubles - ran out of time.

Oh - most important of the Blue Ribbons - I am in week 2 of being able to jump and my injury isn't hurting. A bit sore at times, a bit tight at times, but not that stabbing pain I had before Adult Nationals .

Booby Prize: My lesson was only 50 minutes instead of an hour - we aren't used to it. We lost some jumping time because of it. We lost jumping time, not only because of the shorter seeions but also because of....

My world's worst brackets (on the MIF test). Ugh - they were terrible. Most of them are ok except for the backward outside ones. We discovered something about them - if he lightly held my left hand (on the right BO ones), they were extremely easy. When I do them regularly, I am tensing up something terrible and it is throwing the whole thing out of whack. So he wants me to practice them 2-footed to get the more relaxed feel of them. Hope this works - I knew they just felt wrong but didn't know how to fix it.

Good luck in all of your skating this week!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices

It's so encouraging and inspiring reading about all of your accounts of lessons and practices - it makes me feel like I'm really becoming part of the "skating world"! And it's supersuper exciting, something I've wanted to do since watching skating at the 1992 Olympics. Yipee!!

Basic Skills, Week 3

Blue ribbon: Nothing superb stands out about this lesson, but that doesn't mean it wasn't great overall! Looking forward to Wednesday nights is beginning to be the thing that gets me through the weeks. I've always loved skating but now that I'm finally actually going somewhere with it, I love it even more!! Today we worked on crossovers again, and I finally was able to get the proper stance and do them (somewhat) gracefully and then worked on backward stroking, which I couldn't get at all at first but by the end I had mastered it. I figured out the secret to get me through the learning process before my muscle memory kicks in, and that's to constantly talk (silently!) to myself, like "Okay, weight over left leg, right leg - relax!" Once I learn things a bit better I think I'll stop this. The arms and hips are coming a bit more naturally (position-wise, which I'm pretty aware of since I've done a little dance - except I'm usually aware that I'm doing them WRONG! hah). But next week we're working on three turns for real I hope (we're doing them on two feet, kinda? I guess) and back crossovers if all goes well. Oh, and I didn't fall!

Booby prize: My calves, ankles, and feet are killing me today. I think I'm relying on my lower legs too much for things when I really should be using the muscles of my whole body. Not the most eventful class + practice; I didn't have any particularly nasty falls I can tell about. I'm progressing, I think. Oh, I can think of one bad thing. The little girls at the rink are making me feel like an old lady, and since I just graduated from high school, I think that's a bit unfair! Slow down, little girls!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

sk8er, the arena I skate at doesn't lose it's ice, it just doesn't have any programs available until July, and I don't know when the open skates are either!!

Sounds like everyone is doing well this week! Keep it up!

Happy Skating!

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

Had a chance to practice before work.

Blue Ribbon: Waltz jump: Getting some real height and distance now.
Salchow: Better. Getting the hang of kicking my leg through and lifting off on the left leg. Some of them look pretty good but nothing to alert Nicole Bobek about.
Alternating 3's: Better. I am getting a better handle in checking the upper body consistently

Booby: Toeloop. It is more of a coordination thing. I am one of those individuals that has to do it at least a thousand times before it all sinks in.

All-in-all, slow but steady progress.

Re: Blue Ribbon/Booby Prize Lessons & Practices June 16-

Booby Prize - Ugh, after that great practice on Tuesday, I just went down for the count. The pneumonia finally grabbed me, and from Tuesday night until Friday afternoon, I did absolutely NOTHING but sleep or lie down on the couch (and watch skating videos, like the 3 Magic of Style videos). I have not been this sick in over 20 years. I'm finally starting to feel better.

Blue Ribbon - I made a bargain with my husband. If I could just skate on Friday afternoon, I would forego every other single activity for the rest of the weekend. So he said yes and came with me to video. Just being out of my bed and back on the ice was an instant high, but I could not believe how WEAK I was! Especially at first, my stamina was just g-o-n-e gone, and I was struggling to get enough oxygen. So I started very slowly, worked on small segments of my program, didn't put all the jumps and spins in at first, and concentrated on getting the surety of foot and timing down. When I did start to put the elements back in, I had to break my program in half and rest up between each half. DH videotaped and I got some great footage to help me improve. At the very end I ran through the program once completely. By the end I could no longer get any height on the jumps and things were a little sloppy, but the overall concept is definitely there and now I have a nice benchmark to compare with as I continue to improve. Overall, I was very pleased. Of course, everyone thought I was just nuts to be out there. DH commented that the other women spend a lot more time gabbing than skating, and the video pretty much proves that even with my modified practice, I still did more than keep up with everyone else. I had planned to only skate for an hour, but with the resting moments in between elements, I expanded it to 80 minutes, 60 of which were actual skating.

More Booby Prize - Afterward, I felt like a limp dishrag and did absolutely nothing for the rest of the night but sleep and lay around. It's clear that too much of that would have been a very bad thing. So I'm willing to lay around the rest of the weekend and watch my video and smile at the thought that I'll probably be well enough on Monday to have one more go at it.