Wonderful/Whinerful Lessons & Practices 6/13-20 | Golden Skate

Wonderful/Whinerful Lessons & Practices 6/13-20

Cinderella on Ice

Bless you, Fairy Godmother, I'm Having a BALL!
On the Ice
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Eeks! You go away a few days and find out that no one has started the thread for this week!

Well, please stop by anyway and tell us how your lessons and practices have been going this week. Were they great (wonderful) or not-so-great (whinerful). We really want to know!
 

Cinderella on Ice

Bless you, Fairy Godmother, I'm Having a BALL!
On the Ice
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
OK, I don't mind talking to myself a little bit.

WHINERFUL - They say you never really know what you've got till it's gone. Well this week was the first week of the summer session, and it is just cram-packed with kids now that they are out of school. I know I'll get used to it eventually, but I feel like I need rear view and side view mirrors! Thank goodness it thins out a bit at the end, because trying to do things like the Power Circles MIFs are just impossible!

WONDERFUL - On the other hand, it's really motivating to skate with such strong young skaters, and it reminds me to keep pushing and stretching. The kids at our rink are so nice and accepting of an "old" adult skater like me. I find them all delightful, especially the ones who work really hard. A couple of them stopped me during practice to tell me that they thought my axels were so BIG. Well bless them all, I've written them into my will.

OK, on to my practices. Was on the ice on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. I've been working on my Intermediate MIFs because my coach wants me to test in August. I'm pretty pleased with my progress, except it's time to improve on those Clockwise forward power circles! The power 3s on the end caps are coming along, now that I've figured out how to push so there is actually some power (and that wonderful crunching noise) going on.

What's especially WONDERFUL is that I seem to have gotten my "groove" back. My knees are no longer hurting and I'm excited about all the new things I'm learning. Monday was a Creative Moves class and I picked up a couple of cool arm movements to do during sit spins.

Today's practice was especially fab. Hubby came to videotape, and I showed him all the new stuff I'm learning. Apparently my layback has progressed from just an eyebrow-back. There is at least a little lean happening now. Jumps were strong, moves were fast with good edges. I worked myself into a big sweatball! Tonight I'll watch the videos and critique.
 

dlkksk8fan

Medalist
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Three days of skating this week :)

Wonderful-Monday my oldest son came to the rink with me and brought his camera to take some video. The good thing about it is a least I can see how I am doing. The bad thing about it is I'm not doing so good :\ Spins look slow and jumps so small! All well at least I have a lot to practice.

Wednesday was lesson day and my jumps were better then on Monday (all though I don't have pictures to prove it :p) Started working on the loop jump and not too bad. I just got to get my free leg in the right position.

Whinerful-back spin, back spin, back spin. After practicing so many I can't help but get dizzy! Sit spins need more SIT, but everytime I try and go lower I move to the back of the blade and then to the back of my butt!
 

Cinderella on Ice

Bless you, Fairy Godmother, I'm Having a BALL!
On the Ice
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Dlkksk8fan - video is a great way to improve performance, but I can definitely relate to that feeling of "letdown" when you see how much you feel needs improvement. I bet that you've been making progress in all kinds of areas, but you're more critical of yourself than someone else would be. Don't be too hard on yourself, but good for you that you can see what needs work, because now you will go out there and fix it! Sounds like your jumps improved almost immediately. Woo hoo!
 

dlkksk8fan

Medalist
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
I keep willing myself higher and higher on my jumps now that I know that they are small. Ha, Tara Lipinski got away with small jumps why can't I! :laugh:
 

PrincessLeppard

~ Evgeni's Sex Bomb ~
Final Flight
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
No one has smaller jumps than me, lol. My pathetic waltz jump went from small to non existent this week, hopefully at least the small part will be better next week.

Coach had us do brackets. I nearly killed myself. And then he had do some sort of backward thing (can't think of the name) and once again, I nearly killed myself. All in all, lesson was mostly me just trying to survive :laugh: I'm just in basic 8, why is he trying to kill me???

I did two double 3 turns, though. Not well. But I did them. Yay!

I'm not ready to see a video of my skating yet :eek:

Laura :)
 

icer

Rinkside
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Whinerful: Rink has not yet figured out how to deal with the heat and humidity, so the ice has been awful, maybe even dangerous. Plus (same as for Cinderella's rink etc.) now that school is out, the sessions have become more crowded. So hard to know if the problems I'm having are "me" or the rink conditions... although, as my former coach wisely insisted- "no, excuses, please". I can't whine my way through the whole summer.

Wonderful: This sounds weird, but the bad ice is actually helping me do jump combinations. The ice slows me down enough that I am able to consistently do toe-loop toe-loop (or to tack a tiny toe loop onto the end of almost anything). The ice is slowing my spins, but I did manage to do ONE nice little camel with no travelling at all (circle tracings exactly over one another!) and 3 FULL revolutions in camel position with a beautiful standing spin coming out of it- my odds of actually getting good revolutions on this spin are about 1 in 20, so this one nice spin was HUGE for me.

And also wonderful- group classes start again this week, which means I can do at least a little skating in the evening! Yay! Bad ice or not, I still love to skate.

dlkksk8fan and others- any recommendations on the back spin much appreciated. I started working on this with my old coach, but still can't get very far around on one foot. Everyone says this takes a while to work out, then you love it. Hope that's true.
 

yummyNoodles

Rinkside
Joined
Jun 20, 2004
Its been pretty much whinerful lately. Same deal with all the kids being out of school-- too many little kids on the ice! I think it's really dangerous. I am not an adult skater, but I am a junior level skater from a small club where we do not have high ice time, so I'm out there trying to weave in and out of prepreliminary and lower skaters to get my double axels and triple sals in. The younger kids are not the worst part, either. There is this one coach at my rink who has the biggest ego of anyone I have ever met, and he makes things difficult for everyone else. His students are always crying in lesson and he is completely uncoopertive and has no courtesy for anyone else on the ice. Ughhh! I need to go away to skate for the summer! :mad:

On a happier, more wonderful note, I have done some good programs lately. My triple sal is getting cleaner and my double lutzes have been huge! :)
 

Yazmeen

On the Ice
Joined
Jul 29, 2003
Sorry to have been missing in action, everyone, but while I was skating this week, I was also at a medical conference that was nearby and took up a lot of my time.

In a nutshell: Crossovers are coming along. The trouble with working to change something is that it can mess you up when you don't need it, namely at the exhibition I skated on Saturday. With a slight case of nerves, my right back crosses got funky in the second set and I stumbled and had to drop them to not lose time. It was aggravating and took away from the program, but at least not too much.

Today, we worked on waltz jumps and salchows to take them to the next level. I also had an honest talk with my coach about competing. I'm a bit frustrated always coming in second to my 16 years younger compadre, and I'm going to take my coach's suggestion to ask for suggestions from our head coach who has judged my programs, including my most recent one where I lost by a hair. (In ISI, the judges are generally skaters and coaches, not professional judges). My coach thinks it may be that I shorten some of my stroking and basics when I'm nervous, so I'm going to see what HC says. My coach also pointed out that things could turn out better for me when I compete USFS. She feels my technique with jumps and spins is pretty solid and our music choices are unique and tend to fit my personality. I just want to try and improve and do the best I can, so any guidance is appreciated.
 

dlkksk8fan

Medalist
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
dlkksk8fan and others- any recommendations on the back spin much appreciated. I started working on this with my old coach, but still can't get very far around on one foot. Everyone says this takes a while to work out, then you love it. Hope that's true.

Icer-what my coach has told me in helping me with my backspin is to keep your body lifted, that means suck in the gut and keep your body over the skate. Get your left leg up like in a jumping position. If your let the left hip down the spin will not happen. So tighten everything in the middle up and keep the left hip up. Once you reach a good position then pull the arms in as you would do with a double or triple jump. My coach calls it chicken arms because the elbows flap down like a chicken. Then at the end of the spin check out. Good luck with the spin :)
 

sk8pics

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 4, 2003
Yazmeen said:
My coach also pointed out that things could turn out better for me when I compete USFS. She feels my technique with jumps and spins is pretty solid and our music choices are unique and tend to fit my personality. I just want to try and improve and do the best I can, so any guidance is appreciated.

Hey Yaz,
So are you doing Skate Wilmington this year? I'm just doing interpretive; no time to put together a pre-bronze free program. Oh well. Hang in there; you never know what the judges will do, especially at the lower levels. I wouldn't assume the USFS judges would necessarily see things differently, but you never know.

I finally "got" my right forward inside mohawk this week. It feels the same as the left forward inside mohawk did when I first got it, so I'm pretty pleased. I showed it to my coach yesterday when he stopped to chat, and he said, "You've got it!" so that was nice. We also made good progress on my toe loop on Monday; we used the harness so I would feel secure and really go for the jump properly. It worked pretty well and he didn't make me fall this time! The only time I ever fell on a jump (so far, anyway) was when we were working on toe loops in the harness! :laugh:

Happy skating,
Pat
 

Yazmeen

On the Ice
Joined
Jul 29, 2003
Nope, Pat, I may be doing the Aston Halloween competition, though. I'd prefer to start at one that has a "beginner" adult level like Aston does, just to get my feet wet.

Mainly, I just want to improve and get my overall skating BETTER. We've made a lot of progress with crossovers and stroking in just a few weeks, and yesterday, more progress was made with jumping. Little by little!!!!
 

Yazmeen

On the Ice
Joined
Jul 29, 2003
Good day at Wintersport today. Just hubby and me and glorious ice all to our lonesomes!!! Worked on crossovers and waltz and sal. Sal is getting good. New tech on waltz needs some more help from coach: She has me bringing my knee up more and I'm jumping higher, but I'm not getting my foot through as well. Time to have her look at it.

Hubby did well with sal and toe, he just needs to work on all his jump landings--he tends to kick his free leg out to the side instead of back and lands somewhat flat and hits his toepick too much. Time for his coach to take a look, too. He tried spirals today, which was fun. Not bad for a beginner at them!!!!
 
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