Merry Merry or Very Hairy Practices/Lessons 12/22-28

[Cinderella on Ice]

Very Hairy Christmas Turkey - gosh, I too am singing the Brigitte/Singerskates blues, because after waking up at 6 am, covering my poor feet in bunga pads, and skidding off to the rink, I discovered there is no practice ice today. I was so BUMMED, because I was eager to take up where yesterday left off and begin working on those double jumps!

Merry Merry - luckily, our all-adult public skate on Friday is still going forward and hopefully there won't be too many "non-skaters" on the rink that day, since most of us have the day off from work. Usually it's a very small (under 6) group of us who are at various stages of learning to skate. Sometimes we get the lone guest or two, all of whom are very nice and usually they poop out after about 20 minutes and the rest of the ice time is ours. Hubby said he'd come videotape that day, so I'm excited to make some good progress on my elements.

 

[Cinderella on Ice]

Merry Merry Day After - I had another awesome skating practice on Friday, marred only by the fact that they evacuated us from the ice after only an hour and a half because they had some girls' hockey thing going on. I mentioned that on Tuesday my coach started me working on the 2sal and 2toe. Well, I started with my favorite, and twice came "this" close to landing the 2toe cleanly! I did land a couple of cheater versions (one was about 1.75 and the other about 1.82, still a great start).

Hubby came to videotape and I was shocked to see last night when I was watching it that I did at least 25-30 jump attempts (I'm going to count them to see how many I really did) which is amazing not only because I do not remember doing so many, but I was not tired and I have no ill after effects the next day. That is a LOT of jumping, especially since I also ran through all of my singles and did about 6 really nice axels. I also was practicing my flying camel, which is technically a spin, but obviously involves jumping onto that same landing leg and then doing a back camel. I also threw in some combo spins and fast scratch spins, so I crammed quite the workout into that time period. I was tired but satisfied at the end of it.

Hairy - getting kicked off the ice at 3:00 was a bummer since they let us on late because they hadn't bothered to remake the ice. Usually they don't watch the clock and you can just skate till you drop (sometimes I don't quit until 3:30 or even 3:45). Also, because I didn't realize they were going to do this, I never got to my 2sal which I REALLY need to see on tape because I'm not handling the take-off correctly. I need to learn to bring my right free foot around in front of me and THEN up for the jump. I think I could have improved my timing better if I could see what it is I'm actually doing. Oh well, guess that's for next week's practice.

 

[Cinderella on Ice]

Merry Hairiness - Saturday I spent time watching the 3rd tape in the Gustave Lussi series -- on jumps. He puts poor Paul Wylie through his paces. Then I compared the techniques to the video hubby took of me at skating practice on Friday. Verrry humbling. Those "great big" axels everyone tells me I'm doing (and all my other jumps too, really) are off axis, legs akimbo, arms flying, and generally Lussi would roll over in his grave if he saw them. (Now I don't know that he's dead, but I know if he's alive he's about 145 years old because he looks already embalmed on this third tape, the poor man!) In the video, I'm working primarily on my 2toe. As I said in my previous post, I was so close to landing it cleanly, several times I cheat landed it somewhere between 1.75 and 1.85 times around. I can see what I'm doing wrong (primarily my arms), but it will take some time to fix it. Just for fun, I counted how many attempts I'd made, because I was pretty tired the day after. I had done 31 attempts! And that was in addition to all the single jumps and axels I'd warmed up before, plus the flying camel and the spins. So at least I could see that I'd worked hard at the practice. In the future, I'm going to cut that back because I ran out of time to attempt the 2sal, which is in worse shape. Maybe if I know I only have X number I can try, I'll make each one count even more. Thanks to Sk8er1964 for that tip. Any other hints or tips are greatly appreciated.

 

[Yazmeen]

Merry, Merry, everyone!!! I was in Erie, PA with hubby's family most of last week. We did go to public skate with our niece and nephew on Christmas Eve. It was a pleasant surprise--not too crowded, and they blocked off center circle so skaters could practice moves--hubby worked on waltz jumps and I worked on waltz-waltz and waltz-salchow combo. Our nephew and niece did pretty good too for newbies. The skate guard was an 87 year old sweetie who showed hubby and I how to do a Killian hold and we "waltzed" (sort of) to the "Chipmunk Song." All in all, it was a blast. It will be good to get back to regular ice and lessons tomorrow.

Figureskates: on the gallbladder. I hope everything goes OK.

Holiday hugs to all!!!!

Yaz

 

[Cinderella on Ice]

Yaz - good to hear from you and how great that you had such a nice time at the public skate. I just LOVE the story about the skate guard. Today I learned that one of the women I skate with will turn 70 next week. It is just so AWESOME to see these folks on the ice!

Have fun on the ice tomorrow and be sure to come back and tell us all about it.