Chocolate or dry bread: 4-10 April 2004

[Mrs Redboots]

Did anybody notice that today's date is 04/04/04 in all our languages?

Dry Bread: Our coach is away for the weekend, so no lessons today, just a practice. I still can't hold my inside-edge Mohawk for two beats, and if anybody else tells me I need to hold the first edge for longer, I shall scream! :roll:
I know I can't do that - what I need to know, is how to correct it!!!!! :frus:
We couldn't practice our Interpretive Pairs as my Walkman has broken and I need to get another. Our dance/pairs spin is not exactly 3 revolutions yet - it will have need to be by October if we are to compete in the British Adults!

Chocolate: Most of our practice went well, we did all the exercises we are supposed to do, and did them well. We also did a good Golden Skaters' Waltz, and a not-too-bad Riverside Rhumba, except that I messed up the change-of-edge, and it went from flat to flat! We did a "not bad" Canadian Cha-Cha, too, it's coming now.

[Debbie S]

Chocolate:
I am now landing the loop! I'll admit that it's usually on my toe, but I have landed a few good ones on the edge, and at least I'm rotating all the way around.

My Pre-Bronze moves are coming along well. I mailed in my papers on Thursday and will be testing on April 19. I'm going to test both Pre-Bronze MIF and FS. My goal is to be able to compete in the Chesapeake Open, but if I don't reach that goal, I realized that I could go to the USFSA Adult Training Camp instead - run by Robin Wagner and others. Of course, it's a lot cheaper for me to compete in Chesapeake, but if I can't, than the training camp (same weekend as the comp) could be a nice consolation prize.


Dry Bread:
Weird pain in my hip - I hope it's just soreness. I can't imagine having come this far and not being able to test and needing to take time off.

With all the focus on my test elements, I've had no time for the camel, sit, or backspin. Those have been put on the back burner until April 20.

[jazzpants]

Chocolate:

Just about everything else on the Bronze Moves test except power 3's!!!
Sit spin
Scratch spin (after I realized that I was spinning on the INSIDE edge instead of the outside edge. After that it wasn't so bad...)
Got one camel spin!!!
Dry bread:

Scratch spin (at least the first few...) Maybe if I keep travelling on the spins like I do, I just might make it to Lake Placid for AN!!! :frus: :roll:
LFO3's disappeared again and...
My calf started tweaking again. It's not so bad after a nice long shower but it was just as well that I had to work late tonight (Monday) and miss the Monday night session. :cry: (Playing it safe, of course!) Of course, I was having so much fun on the ice that I didn't realized I'd been skating for almost TWO hours!!! :oops:

[sk8pics]

Debbie--Let me know if you end up going to the training camp. I haven't made up my mind yet, but if we both go maybe we can carpool or something. Oh and congrats on your loop!

As for me, Chocolate: Yesterday's practice was great! I ran through most of my new interpretive program without the music and started being able to do the jump sequence where it is in the program. I don't quite have it yet, but soon... Good thing, too, as I signed up for the competition in Laurel, MD in mid-May! Also yesterday made good progress on skating around in a circle changing from forward to backwards and repeating, with one crossover in between. I can do it clockwise, sort of, although that right forward inside mohawk is icky. The mohawk stepping from a left back inside edge to right forward inside edge has gotten pretty strong, though! CCW I can do the left forward inside mohawk but can't do the step from the right back inside edge to left forward inside edge at all. Oh well.

Dry Bread That icky step from the RBI edge to LFI edge. Also the spread eagle with my right foot leading. Unfortunately that is in my program so I have to keep working on it. The other direction is much easier for me, but I think I can get this one, too. Right now though when I try to do it in the program, I end up just doing a two footed turn. Oh well!

Happy skating everyone, and to all who are injured or hurting, feel better soon!

Pat

[sk8er1964]

Very dry bread: Ok, a week to go before AN, and today I did my program twice. If you combine the two programs, my score for jumps was four falls and four pops. :frus:

Chocolate: At least my spins were all centered.

[flo]

Chocolate: Doubles are going well, we tried a differend set up, and it's easier to fit in on sessions. The parts of my costume are arriving, but I'm not sure about the latest black skirt - it's a bit sheer!
Debbie, I may skip Chesapeake as well and do the camp. I wnat to find out how the sessions run - if you don't dance or do moves, if there's set sessions or you select wha tyou want to work on.

[Mrs Redboots]

Chocolate: Finally remembered to take a plastic wine glass to the rink to practice my interpretive with. This was perhaps just as well, as it was a lot harder to skate with it in my hand than I thought it would be! New Walkman is lovely, much nicer than the old one!

Made myself practice all the things my coach likes me to practice.

Dry Bread: My back outside edges are still appalling - I can get a reasonably decent RBO edge now, but I cannot, for love nor money, manage to keep my weight in the right place on my LBO one. My body insists, no matter how hard I bend my knees, on rising up until my weight is over my toes, with the inevitable result that my toe-rakes dig in, and it's "scrapey, scrapey!" time.

Nor can I do a proper Swing Dance Mohawk - again, no matter what I do, I rush the entry edge. On a very good day it lasts for about 1.75 beats, but it never manages to last the 2 beats it's meant to. And if anybody else tells me I need to hold the entry edge longer, I'll scream and scream until I'm sick, just like Violet Elizabeth Bott. So there! :frus: :roll: :cry:

[sk8pics]

Debbie, I may skip Chesapeake as well and do the camp. I wnat to find out how the sessions run - if you don't dance or do moves, if there's set sessions or you select wha tyou want to work on.

flo,
I went to the camp last year and had a great time. I don't know what they are planning this year, of course, but I can tell you how things ran last year. We were split according to test level, and each group had its own schedule. We had on ice as well as off ice sessions and also a break or two scheduled in. I recall a class on jumps in general (with John and Sylvia), a class on toe jumps (Igor and Tamara, I think), a class on jump combinations (with Artur, and I remember working on loops and half loops), a class on spinning (two coaches, one was Artur), a stroking/crossovers class (with Tamara and Igor, who had us doing varieties of stroking with turning in different directions, and also lots of crossovers, and circles changing directions after each crossover, forwards to backward and then back again), and also a choreography class and a moves class. Each class varied according to the preferences of the particular coach and the skaters. So you didn't exactly choose what you were going to work on. But with a couple of exceptions, they didn't try to "make" anyone do anything. For example, Artur let me do what I wanted in his spinning class (which was really beyond me) and let me work on half loops instead of loops. The moves coach pointed out what I was doing wrong in one of the moves and encouraged me on another that I was doing pretty well. So there was a lot of structure to it. You could always skip a class if you wanted to. In fact, my moves class was at 8 am the second day and only about 7 or 8 of us showed up, so it was actually a great session.

If you have other more specific questions please feel free to PM me or post them here. Off-ice jumping with John Zimmerman was my favorite off-ice class. We all had a great time and laughed a lot! I also loved the classes with Artur, John, Sylvia, and Tamara. They were all wonderful. Artur is hilarious; he would smile and wink at me during the spinning class and say, "Just keep going. YOu get it, you get it." So cute. The choreography classes were great too and so much fun!

Oh, and the rinks were freezing cold so bring layers if you go!

Pat

[flo]

Pat, thanks for the information. I also saw that they had a dance and fs track, so I could do the fs. A few of us are thinking of going, so we should take advantage of the friends % off offer. The Chesapeake Open is a great event, and it's too bad it's on the same weekend.

[sk8pics]

flo--That's right, two separate tracks. I think all the off-ice classes (except for jumping) were common to both dance and freestyle. But obviously the on-ice classes were different, although the dancers may have had a moves class, too.

[Mrs Redboots]

Gack - total dry bread day today; wasn't able to skate worth anything. Jumps and spins simply didn't happen, not even in my programme run-through, and I just felt like I couldn't skate. We all have bad skate days, but I'm supposed to be going to another rink this evening, so I hope I've recovered by then!

Having said that, Chocolate was that in all my exercises I focussed totally on technique, and did them well! Changes-of-edge weren't at all bad. As for waltz 3s, they were so good I then had to do an exercise of FI3, step to FO3, BO edge, FO edge and repeat.... not nice.....

Still couldn't balance on LBO edge at all. Sigh......

[junkety]

Chocolate: Kind of a teeny-tiny victory compared to all the much more impressive things everyone else has to report :oops:, but I'm still just a beginner, and I can finally say I have got one of my back crossovers, right-over-left, to work. It's not pretty, by any means, because I have zero practice time and only a half-hour group lesson once a week, but I'm very happy and more hopeful than I was!

Dry bread: well, of course, the left-over-right back crossover, which still is wildly theoretical right now, and mohawks of any kind, but still, I'm content to keep working at everything. No matter what, skating is so much fun. :D

[sk8er1964]

Chocolate: Kind of a teeny-tiny victory compared to all the much more impressive things everyone else has to report :oops:, but I'm still just a beginner, and I can finally say I have got one of my back crossovers, right-over-left, to work. It's not pretty, by any means, because I have zero practice time and only a half-hour group lesson once a week, but I'm very happy and more hopeful than I was!

Dry bread: well, of course, the left-over-right back crossover, which still is wildly theoretical right now, and mohawks of any kind, but still, I'm content to keep working at everything. No matter what, skating is so much fun. :D

Yours is not a teeny-tiny victory. Getting crossovers right is not only hard to do, but it is also one of the most important building blocks of skating that you can master. Keep up the good work! :D

[dbny]

Yours is not a teeny-tiny victory. Getting crossovers right is not only hard to do, but it is also one of the most important building blocks of skating that you can master. Keep up the good work! :D
ITA. This is a very important accomplishment. Congratulations, junkety!

Chocolate
Managed to get to a freestyle session today, the only one that wasn't cancelled because the kids are out of school this week. My FI threes are getting stronger and more confident, although I still am not attempting the alt pattern with them. FO threes are also more confident now, and I got through the power threes again.

After watching my daughter's Juv MIF test on tape last night, I decided that I needed to work on the 8 step Mohawk pattern every time I skate. The kids go out and do it the first time as fast as they will test, doing FI Mohawks, of course. I decided that slow and steady with real FO Mohawks is also a valid approach, especially for a scared adult, so that's what I did today. On the CW, my LFO Mohawk is pretty scary and I was having a lot of trouble with it. Then remembered my coach saying to keep my back to the circle on the turn. I did it on the boards a few times and discovered my L shoulder was coming forward. Back to the circle with a much better turn! On the CCW, the turn is not so bad, but BI-XF to LFI is a problem, but somehow was not today, maybe because my brain imported it from the CW direction.

Dry bread
After reading about labral tears of the hip, and wondering what open hipped twisting movement I could possibly be doing (that would put pressure on the labrum), I discovered that T-stops do it! Thank goodness I learned hockey stops.

[triple twist]

I have been having chocolate lately! Skating is so much fun right now, even with my terrible blades. I'm getting new ones soon but I feel like I can do a quad lutz right now!!

[jazzpants]

Dry Bread:

I think my B Xovers to a BO edge SUCKS and would definitely NOT pass. Yet my primary coach thinks that it WILL pass. Okay, I'm humor him for now.
We both agree that my forward power 3's still needs work. In fact, I almost lost my LFO3's again this morning. :frus: :evil:
My primary coach being the person that he is, announced that he wants to switch my lessons back to Monday nights because... he's dropping HIS coach after AN and quitting the competition scene (again!) Said something about wanting to "buy a house" now. :roll: (SUUUUURE!!! We'll see how long THIS will last.) :P
Chocolate:

Primary coach thinks that the rest of my Bronze Moves will definitely pass! (Though my secondary coach didn't like my 5 step mohawks on Wed. She worked me to death on those the day before. But HEY! She's a perfectionist!!! That's why I hired her!!!) :P
He also told me that my speed on my forward alt. crossovers is much faster. He now wants me to SLOW DOWN (WHA!?!?!? 8O)... well slow enough to concentrate on my stroking so he doesn't have to hear that annoying "toe scratches." He figures with the extra power I get from stroking properly that I'll end up skating faster anyway. (Okay, I know he's right. The second round felt SLOWER... yet he says that I was actually skating faster still!!!) :P
A fellow skater at my rink told me that he thought my skating has "really improved" over the past few months! He SURE made my day! :mrgreen:

[Mrs Redboots]

Chocolate: Kind of a teeny-tiny victory compared to all the much more impressive things everyone else has to report :oops:, but I'm still just a beginner, and I can finally say I have got one of my back crossovers, right-over-left, to work. Actually, that's a mega-victory! Crossovers are reall important, and I well remember how utterly impossible they were when I first started skating! :roll: Hopeless, I was. Still am!

Haven't actually skated since Wednesday - I thought that if I went out on Wednesday night, I would just put my skates on and prop up the barrier, pretending to be dancing - which I don't mind doing at my home rink, but not up there! Then yesterday I was supposed to go to the Maundy Thursday service instead, but sat down in my chair when I got in - big mistake...... and still very sleepy this morning. OH well, a few days' break will do me no harm at all, and probably quite a lot of good. Back on Tuesday!