I hope that you don't mind me taking the liberty of starting a lessons thread, haven't done it for ages and am feeling a bit nostalgic at the mo.

I want to start skating again though I can't even think about it until I've got my job situation sorted out. I wonder how difficult it will be to pick it up again!

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The best whisper is a click

At your level - not that difficult. If you were just starting then it would be another story. For me after time off the hardest part was getting back into the skating habit, not the skating itself.

Halo: I can finally do a 3 turn, a right outside 3 turn in fact. I had my blades shifted last week as I had a lot of trouble doing some outside edges. Had sync practice last night, lots of fun it looks like there will be enough people to do it for the competition in October.

Horns: I hit my elbow up against the boards last night during sync practice when someone else and I were practicing some russian swing roll type thing (can't remember the proper name for it), we were stopping when she managed to swing me around and I ended up skating backwards before being pushed into the wall by the other person. It doesn't hurt to much, I was more worried because its the elbow I have fractured twice before.

Halo: I had the ice to myself for 45 minutes. Kinda cool, but since it happens frequently on these Gawd-awful early sessions, it's kinda boring. However, I made do. In a way, I'm kinda glad I broke my ankle. Now before you call the guys in white coats to get me, let me explain. I had to go back to my basic skills, so they have improved so much since I've been back. Some are still lacking, but most have improved. Mohawks are smoother. Back crossovers are getting less scratchy. Simple things, but so big. I've been concentrating less on the jumping that I enjoy so much and worked on other things.

Horns:On the other hand, I had one of my coaches look at my blades because I'd been struggling with thinks like 3turns--I was consistantly skidding them. She told me I have no rocker left. I wasn't too surprised--I'd kind of suspected it. The F*&%^(* kid that sharpened my skates in October destroyed my blades. Don't think I have any recourse though. I have another pair on order, and NO KID will ever touch my blades again.

Halo Even though I was very tired, had a good practice and lesson today. Two days in a row I've done good program run throughs in my lesson, and my coach continues to be amazed as my spin actually improves with my one-a-day practice philosophy, Today he said I had a "kick-a$$" run through, which is pretty high praise. I was happy because the session had been chaotic with one collision that sent two other adult skaters to the ice. Everyone was okay, but it just made me a little jumpy. Also we worked on power 3's and I did some of my best ever ones on the left side; my coach was helping me, but still they were an improvement. And my salchow continues to improve and I am loving practicing them! I did two that had perfect tracings when I practiced them and another for my coach in my lesson. They're not all perfect, but he says they're "perfectly acceptable" so it's very exciting!

Horns: Came the closest I ever have to doing a face plant on my spiral in my program, as my blade went sideways on the ice, (stupid chewed up ice ) my weight shifted side to side and then forward as a result, then my quad clenched and I put my free foot down and breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't do the spiral in the run through because of that, but at least I am okay!

Hi Terry! Maybe next time I see you up here I will be less distracted and we can talk and I can watch you skate a little!

Hi Raye! Thanks for your earlier congrats on my salchow!

Happy skating everyone,
Pat

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August 22, back on the ice!

HALO: I had my last lesson tonight before my test on Sunday the 24th. I will be doing Bronze Moves! Lesson went well my coach had me do each move 2 times plus some other drills. I am feeling pretty good. We shall see how this week of practice goes. I am trying to stay focused and am just going to keep doing run throughs at my sesssions. Stayed around for the adult session after my lesson...the ice was crap and it was sort of cwowded.....after 50 min of that...I was done!


Horns: My usually rink has been having bad ice in this HUMID and HOT weather! The early morning seesion are skated in thick fog and bumpy ice. The afternoon and evening sessions are wet ice with snow!!! Basically crap!

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Why are you skating so slowly? Get out of my way!

If you skate faster, it makes everything look better!

HALO: Well did 21 Perfect Backspins, and lots of good Frontspins, and my 3 turns and edges are going good

HORNS Done bugger all on Jumps

Halo: GORGEOUS back cross-rolls. Even coach thought so. (I had originally written cross-overs when I meant cross-rolls....)

I LIKE my my new boots... Now that I'm pretty much used to them, things are more comfortable and easier to do.

Horns: Tango end pattern. I'm not yet pushing into it solo as much as coach wants. Nearly did some sort of wonky fall doing the RFI after the LBO back swing in the Tango...we are re-building that part of the dance when I skate it solo and I don't have the control in the shoulders there because I'm too used to relying on partner/coach.

Tango mohawk... first time I've done that bit in the new boots. I'm much more over my feet so I was almost too close to coach. But the RFI3 afterwards was really nice and quiet.

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American Waltz... Once, Twice, ???? ...

Q: How many coaches does it take to fix Jen's Dance Intro-3 Problems
A: 5 and counting...

Halo: Great practice this morning. Husband and I were the first skaters on to the ice, so it was fast and lovely! We had permission to use the music, so ran through the Golden Skaters' Waltz and the Riverside Rhumba (the Elementary compulsory dances for this year). We still need more speed in the GSW, though. Then we walked through our Free Dance, as we are still settling in the changes in the step sequence that we made on Sunday. I decided to change one of my 3-turns into a rocker, but I'm not sure whether I'll keep that. I probably will.

After Husband had gone, I worked on my edges, and was amused to be told that I was skating "really fast" by the fitness trainer, who hadn't seen me skate for some months. I'd just been reckoning I was a bit slow.....

Did almost a whole lap of back cross-rolls, which pleased me, and several people said how well I was doing them. I don't think they're nearly test standard yet, too "steppy" still, but they really are coming along nicely now.

Horns: My coach is running a summer school for his younger skaters this week (some of them have had to have permission not to go into school, as not all schools have finished yet - the majority don't finish until this Friday, and some are going on until next week, even), and so once they were on the ice it wasn't easy to get things done - some of those kids are fast! But they're nice kids, and weren't going to get into our way deliberately. As one of them's mother is a gymnastics teacher, she also does fitness training and some choreography, so I asked her to look at one of our new holds and see if it worked. Needless to say, the Husband (who doesn't always like being looked at!) made a mess of it, so we had to do it again....

Back cross-rolls were still dire. They are better than they were, but that wouldn't be difficult. I cannot get them right! I am always too far forward on my skate, and lurch forwards instead of leaning back into the edge, thus running out of oomph. But I can't feel where I ought to be. Unlike in the cross-rolls, when I know how it ought to feel, and try to reproduce the feeling..... Grrrrr....

Must make a list of things to work on in my lesson tomorrow!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

horns: my axels were not working at all today!!! I can't pull into the backspin position fast enough and so I don't get enough rotation...oh well maybe on thursday...

halo: I learned the 14-step in dance! Its so fun except its fast!!

Halo: Did a fairly decent runthrough "cold" at the start of my lesson and an even better one at the end of the lesson. All the work put into the attitude spin last week paid off. For the first time ever, no problems at all on the back outside pivot. And, my coach made me a nifty music which was very sweet of her.

Horns: I seemingly cannot break my bad habit of not holding the LFO edge long enough before the three turn on spin entries. It's so frustrating because I am totally aware of the problem and put thought into the entry as I do it, but my body is just not cooperating. ISI Worlds are next week and I feel not quite up to competition standard.

Halos: Big improvement to back outside twizzles. Need to work on these a lot for synchro this year. Forward spins...actually got my legs crossed properly a few times! Good flips and lutzes. I'm getting a lot braver with loops, so I'm going into them with more speed and am getting better height. Waltz-loops are getting better, too. I have no problem going into a waltz jump at full speed, but I go in a little slower when I know I'm going to do a loop on the end. I'm gradually speeding up when doing the combo, and I think I'll soon be at top speed. Loop out of cross-overs getting better, too!

Horns: Backspin progress. It IS progressing, but not as fast as I'd like. A forward spin just feels so natural for me, and a backspin feels like the LEAST natural thing in the world.

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~No thinking, breathing, or hesitation!~

My coach's exercise to fix that one is to stand on one of the lines, you push on to a LFO edge, but you may not do the 3-turn until you have come back to the line. In fact, that's how he teaches spin entry.... it's good practice, too, for holding your check before going into the turn (which is probably why you're turning to early - you could well be letting your right shoulder come round too far too soon....).

As for me, today was my lesson day.

Halos: Was able to spend 2 hours on the ice, which was great. For the first 20 minutes I worked with Husband on our step sequence - decided to take out the rocker, since although I can do it, we ended up on the wrong foot and that got a bit complicated. So back to an ordinary 3-turn. The back changes-of-edge need some work now we are just holding hands - it's too easy to break at the waist.... At least now I know what to look out for!

Then on to my lesson. Worked mostly on edges - I showed my coach the two solo dances I may or may not compete in November, and he said that although they were infinitely better than they used to be, "and your extension was better than you normally do", my edge quality was still poor. I plan to work hard on that, and decide nearer the time! So he gave me some exercises for improving my FO edges, although, to be honest, I think the work I did later on the Circle Cycle and Evil Eights probably helped more.

Also worked on back edges, which improve slowly, and Level 3 Dance Moves, which are nowhere near testable yet, but an awful lot nearer than they were! I even managed to get some flow in the back cross-rolls, but still don't know what I did differently to when I didn't get any flow! And managed "3/4 of the length, not bad!" (my coach) of back cross-strokes. I'm beginning to get the feel for them, but it's so hard to keep one's upper body back while crossing one's feet in front.

I then worked on speed and acceleration, including a very silly exercise where you start from a standstill and then do lemons (swizzles) all the way round, getting faster and faster - quite hard to keep one's balance, I found.

After the lesson, the coach was working on the Circle Cycle with the summer school, and no reason for other people not to join in, so I did! Hours of changing edge, very good for me! And I thought afterwards it would be good music to do Evil Eights to, although when I did them, the kids were doing programme runthroughs, so the Circle Cycle wasn't playing. One of the exercises the coach invented was worthy of Xavier Debernis at the Mountain Cup camp - all it wanted was a Mohawk instead of a 3-jump and you'd think he'd turned into Xavier all of a sudden. He said (my coach, not Xavier!) that most of the CC exercises were aimed at dancers, and he wanted to invent one that would suit free skaters.....

Talking of Mohawks, I showed off that I can at last do the baby mohawk exercise I loathe - which I only really mastered by working on back cross-rolls, you never know what will help which.....

Horns: Two hours on the ice? I'm exhausted!!!! Totally cream-crackered. Usually when I have a 2-hour session I spend far more of it propping up the barrier than I did today, when I was really trying to skate aerobically for most of the time!

Husband says that since the ice is so empty this week, we're probably going tomorrow morning as well as tomorrow evening! I'll be as tired as the children by the end of the week, shouldn't wonder!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

You missed my Zamboni imitation (power-3's trip up onto freshly zamboni'd wet ice)!! I now sport 2 lovely bruises (right elbow/knee)
No skating for a while-State Fair!!!!!!

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

That's my ex-coach's method also.

I've been off the ice for three weeks now. I was hoping to skate this week on a public session, but have been sheparding daughter to doctor's appts instead. We leave Fri morning for two weeks of camping. I'm taking my skates and am determined to skate twice on public sessions. I don't care if all I get to do is go round and round!

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Halos: Loops out of a 3-turn have gotten really good, and loops out of cross-overs have improved a lot. Sals had really good height today! Managed to do a couple of cross-foot forward spins, and a few decent backspins.

Horns: Every session, I can do a certain amount of flip jumps, and then they just go to crap. Not just less height, or something like that, like I can't get off the ground. Same with spins. The first few spins of the session are always great, and by the end I can't spin to save my life.

Wiped out on a back outside twizzle today, bruising my rear nicely. Should be nice and stiff tomorrow from that one!

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~No thinking, breathing, or hesitation!~

As soon as they start deteriorating, leave them, and go and do something else. You may find that you can go back to them in 15 minutes and they're fine again, or you may have had your "ration" for the day. But leave them as soon as they start deteriorating.

Not skating this morning - husband just grunted at 6.15 and went back to sleep! Very stiff, but suppose I'll drag myself down to the rink for dance club, which I'll enjoy when I get there, no doubt!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Started working w/ FDance (juv & int)

Halo: Lifting me is easy enough, the drapes are getting better as is the footwork. Unison seems to be good.

Horns: Dance spins, gotta remember to lean outside the circle. Doing the footwork fast is difficult, he just had to have a full lunge, (he is so young).

The music we dance to is pretty and very soft, not very me, but i figure it's good to give different types of music a go.
My jumps are really good even though I test this saturday and was supposed to test dances next week but can't due to eye surgery. Oh well, I'll do it later.

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Who me? Couldn't be....
http://www.youtube.com/bouldersk8r

Yes..... my husband lifted her at one of the many parties at the Mountain Cup, and said "Goodness, you're light!" Which was not exactly tactful of him, but true - Coskater64 is a lot lighter than I am!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Halos:

Spins felt good. Sit-change, flying camel-back sit combos and forward camel all felt pretty solid I'm also getting a bit braver on the lutz, which caused me to take some falls, but at least there is progress I also pulled out some nice RFI brackets as well as some RFI-RBO double brackets. I'm hoping to get them good enough to put into a footwork sequence in my new program

Horns:

My test program run-through was less than spectacular, though I felt pretty overheated during the entire freestyle, so I think that may have had something to do with it.

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I've got mad salchow disease!

Dance club this evening - really focussed on edges and speed. There are some times I'm sure the Husband holds back, though he always says not (well, he would say that, wouldn't he!).

Halo: Did some good work on the basic dances, and did at least one pattern of the Golden Skaters' Waltz really fast.

Horns: Some dances still felt like skating through treacle. Another skater pointed out we were probably doing the chassés in the Riolado Samba (Silver Samba with the backwards bits taken out) at half-speed. I canNOT do the 3-turn in the Hickory Hoedown, I don't think it's physically possible! Do not like the Festival Quickstep - Husband messed up the change of hold and pulled me off-balance, then blamed me! But when we did it again, he got it right, so that was all right, but I still don't like that dance, and don't know what I'm doing with my free leg on all those quick steps! Ah well.

I might grumble, but it was still enjoyable! Before it started, we tried doing 3-bracket-3s in hold, with singular lack of success, but it was fun trying....

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Halo: My spins are getting better, I am rotating a lot more than I used to! Also, I'm starting to feel really comfortable with the Ten Fox.

Horns: the 3-turn skill in preliminary skills is still bad...and my axel is the same, I was able to pull in a tiny bit tighter today, but no real progress oh well...I didn't have too much time to work on them, so maybe next week I'll have more luck with that

: Trying out the last morning FS session with primary coach today... I like it!!! It's fairly quiet...
I got thru most of my moves relatively unscathed...

Guess what? He actually LIKED my nightmare forward power 3's!!!

: My BW crossovers around the ends of the rink! Primary coach just had to choose the time where he goes over back crossovers and telling me to LOOK behind me to remind me of the time that I almost ran him over with my car.

Coach: "You have to look... like you should have when you almost ran me over at 6th St. a few weeks ago..."
Me: "Well, actually YOU wouldn't have gotten hit. The guy in front of you would have gotten it!!!"

(Maybe I should have... Just kidding... And besides, after that freak accident I had about 8 days ago... I probably deserve it too!!! )

There are still some stuff to work on... on almost all the moves!!! More stuff to practice this weekend...

Another funny: After having a hard time stiffling a yawn and dragging on moves that are usuallly easy for me, he says that he thinks he's gonna make me take the test in Sept. so I would quickly pass it and get back into skating Monday nights again... Of course, I quickly had to correct him that we switched to morning FS b/c of the summer weeks... and school will start soon after then anyway, so it will be Thursday afternoons again...

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

Halos: Pretty much everything which was a shock to me and my coach because I'm only skating once a week for the summer and so practice is minimal. Maybe I'm forgetting all my bad habits? It was definitely a Spin Night, since I hit everything. Camels were better than I've ever done them and I did several, not just One Lucky One. The sit-change-sit changed feet and stayed down! Even the layback was centered!

Jumps were a little less angelic but I got closer to a clean flip than I have since the week I got back from Fance. I eked out another degree or two of rotation on the axel and landed on the correct foot for a change. And we worked on the double salchow prep for a while - salchow/backspin/exit. I really like edge jumps.

Finally we worked on a straightline step sequence and I didn't trip once. It got a little wonky when we shifted it to the diagonal (blasted dancers kept STANDING in my path!!!! Not waiting for music or anything, just standing there chatting!!!!) but it was - interesting to see how different steps felt just because I changed their location in the rink.

Horns: Besides the standing dancers, the only issue we had was with a member who "forgot" to mail in her membership renewal and made a scene in the lobby when we explained that she couldn't walk in and skate because she has no insurance since she isn't a member at this time. This isn't the first time she's done this - I don't think she's ever gotten her membership application in on time in all the years I've known her, but it's the first time the club has enforced the rule about not allowing non-members to skate. She's not the only one who's tried but she is the only one who kicked up a fuss. I know I shouldn't let that stuff follw me out onto the ice but it does and it's not fun.

Halo: Getting back in to the swing of things. Finally had a pair lesson--it had been 4 weeks since the last one. Cleaned up 2 lifts, then learned the flying catch-waist spin. (I'm gonna call it the Kama Sutra pair spin because of the funky positions Loops and I end up getting into! ) Flo, is this the flying spin you keep raving about? It starts off as a normal pair spin, but then we hop to each other (kinda like a mini waltz jump), assume the back camel position, and grab each other's waists--or try to!

After the lesson, we played around with pair brackets while we were in a Killian position and then went straight into a funky dance lift. That was pretty neat-o.

We are making nice progress on our new program--even though it's not done being choreographed. We'll get there.

Horn: I've developed a hip bursitis problem--the massage therapy seems to help a little. But doing flying camels, at times, hurts like a mother ******.

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Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
"Do what you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life."
-Haha, I've *arrived*! I am listed as a reference on Wikipedia.