naughty
it was VERY naughty of me to skate today. i donated blood for the first time and passed out. still decided to go skating. i was SO wiped. i played the axel game again with an 8-year old and 13-yeard old and it was SO tiring lol. i fell after 10 or so and just lied flat on the ice.

double flips were no good. we decided to try some, after 5 or so tries i went "I don't like these. I want toepicks!" and we moved on

nice
did one really good double axel on the harness. It went up nicely, and it was clean. my coach wasn't really sure how much she was helping me though. usually she lets us go up on our own and then just saves us before we hit the ice (which means as we go down she jumps up in the air lol), so i may have gotten the rotation on my own. either way, the lift off the toepick was still nice

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Youtube Videos

Yea....that's why they suggest taking it easy and not exercising after donating blood...but, I really should be one to talk because I did the same thing a few weeks ago Not the best choice in the world...but coach and I were able to work on moves that day and limited jumps and spins

Hmmm my best (male) friend donates blood and he's always so pale afterwards that I joke that he's become a vampire. He doesn't usually do bodybuilding the very same day, it takes him 2-3 days to get back to normal (although he looks pale for a week, but apparently feels fine after 2-3 days). Although he claims that women take blood donation better because women's bodies are more adapted to massive bloodloss.

BTW nothing to do with my skating - at least not directly, but...

The ice rink that was supposed to be built next to our rink in september 2008 (a second olympic size rink and a speedskating track of 400 metres) won't be done until 2009.
HOWEVER. A ballet room MIGHT be included in the plans, and there will also be a half-sized ARTIFICIAL rink. The figure skating club is already discussing how to make use of that without ruining our own blades, apparently blades go round from use on plastic ice?
With 6 months break in the summer and the next closest open rink *abroad*, I suspect they'll eventually decide people should get a second pair of (boots and) blades. They already decided to put the very beginners (those with rental skates) on the artificial ice to free up more real ice.

Call me crazy but I think that artificial ice is a wonderful thing. If they can make it pay for itself, there will be skating possibilities in the Netherlands in the future in summer months.

Naughty:

SNIFFLE

I knew it was coming, felt it coming since Saturday ..... I dot a told

Oh well, time to get it out of the way before competition Sunday. One practice tomorrow.

Nice:

Taking the day off work to stay warm and get lots of rest.

__________________
Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

Nice:
Now that we have our third judge lined up for the test session next month, I made a effort the last two days to skate more aggressively and really attack my program!
Had a lesson with Secondary Coach this am and she learned that I can jump pretty well in the mornings.

Naughty:

Secondary Coach also learned that I cannot spin in the early mornings to save my life.
Am still a little sore from Monday night's step aerobics/resistance training class and skating yesterday afternoon and this morning, so will skip the gym today and walk my dog instead (it's calling for sunny and mid 70's here in VB today).

__________________
Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

Naughty:

Me!!! Okay, I asked for it. Picture this...

Saturday: Worked out at the gym with my Ballet Guy trainer. Did a little bit of cardio to.
Sunday: Did an hour on the ice doing what I needed to practice, then full fledge 45-50 min cardio on the elliptical trainer
Monday: Went to skate for the hour and a half session.

Needless to say, my Tuesday MORNING lesson with my secondary coach was a washout!!! Couldn't jump to save my life. Okay, I did ONE good waltz jump and a couple of good loops, but they weren't full speed... Jazzpants' body pretty much checked out then. (Yes, I know! Jazzpants need to control the fact that her willingness doesn't always match the body... )

Adding to it, I'm freakin' out about going full speed into the loop again! Don't know why... but I am doing it. Secondary coach says "Get over it!!!" (Tell me something I *don't* know...)

(And that's not all... I had my other personal trainer later on that night. The woman worked me, but surprisingly, not that hard -- well, at least not on the strength end. She did work me more on the balance and core end though and prescribed an off-ice jump exercise for me. (Other personal trainer IS a fellow skater too... secondary coach had told her to work me on off ice jumps and "stretch the OUTTA ME!!!" The torso stretches is when I'm not liking secondary coach all that much now... )

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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!!!

Naughty: Me, for barely skating today and spending much of the session chatting to one of the coaches and to 2loop2loop.

Husband for refusing to have a lesson.

Nice: Husband pleased with his programme by the end, he reckons that for a first outing, it'll do nicely, thank you.
Dances okay.... I have done the traditional thing of breaking the RFO3 on the Willow, which bodes well for Sunday....

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

Naughty - Haven't been on the ice since last Wed due to a bad cold and still didn't feel up to it but I had a lesson scheduled and needed to bring some show music to the director...so in I came at 5:45...

So we've been going over the Bronze Moves and today was the DREADED mohawks!

Nice - Coach said the mohawks are actually not that bad! Of course I didn't do my freeze up and chicken out routine either. We broke them down and practiced the stop forward from the backward edge which I had more of a problem with until she fixed my arms. When I wait to pass my arms and keep them by my side, I can step right back on my circle with a good forward edge. It's all in the arms.

Then I went home to bed. Fortunately we have a community thanksgiving service tonight and it's not my turn to preach because my voice comes and goes.

j

nice

loops!! the tracing is perfect. they feel high... on the tracing, from take-off to landing, there's a gap of about 30-40 cm. wow....

sitspins! i can now do about 2/10 that don't end up on my bum. (as compared to monday, when I told my coach that my sitspins were successfull on a scale of umm 1 in a 1000....)
in fact, I did one sitspin with 3.5 revs ON WHICH I DIDN'T FALL!! yay

scratches are centered. i knew it was the blades that made a difference.

i got the double 3's! thanks everyone!

my program is going good. I manage to do a fast (im talking blurry) scratch spin, immediately into a half 3 turn, toepick turns (you know, when you skip and turn and generally do fancy stuff on those picks...) and step sequence, without falling over/ going in the wrong direction/ getting in the way of a double jumper because i can't even see where I'm going (i really can't. it takes me 5/6 seconds to get my vision clear after those spins...)

the rink was quite empty compared to usual.

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I'm late posting this about Monday's practice - our internet connection died at home, and was just repaired today.

Naughty: I'm fighting a cold or something, and my heart wasn't into skating Monday evening. I went anyway because of the doc's warning about high blood pressure. I figured the exercise would do me good.

Caught the blade tail on back cross-strokes, and slammed back-first into the ice. That hurt.

I fiddled around with easy stuff until the session ended. Afterwards I went home for a warm shower.

Still have the cold today.

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Bill Schneider

nice with naughty bits:
worked some more on my canasta tango variation - a ridiculous invention of NISA to annoy British ice dancers (well me anyway! ), it's half a CD and half your own steps (like an OD). Completely pointless but I have to pass this one (level 2) to be allowed to test an original dance which I'd like to do. I presume some bright spark thought it was too difficult for people to make the vast leap from being told exactly what steps to do and where in a CD, to golly gee having to do your own steps to a rhythm (where's the sarcasm icon?)

The fact that at the same time you can be doing free dances which are all your own steps (I have level 3 free dance test) seems to have escaped their notice. Or the fact you can be competing OD's without ever testing a variation which I have done and won medals for.

Anyway on the plus side I quite enjoyed this today since the coaches tend to ignore the NISA instruction that it should be 'simple steps done well' and instead make them intensely complicated. So my variation on what is just a level 2 dance has mohawks, barrel rolls, a drag, an inside 3 etc etc. The hardest bits for me are holding the barrel roll's final back inside edge for two counts before stepping to forward and the quick RFedge, LBedge on single counts after a back swing roll.

Had a nice skate after with a friend who helped with my camel spin entry and my salchow loop and flip loop combos.

naughty: backspin - it's annoying me now!!!

Naughty:
-Decided to brave the pre-holiday crowds at public today instead of skating morning freestyle so that I could sleep in and save money.
-Didn't run though junior moves today, too many kids out of school.
-Lost my double toe. Again.
-Today's pinnacle of awesomeness: fell on a walley and did a belly-slide halfway across the rink. Haven't done that in several months, so I guess I had it coming.

Nice:
-Axel and double sal are still landed after a week of being off ice due to a head cold. It's nice that some of my jumps are becoming more consistent.
-Laybacks were also nice which is really odd since it's my weakest spin and I'm just getting over a head cold.

Naughty? Well, not naughty, but oh well, the practice thread title.

Very upset this past week because my primary coach decided to quit, lock, stock and barrel - she got really angry one last time when the ice was crap and it took them FOREVER to get it not even decent. So she left. Some of the skaters have been trying to talk her into teaching at one of the other rinks, but she seems to not want to do that, at least right now.

So we're all feeling a little discombobulated, to say the least... wondering what the hell we're going to do - it's not like there aren't other coaches, but really she was the best I'd ever seen - she has been teaching so long that she says that she can just hold your hand while you are doing something and know what you are doing wrong and understands what you can do to fix it... I LOVE HER.

Other naughty bits is that I seem to be getting dissed by my dance coach - maybe he and my other coach are in this together? I don't know - he always seems to overbook and then I get left behind without a lesson. Why do I even bother to show up?

So practice has been spotty at best - just putting my feet on the ice and skating around - hard to do for this one who likes to work on stuff.

Went to the public at the mall rink this morning - I knew it would be crowded and it was - knowing that my old hockey rink (where they were so horrible to my coach) was probably empty (but was the ice good? - probably not) made it hard to be at the mall rink but I slogged around for an hour anyway. I saw a person that I hadn't seen in a while and so that was nice to catch up.

Nice? Well, not my attitude these days, that's for sure!!

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Is Portland the only city with it's own ice-dance website? http://www.pdxicedance.net/

naughty
my skating in general wasn't great because I was so flipped out mentally (check out my post in the non-skating discussion for details).

hurt my left ankle. I was doing a double loop, and i stepped out of it and kinda stumbled. well, my left ankle was forced into a point which shoved the back of my boot against my achilles.

took me a while to get myself to do an axel. i mean, i understand why. when i'm messed up in the head, thats the first jump to go

nice
i did a decent camel-jump-back camel.

choreographed my Christmas show program it's fun music, the Fall Out Boy cover of "what's this" from "Nightmare before Christmas." I choreographed most of it last night while falling asleep, but I figured out most of the details today.

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Youtube Videos

Good or Naughty? You decide:

I never made it to my club ice today for my session, canskate or big & little skate. Staying home did give me an extra day to get better. What ever I had that ailed me, seems to be going away. Not sure if it's the 1500 ml of vitamin C, the pro-antibiotics or the antibiotics that's knocking the sickness out of me or if it's all three. This was the first day since I got sick and went to the doctors that I wasn't laying around in the house. I actually did stuff at home. Speaking of that, the reason I didn't make it to the rink is that I cut 4 CD's for two skaters for their competition this Saturday. I made their practice CDs month's ago. It took me hours to get my printer to align its self so that I could print the labels and also I printed one each directly to a printable disk. I finally had to use two different programs to get the job done. One child is skating to the Simpson's Theme music from both the movie and the weekly show. The other is skating to music from The Pirates of The Caribbean 1, 2 and 3 with a female touch. It's not all sword fighting music. I got pictures from both movies and made them the background of the cd's I made for them and then put on the FS competition info essentials.

Wonder what my secondary coach will say to me tomorrow since, I've been laid up all week except for today and never practiced any of the off-ice he told me to practice? ????????????????

__________________
"It's not age that determines but the heart." "Skating is not just a sport for the young but it's a passion for the soul of the young at heart." Brigitte Laskowski

I am a nomadic adult skater who is a member of Windsor FSC (Skate Windsor) WOS SC again since Sept. 1st, 2008.

http://eastcastlemusic.tripod.com

Singerskates Sports Music Editing

Naughty AND Nice! For having a COLD and feeling like absolute cr@p, today wasn't too bad. Spins were a bit off (to be expected with my head plugged up solid) and the energy level was low but I skated my program (without music) perfectly and now my coach actually BELIEVES that I know the choreography.

Gotta try to shake this cold before my event Sunday afternoon.

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

(for yesterday)

Good:
clean 2loops
Axel landing is starting to straighten out - im not doing that little go around in a circle landing i used to do all the time
stroking coach said i've improved since last week on my moves
started coreographing my christmas show program (almost done ) & its got all of my favorite Elements: Axel, 2loop, Layback, I-Spin, Y-spiral, spread eagle

Naughty:
haven't gotten my blades sharpened and their really too dull to do 2sals in.
fell on quite a few 2loops before i started landing a bunch of clean ones

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Good:

Did a clean program run through in practice today. Now where were my coaches today?? Continuing to attack the program and skate with more speed. Now this was easy to do today, because the freestyle was not crowded at all!


Naughty:

Must remember to keep the right shoulder up on jump takeoffs and landings!

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Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

ugh, spins were uncentered

the elements for the mif test are working nicely though.

Sessy, that's wonderful! I wish our rink had a nice aerobics/ballet room...we currently exercise/warm-up in one of the meeting/party rooms and it's disgusting. Food on the floor, it's sticky, yuk!

What we do for the synthetic ice-get a cheap pair of blades similar to your good blades (i.e. same size rocker). If you are lucky enough to have a 2nd pair of boots, that's even better! The best thing about synthetic ice: because you can skate in a warm room-you can break your new skates in quicker!!! (pm me if you have particular questions).

Ok, this is for Wednesday night, my first lesson in a while:

Good: spins! My scratch spin came back like something wicked! Even my coach was amazed! I managed several that were decently centered and fast! Woo!!!! just like the old days! It's so funny because it's my bad leg and I was soooo cautious! maybe that is why, I entered them very slowly!

Naughty: jumping was tentative so we only stuck to waltz jumps and my pushoff is very shaky. Crossovers are very bad-I'm afraid to skate very long on my left leg-it might collapse (the outer ankle is very weak). Back crossovers are much better-don't ask me why. Spirals are very hard to do (sniff! sniff! these were my best move) and hurt the muscles (especiallly the piriformis) in my left buttock. Time should heal and strengthen me.

Good: Overall I am pleased, as is my coach. I have a lot of things to work on, more homework. Every session I skate, I'm to do:
swizzles, slalams, chasses, front and back crossovers (each direction) as my warmup.

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

Good: Had annual skate at Wollman Rink in Central Park today, yay! Much fun. So gorgeous. The rink...not my skating.

Naughty: My skating. I'd like to blame the wind, however. Nothing like trying to center a spin in a gust of wind!! I can't really blame the wind because I saw some really nice spins.

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Revised Official 2010 Goals checklist
Skate __
New boots __
(lowering the bar for 2010 as I haven't skated in a year)

This was for Thanksgiving Day.

Good:
Me... for at least TRYING to do loops and flips on very tired and cold legs.

Naughty:
I didn't land ANY jumps 'til towards the end of the session, b/c I just couldn't feel my legs -- particularly my landing leg (left in my case.) My back sit spin went to pot too...
Good:
...until towards the very end of the coffee club session. Then it wasn't as bad. I was able to land my jumps then and my back sit spin was starting to get somewhere. And oh, my bracket exercise that my NYC coach gave me last year is definitely coming along better. It's not consistent good, but I can figure out what I can do to increase my odds of getting it good. Also, I had a fellow skater noticing that I'm practicing brackets too. (Meaning that it's at least getting good enough for someone to notice what I'm TRYING to do!!! LOL!!!)

I WILL conquer that goal!!! I will!!! I intend on showing my NYC coach the brackets!!!

Trying to be good...
Needless to say, I opted to stay home and not go to the gym OR skate so I can give my body a much needed rest...

Naughty and OT:
...until I went surfing on the Old Navy website and saw this nice thick sweater on sale for $25!!! Then I went and decided to go treat myself to a nice gym outfit from Lululemon to flaunt the new bod!!! I feel I am (or will be by next week's dietitian visit) at my weight goal and will likely officially be put on "maintanance mode!" (Nope! Don't want to lose any more when I'm at my goal! I'm happy where I am now -- slim, light on my feet, more agile, LOTS of energy and STILL STRONG!!! Hopefully lower cholestorol numbers too... )

__________________
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!!!

Thursday
Good:
Made it to the rink, where I skate on the City Ice (ticket ice), to meet up with my secondary coach and had at least one hour of the two hour session on which to practise and be coached for a 15 minute lessons, even though my 23 year old Drama BA Honours Univiersity 4th year soon to be graduate at the end of December daughter had me drive her clear across town right before because she had to restart typing up her paper twice over in the morning because the power failed twice and the paper was due during her class.

It was the first day back after feeling like I was going to die all week from what ever it was that I had. Don't care right now what it was though. We worked on some of my presentation of the West Side Story program I've edited, remastered and choreographed myself going into and out of elements. It really made a difference with placement of where I had planned to do elements and where I use to do the elements because now, my elements are where I invisioned them to be in the program. Case in point. I had a half flip/flip/toe combination right out of a catch LBI spiral that just was not lining up correctly before Thursday. I was finding myself going into that spiral too soon after the CE spiral and wasn't making it around the corner fast enough to get any height on the half flip or flip. I was out of gas before I got to the flip. What my coach did was have me stick two more BXs after the Mohawk for a total of 3 BXs and that got me the speed to carry me quicker around the corner and onto the jumps. There are no steps before that jump combination. He also got me to grab my blade directly behind my body so that I would grab the toe pick area which would allow me to get the blade higher into the air allowing me to have a smoother run on the blade so that I would not lose speed into my jump combination. And that just one of the things we worked on for my program.

Before that he had me run through my jumps.
Waltz: Nice swing through, height and landing.

Toe loop: better and bigger second half of RFI3 so that I would have time to get my freeleg all the way back to really dig into the ice and pop up that jump.

Salchow: isn't swingy anymore, finally feeling right.

Loop: had many close landings but it wasn't until the very last jump of the session that I actually landed it on the correct "foot and edge on one foot", only thing was that I was so shocked that I had finally landed it clean after 2 and 1/2 years of either not being able to do one clean (severe injury, sickness, surgeries and stuff) that I just froze on the landing and forgot to run out the edge and stayed in the backspin position for two rotations before getting out.

Bad:
Got overly hot and had to wait half an hour before leaving the rink because I was so wet. (Shouldn't have worked so hard just coming back from being so sick.)

Friday
Bad:
It was half a session before I realized that I had forgotten to take my inhaler even though I was wondering why I was out of breath and had no energy.
Wasted precious ice joining group which was made up of mid to high CanSkaters. Really, I just didn't want to push myself too much today because I had a hugh headache from sleeping wrong in bed last night. I messed up my neck and shoulders because I had too many pillows in bed.
My balance still isn't back because I'm still feeling a bit of the effect of what ever I had. Not totally over it yet.

Didn't make it through my whole program on time but there were lots of kids on the ice and I had to avoid them or come to a screaching halt in parts.

Good:
Sitspin during first half of first session was decent.

Footwork: was OK

Waltz jump: was getting scarily high and starting to freak me out. I was swinging my freeleg much, much higher and quicker. But it sure did sail across the ice.

Salchow: boy, I can taste that 2Sal coming back sometime in the spring. It's nice to have control again.

Toe loop: I have to watch my arms on this jump or I don't get to pick in right or get decent height but after the first two the rest of the day they were decent.

Flip: It took me about 5 attemps but after that I was getting lots of height on them and was landing them all the way around either two footed because I planned it or with a touch down.

Loop: I did the two footed take-off exercise for a while before getting into doing the jump. Didn't manage a clean one today but did do by landing on the correct foot only to touch down. Must be my balance being off with the headache.

__________________
"It's not age that determines but the heart." "Skating is not just a sport for the young but it's a passion for the soul of the young at heart." Brigitte Laskowski

I am a nomadic adult skater who is a member of Windsor FSC (Skate Windsor) WOS SC again since Sept. 1st, 2008.

http://eastcastlemusic.tripod.com

Singerskates Sports Music Editing

Lol we now have ballet in the lobby, which is usually sticky with beer remaining from hockey games, yikes. So what's the rocker on coronation aces?
I do happen to have a second pair of boots.

I didn't wanna post about this yesterday cuz I wasn't sure;
I did a toe-loop by accident yesterday, I just wanted to go through the set-up trying not to pre-rotate the take-off, but then I went into the air without meaning to. It was a *tiny* toeloop but the ankle seems to be holding up.