It's been blowing a gale here, with torrential rain, hence this week's title. And now it is really lovely - clear blue skies.

Wet and Windy: It takes forever to find the right place on the ice - this morning I couldn't manage it until two hours after I'd got off - after Church, doing off-ice 3-turns with a friend. And suddenly I got the posture I should like to have on-ice .....

14-step to music: struggling

Back stroking in Kilian hold: struggling

Fiesta Tango: grinding to a halt on the STF

Swing Dance: Dire, for some reason. Can do better!

Dance moves: Don't ask!

Clear blue skies:

Willow waltz: Far from perfect, but coming along.

Golden skaters' waltz (music happened to be playing): Gorgeous!

Husband's programme: Great!

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

Wet and Windy I hate inside mohawks from my right foot to my left foot (I think, now that I've typed it I might have my feet switched). I just cannot do them from anything but almost a complete standstill, yet the mohawks on the otherside are almost good enough that I can do them at some sort of speed.

Also, mazurkas. I just do not get how that is supposed to work.


clear blue skies I love to spin. My spins are not yet good, but they are thrilling. I'm consistently able to get 4-6 rotations on one foot (from either a two foot spin entrance or a hockey glide, no proper entrance yet) and looking at my tracings, they aren't moving all over the place yet (although, not on a dime either) My free foot is not in the right place, and while I want to fix all that, in the moment, I just don't care. I just love to spin!

Also, while it's nothing like a real one, my waltz jump feels like it's getting closer and closer to deserving the name waltz jump. It's awesome to have my feet leave the ice and land far away from where they left (by "real" waltz jump standards, still not far, but by what I had been doing- it's progress). It's just so great to feel like i'm getting somewhere with this.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Rain? Gale? OH MY!


FROZEN & Windy! With the temperature at -18C with a windchill of -31C, it was COLDER in my country rink than outside! (How'd they do that??!!) Instead of getting warmed up and limbered up, I got stiffer as the session went on. Not much chance of making progress so it didn’t make sense to stay around and get colder!

Clear blue Skies On the positive side, I skated 3 hours yesterday so I am not short of ice time this weekend. Being very cold, I also did a MAJOR flood on my backyard rink and have about 90% coverage now. A couple more floods to smooth out the bumps and it will be ready for SKATES!

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

wet and windy *grumble grumble* four parties at today's public session plus little kids waiting for hockey and skate guards playing tag and skate guard friend chasing little hockey kid into the middle and hockey dad watching me kick skate guard friend out of the middle and saying "she thinks her s*** don't stink" *grumble vows to stop going to sunday public session though it's not usually THIS bad*

clear blue skies since seeing myself on video my sit spin is finally parallel and doesn't just feel parallel (or so I'm told), loop is almost always there, flip is there more and I tried not to have flop arms

ha! i don't pay attention and posted on last week's thread...oh well...

Went back for adult skate, but really just socialized with friends and daughter. Didn't really feel like working hard, which was ok with me. After this mornig (show rehearsal which wasn't a lot of skating) and club time/lesson, the break was nice.

We messed around with camel spins (which disappeared for the most part, but did I really try? not really) and spirals, waltz-loops, salchows, and dodging some beginning skaters who were all over the place it was fun!

I think I'm over my funk...and need to get my skates sharpened! Two weeks until show and now is a great time!!!

ETA: my scratch spins are t-r-a-v-e-l-i-n-g!!!!! either from the dizziness, poor technique, low blood sugar, improper offerings at the altar of the gods of skating, I don't know....it was suggested to me that I need more luggage in my "booty" to spin right hmmmmm, don't know about that cause when I had it in my booty I couldn't spin at all!

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

Looplover: Only 4 parties? We had 11 during my public session. Each with 10 kids ...yep...110..plus the parents , plus the public! It was crazy! What ever happened to a nice roller rink birthday party?! Egads what a mess. I'm going to put up posters around the rink of art schools that do kids parties, roller rinks and other kid friendly venues!

Rusty: Awesome that your rink is near complete! You lucky lady!

Skate@Delaware: Glad the funk has passed. Just had my skates sharpened today. What a difference!

Wet and Windy: The crowd! My coach has my music and today I am feeling like maybe I should have picked another one. I was confident about it but doing too much " stinkin' thinkin" about it today. Wonder if I should call her and ask if she has started the choreography yet...eeek!

Clear blue skies...really focused spins due to space limitations. Many thanks to sk8pdx for posting about her spin class and the back spin. She discussed concentrating the outside edge..and what a huge difference this made. I was delighted to have a few revolutions on the back spin several times. Still not done well but at least done. Makes total sense to me now. A little girl asked why I could spin and then all of a sudden not spin so well...giggle. She did not appreciate the fact that the foot changed! Will practice this more but think it is now at least possible since I was beginning to think I would never get it.

With limited space I was able to only do a few jumps when something opened up big enough. The ice was a mess within minutes with that many people so just did the best I could. Only stayed an hour but felt it was a break through at least!

Our rink was a madhouse - THREE (count 'em: 3) huge birthday parties, and the parents skated as well! I was teaching my first student, a petite 9-year old and saw a kid horsing around with his grandfather, trying to push grampy from behind. I caught the kid before gramps went down, and asked him to calm down and skate slower. The showoff moves away backwards and knocks down my student! Arrrrgh.

I gave two private lessons today and spent the last hour of the session playing with the twins. They're usually pretty good about taking privates from me individually, but I think I'm going to pair them up for a semi-private with one of the younger coaches. (Who I really, really like a lot.)

Wet and Windy:
MITF practice was out of the question, given the crowd.
Jumps were terrible, mainly because my boots were loose!

Clear Blue Skies:
Managed a few recognizable spreadeagles and some great back spins.
Spirals were very nice, from what I saw in the glass.
I'm getting really good at spinning CW! (I'm a CCW skater.)
The music was outstanding today - somebody must have mixed a CD for the rink.
Lots of party songs, at one point it felt like an old-fashioned roller rink!

There's this thread about mazurkas that might help.
I was just teaching it this week so I'll give you a rookie tip that worked really well.
Do it from a standstill. Take your foot and pick in as if you're going to do a toe tap to the side. Quickly, bring the free leg across to the front, then put your feet together again, landing on the free toepick. Push off onto an inside edge on the other foot. Once you're comfortable with the switching, do it from the FI three-turn with a half-rotation.

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It must have been a big birthday party weekend! Our rink only looked like it was set up for two, but one of them was at 12:00 (which is way earlier than normal, since the session starts at 12, parties usually start at 12:30 or 1:00).

I can't imagine 11 parties!

Anyhow, I got 8 minutes of good ice time in before the kids started invading the rink...

The worst I've seen was 4 parties at a time. I don't think they have enough rooms to do more than that.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Clear Blue Skies:
Felt well enough to go in for Sunday. Got quite a few good backspins and dared enough to do some good backspin to forward attitude spins! I also finally got around to doing some flips and did doubletoe's drill of pushing slightly to my left to set up for my LFO3 entry for my flip and had a couple of really close clean landings to show for it!!!

Wet and windy:
The rest of the session. Ice was crap! Rink was crowded. Couldn't do much spinning... and I was practicing setting up for my waltz jump at higher speeds and kick thru and nearly kicked some obnoxious teenager going into the middle of the rink and DARED to tell me to "watch where I'm going!!!" GRRRR... I should have kicked thru and risk kick her where it hurts to teach her a lesson about going thru the middle of the rink where she has NO BUSINESS going into!!! (Yes, she IS a BEGINNING SKATER and she was barreling into the middle!!!)

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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!!!

Awww thanks Dallas. I am glad it helped. After all, that is what our practice threads are for, eh? Sure wish I could come skate with you again to see all the progress you have made. (I bet you have graduated from the safe and secure "lutz" corner of the world). Not only was the revelation in my backspin about the spot on the blade, it was about the direction of the rotation and the rest of my body alignment as well.

When a session is so crowded like that, not all is gone to waste. I usually work on footwork things like mohawks both inside and outside, mohawk crosses or "drunken sailors" as I have heard them called, little jumps like ballet jumps and mazurkas, yes, even the little evil bunny hops. Someone showed me how to do chawktaws which are really fun! I also work on backward and fwd cross rolls, fwd and back power pushes/pulls too.(they are little tiny baby things and I don't have Skate@Delaware to skate behind me for the ripping sound effects 3 turns, and of course spins. don't forget to practice pivots too. ...all the little stuff we forget because I tend to focus so much on jumps and spins...

Wet and Windy:
It was especially c-c-cold in my rink today. but suprisingly empty compared to what I have read here. still waiting for my loop to arrive. Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas. I have been a good girl, really.

Clear blue skies:
Did a backspin with 3 revs. (never done that before, I usually stop at 1 1/2.)
attitude spin was great
working on shoot-the-ducks. of course the right side is my weaker side and they are not as low. but progress is being made. figured those would help with sit spin.

Had a wonderful skate day today!

Well, I don't post too often on these threads, but I admit I'm now in desperate need of sympathy...

wet. very windy. ugh...
Oh, axel, where oh where have you gone?? Sigh. It's a horrible mess. Don't know what happened but it seems that every bad habit I've ever had on this jump has come back with a vengeance and now I either consistently fall, two foot, or simply pop out of it. Curving the entry. Not stepping up. Not stepping through. Not converting. Not staying over the right side. Not coordinating upper and lower body. Prerotating. Leaning too far forward. Leaning too far back and taking off from the heel (ooh, very very scary!!). Not checking out. Blocking the rotation. Jumping inside the circle. Not getting the arms through. Chickening out.

Every attempt is a different mistake. I had my last session videotaped, and every jump looks different. Every jump also looks wrong, and I have absolutely no feel for the timing of this anymore.

The problem is that I can see each jump and I KNOW what I need to do. Even without seeing the jump, I can usually TELL what I did wrong after the fact. But I can't seem to fix the whole jump. Coach says I need to just take a break and stop thinking about it and let my body just remember how to do it. Easier said than done when applications for Nationals are coming up.

This has been going on for 3 weeks and counting... GRRRR!

OK, sorry, just needed to vent.


blue. sunny...I guess...
Well, I can apparently land a double sal now... not that it matters b/c it's not allowed at my level anyway.

Skating is not fun when you spend most of your time as a human zamboni.

Thanks for the tips- that's pretty much what I'm trying to do (from a standstill) so it's just a matter of practicing until it actually works. I have a really hard time pulling the free leg in any sort of smooth motion, so I have problems before I even try to jump. And then the "scissor" motion is a mess... I'll check out the thread you linked to.

__________________
-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

HUG

I'm nowhere near your level Penny but I understand how you feel. I think your coach is right in that you need to step back from it for awhile and do some stuff you are good at and enjoy. I think we develop "a negative attitude" (subconsciously) toward our nemesis move and the attitude gets in the way of making it work. Coming back without the mental stigma gives you a better chance of landing that axel.

Anytime you need a hug, there are lots of them here!

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

Wet and Windy: Three turns, my ALWAYS sturggle element. For really no reason, grr! I was practicing the waltz-8 and pre-bronze 3 turn pattern and my rhythm is good, my lobes of pretty good size and the stroking parts of these patterns are good, but can I take the turn on one foot? Heck no!

Still striggling a bit to get into one foot spinon one foot, thought I had a light-bulb moment about the free leg that helped me ALMOST get my foot crossed in the spin -- I think if I were getting into the spin on one foot, I'd be able to cross my foot correctly because I'd have just a tad more momentum. Will keep working. Also tried a few from a RFI three entry (coach showed this to me last lesson). These are a little less controlled at the moment, but I think will be OK shortly.

Clear Blue Skies: Worked very hard on moves this session. Myt last lesson my coach actually thought it was a good idea when I said, "I'll probably pass Bronze before Pre-Bronze with this stinkin' three turn pattern..." So she brought out the moves book and set me to work on both pre-bronze and bronze. I so much prefer the power threes to the pre-bronze pattern -- so much so that I have to think every step of the pre-bronze pattern so I do the inside mohawk instead of a choctaw into an outside three. What a pain! I've worked on the power threes longer, so they feel more natural and I nearly stumbe every time I do the pre-bronze pattern trying NOT to step forward on the wrong edge.

I'm finding the stroking drills from the moves to be very fun and I think I'm getting decent speed on them: four strokes down the rink on each side, three crosses around the end on the perimiter stroking -- four lobes down the rink, three crosses around the end on the perimiter power stroking (forward), and four crossovers F & B on the figure eights on the hockey circles. I actually think I need tomove my feet faster on the forward figure eights as it really only takes me three crossovers to get around the circle and the minimum is four.

Worked on picking a little bit more behind my left ear on the 1/2 flip -- more pop that way. Also tried keeping my feet a little closer together before takeoff on the 1/2 loop. Got a few waltz jumps in the air away from the wall, go figure!

Yeah, me too...my coach actually wants 5 crossovers around each circle...so I have to take smaller quicker "steps"...

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

I think you're right. Since last week was Thanksgiving, some people may have put off their parties until this weekend. My oldest's birthday coincides with Memorial Day weekend, so I usually have her parties the week before or after. Her sweet sixteen was poorly attended because it was a holiday weekend and many people were away.

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Wet and Wind-ed!

I am sweaty and exhausted from doing run throughs of this Silver Freeskate!


Coach wants me to take MIF and Silver Freestyle on same day!

January 15! Nothing like rolling the dice!
I hope to be on-line that night and register for Adult Nats!

Moves are going well....coach says I am ready now for the moves....I still practice them for about 35-40 minutes every time I skate!

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

If you skate faster, it makes everything look better!

Oh, I have TOTALLY been there (and recently, too!). When that happens, my coach has me go back to waltz jumps, then waltz-loops. Last month I lost my axel for 2-3 weeks and did nothing but waltz jumps and waltz loops in my program the whole time. Once I finally got the takeoff feeling right again (It turns out I hadn't been holding the takeoff edge long enough, so I fixed it so that I felt like I was gliding straight forward for 2 beats before takeoff), I added the backspin position in the air and--bingo--the axel was back. This is probably the first time I didn't freak out when my axel went away, and I'm very proud of that, LOL! So I would highly recommend taking out one revolution, focusing on the takeoff, and not freaking out.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Good luck!!!! To take the pressure off, you may want to try to convince yourself it doesn't matter if you skate at Silver this year at Nationals, because you'll still skate Silver later on in the year if you don't pass this time. Brainwashing myself to believe it didn't matter was the only way I was able to keep my nerves in check and pass both my Gold MIF and FS on the same day last year, LOL!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Heh heh heh!!! Aren't you glad I told you to ask??? (I knew that was coming... )

Good luck with the test!!! You'll do fine!!!

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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!!!

Clear Blue Skies:
Lesson with Secondary Coach was 150% than last week's Lesson From Hell.
There weren't too many people on the ice today. Maybe they know that Mondays is one of the skating days for that Psycho Bronze Moves Lady!!

Wet and Windy:
Ice was horribly chewed up- then again that's a good stamina exercise!!
I cannot, for how long I wait to get the RFO threes on top of the lobe for power three turns!! Any ideas out there??

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Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

I'll give you one idea if you tell me how to step forward on this side: My idea: WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT. Maybe look at the side wall and turn when you are lateral to it?

Sorry probably not much help.

Good luck with your test.

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

Terri - you should wait until you feel like you're going "downhill" (back towards the line/axis) on the lobe before you turn.

Clear blue skies: My axel stayed with me over the weekend! I landed two cleanly today, and I even got them both on video - I am using my little P&S digital because I was desperate to see how they looked. I'm crossing my fingers that I can duplicate this in my lesson tomorrow. I did a few pretty good double loops, though they're definitely 1/2 underrotated. I also had one credible double toe attempt but the rest were horrifying.

Wet and windy: I couldn't spin for crap today (I think I pulled something in my side/hip because laybacks HURT), and my double sals were terrible. I know what I need to do (keep the left shoulder checked on the take off) but I can't make my body do it.

Clear blue skies: I managed to skate at weekend public sessions. All APBMs went fine. I worked most of time on the hard one - F3-turn pattern. Tried all of the tips I got from the thread. Check and hold 3s, push to BI and hold BXOR to a nice deep FI edge.

icedancer2, you are right! I just returned from rink. I pass APBM, tonight

Luna

I have always turned before the top of the lobe on every MIF pattern I've ever had, in spite of my own eyes telling me I was at the top of the lobe. I finally realized my own space perception was totally wrong and I started waiting until I was absolutely sure I had passed the top of the lobe and was starting down hill before I turned. It solved the problem. Now the turn marks show up right at the top of the lobe. Go figure!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics