Hi Nova,
That's one of them! There's also another where, instead of hopping, you do an inside three into eachother and end up in the same position. From this position you can go to a ball, both of you just bend your skating knee and crouch down, free leg also bent, but not on the ice. My camp partner and I decided to rename it to a "hedgehog" spin.

Also, if he hasn't done it, ask Nick to teach you too the head chopper. It's just a pair cammel and loops would crouch down for a rotation (and your leg would go over her head) and then pop back up into the cammel position.

Halo: We had some visitors to our rink this morning, the British champion dance couple, down for a judge's critique. And our own elite dancers were back from holiday and illness, so we ended up training with three of the top four British couples! Can't be bad.... and two Junior couples and one that is either Novice or Primary, forget which - and another adult elementary couple! I felt rather sorry for the two free skaters, although more joined them in due course, and some more adults, too.

We had a good practice, although we still need to work on the new holds in our free dance. One of the holds showed the weaknesses in my back cross-rolls very nicely.... luckily I only have to do 2 in it in the actual dance! And we both had trouble not breaking at the waist in our changes-of-edge. Spent time working on our assisted 3-jump/sort-of lift, which ought to work a lot better than it does. It's fine if we go into it slowly, thinking of each phase of the element, but at speed it almost never works properly! Our other lift, the "real" one at the end of the programme, is almost always fine.

Mind you, I'd not do one lift I saw this morning where the woman is slung round the man's neck like a garland, and the only reason she doesn't fall off is that she's holding her blades..... Sheesh.... no thank you! Nor would I trust him to do a spread-eagle while I did a (supported) handstand on his knees, thank you very much! Or some of the other upside-down lifts I've seen our elite skaters do.

Horns: Traffic jams, mainly; you couldn't do things like Evil Eights without getting in someone's way, or they in yours. It was sort of fast out there - but I like that, as it makes me skate faster.

Did a Canasta Tango solo, and realised, when I'd finished, that I had not bent my knees at all (I exaggerate, but you know what I mean).... Oh well, trudge another mile.... and my FO edges were slow and clunky today, although I think they were deeper. Back cross-strokes coming along nicely, and back cross-rolls, too.... did some quite good forward cross-rolls in Foxtrot hold, too (this hurts like crazy if you do a whole lap, which we did - the second side really focussing on knee-bend and edges, it made a difference!).

Tried a hold we've been discussing on another forum, where I skate in front of him with my arms back, and he holds my hands. He said I might find it easier if I kept my shoulders back - er, I don't think so, much too scary! All the same, he's quite right. We'll have to try that again next time we skate.....

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Nick mentioned these others. Loops hates the crouch spins (but I like 'em). Nick calls the head chopper the guillotine.

Loops and I might also play with a pair spin where she does the forward camel and I do a forward sit. And unfortunately at the silver pairs level, changing positions is not allowed.

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Pooh - keep working on it for gold pairs. Remember - both of you can go up to gold when one of you passes gold.

Since Loops passed gold moves, we can take the gold pairs test. Or we can take up to the juvenile pair test.

These tests won't count for me because I've not passed gold MIF or taken ANY standard track tests; I'd just be along for the ride.

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But before we could take the gold pair test we'd have to take the bronze and silver tests, or we could take preliminary and juvenile pairs. Either route is available since I've passed both gold and juvenile MIF.

That's not in the cards this year though.

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Something to look forward to next summer, perhaps--that is if I don't actually follow through on the annual "I'm quitting for good--no, really!" bit in December.

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Or one of you could pass gold free. The rules are too wierd. I have a juvenile pair test, which puts me in gold, but I can't take the gold test because I don't have gold moves. So it would take me two more tests to get me where I am now. Grrrr.

But passing gold free means you have to skate in gold singles. ( )
The way the rules are set up now is that you can skate gold pairs but still be a silver singles skater.

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Halo: Did spinning today. Had a REALLY GOOD spin from the back shoot-the-duck entry, resulting in 16 revolutions. I had to count the tracing 3 times to make sure I wasn't kidding myself. Spins started going downhill after an hour though. Started toying a bit with clockwise stuff again. Managed to pull off clockwise waltz jumps, half flips, toe loops, and salchows. Not very big or stable jumps compared to my counterclockwise ones, but they're there. I think I'm going to start practicing clockwise jumping and spinning for a while every time I skate. My clockwise spins suck, but they're much better than my backspins that I can't do at all!

Horns: My feet hurt in my skates. First the tops were sore so I loosened them a bit, then they were tool loose and I couldn't skate so I tightened them again and they were tolerable, but the backs of my heels hurt a lot after not even 2 hours on the ice. I want my new skates.

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Horns: We were practising changes-of-edge together and Husband mistimed his swing and kicked me in the shin. Absolutely denied he'd even touched me - until, after we got off, I showed him the mark, which only just didn't bleed, and will scab! So now I have scars on each leg from him.......

Very tired today, but still managed to skate relatively well. Made a nonsense of my RFO 3 in the free dance, because Husband swerved out of the way to avoid people who were standing in our line of fire (I said go straight through them, they knew we were coming) so I was off-balance.

Tried to show off our pairs spin to our coach - naturally, the Laws of Skating kicked in, and we couldn't even get 1 revolution......

Haloes: Lift worked better than ever - husband managed a full 360 turn with me in his arms before the music stopped! Coach said our Swing Dance "looked easy", which is a huge compliment from him!

He finally explained to Husband, in words of one syllable, that we need to rotate our shoulders together when one of us is doing a 3-turn. So we tried it like that, and, needless to say, it was much easier, so I was like, "Can we always do it like this, please?", but I bet that won't happen!

Husband and I played with the Hickory Hoedown. I can do the 3-turn slowly now, but not yet at the correct speed. Oh well.....

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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!

Hello all,

It's been a while since I've done one of these. I really didn't have much to report since I didn't really have any new things to report regarding how my skating had been going. However, I've made some progress and thought I'd share.

Horns:
I figure it's best to get the bad stuff out of the way first. Regarding the work I've been putting into the gold moves, it's been so frustrating to be struggling with what I thought was the simplest step of the test. I've been struggling with power circles. Originally, the only power circle that was decent was the forward counter-clockwise power circle. Now, after a lot of work, all but the back clockwise power circle are at least presentable if not actually passable. I think that I sometimes get carried away counting the crossovers as I do them that I forget to focus on my crossover technique and I end up tripping or losing my balance. I hate splatting on crossovers. My right forward outside bracket can still get a little bumpy. On the whole, my bracket pattern can get a little distorted when I get to the back outside brackets. I tend to make those circles a little shallow.

My freestyle has been improving steadily since my bout with waxels and wow-cows a couple of months ago. However, that being said, I'm still struggling with the entrance into my camel spin. I have a tendency to hop up into the camel position. I think I've made some progress towards fixing this but I'm still inconsistent with my camel entrances. I've also been toying with doing forward spins out of back spins. This has proved quite challenging for me. I always seem to lose my balance a little bit as I step into the forward spin coming out of the back spin. The double sal is still AWOL. I've decided to take a break from it because my last few attempts were dismal at best and life-threatening at worst. I still don't get why this jump has gone away from me. So I've decided to work on other doubles which leads me to the positive, up-lifting part of the post.

Halos:
I'm probably most pleased about my progress with the gold moves. That's not to say that my moves are all perfect or even passable but I can at least get through each pattern and by and large I feel comfortable with everything except the back clockwise power circle. Considering my moves were a dismal eye-sore as much as two months ago that's saying a lot. My moves coach and I are working hard at refining everything and I still make dumb mistakes but I feel there's nothing on the test that I won't be able to do by the time I take the test (my goal is to take the test by the end of the year).

It's been hard to get myself going when working on freestyle elements lately. I've been doing my usual assortment of jumps (all the singles including the axel). However, my main focus for the past couple of months has really been spinning. I've had some breakthroughs in getting my sit spin lower and increasing the speed of my back scratch spin. My flying camel has also been improving in terms of speed and centering. I've been toying with a layback spin. It's been quite the adventure! I tend to go up to my toe-pick and grind to a halt but my coach tells me I have good arch in my back so I guess with some work it might be usable. I've also been working double jumps. The double toe is sometimes toe-axeled and at other times not. It's still a work in progress. I had also been working on doing double loops out of back scratch spins. This past Saturday they were feeling particularly snappy even if they weren't getting all the way around so I decided to try a double loop out of a back edge just to see what would happen. On my first attempt I landed on my right foot (opposite from the landing foot...I'm lefty) but did get all the way around. I was shocked. So I figured I'd give it another shot and see what happens. The second attempt went up and rotated and actually stayed straight! I actually landed on my landing foot and everything! However, I was so shocked that I didn't check my free leg behind me. I tried to throw the free leg behind me quickly to try and save the landing and wound up catching the toe-pick of my free leg on the ice behind me and tripped myself. ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!! Still, I was excited that I got it all the way around and I got up from the ice laughing. It was fun trying that double loop yesterday.

So that's what's been up with me. I hope everyone is doing well both on and off the ice.

Frank

Hey Frank,
Glad to hear you are making steady progress on the gold moves. That gives me motivation to work on them.
I had one lesson on them many moons again and got so frustrated that I decided to stop and work on my spins (achieving Level 2).
Loops and I were playing around with a mini-bracket sequence (while I skate behind her and hold her arms), so myabe I can return to working on those.

Kudos, also, on your spins--they sound exciting!

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Hey NoVa,

Good to hear from you. The gold moves are tough to begin with, but they've been very challenging for me because I've never really felt that edge control was ever a strength for me. However, I think the trick is to just keep working on them no matter how crappy they might feel. Believe me, there have been days that I've felt completely in lummox mode. Sadly enough, these days always seem to fall on days I have lessons with the aforementioned moves coach. Regardless of how badly the moves feel on any given day I always tell myself that I'm doing better with them at that moment than on the day I first started to learn them and that's always helpful.

The spins have been exciting. I don't think any of the new stuff I've been trying is quite program-ready yet but it's been fun trying it all and I think it's been helping my spinning in general. I've been toying with doing a forward catch foot camel. I'm still having trouble catching my foot but even if I don't get it, the spin tends to gather a ton of speed. People at the rink who have seen it say it looks cool even when I don't catch the foot and stay in the arched, bent-leg position. Whether that's true or not I don't really know. All I do know is that practicing this spin makes me feel as if every drop of blood in my body is rushing to my head! I could do without that particular sensation.

Take care,

Frank

Sorry for off-topic - which rink do you skate at? Eventually we'll have to move to London and I'll have switch clubs and coaches. The Covenry rink team is great and I'm wondering if I'd be able to find a good crew in London. Which rink would you recommend? Alexandra Palace looks like a good choice, if we move to North London, but we might end up in Docklands. Heard some rumors of a rink being built inside the Dome... are those just rumors?

Halo: now I figured out the difference between the edges that my coach wanted me to do and the ones I was doing last time when we had a lesson. She would have been proud of me!

Horns: because of admin stuff (she's also one of the school's directors) we didn't have time for my lesson this week so I had no chance to show off my progress. All I got to show her, when she stopped by to have a quick chat, was my first feeble attempt at a bracket that I've been learning from a skating manual.

Halo: She liked it!

I skate at Streatham, in South London, which is the most convenient to me. This is to be rebuilt in a couple of years, but the present rink will remain until the new rink opens. That's "home" to me, and I recommend it, but in London you have a choice! Alexandra Palace is lovely - we skate there once a month. There is also Lee Valley, in the area that will be rebuilt for the Olympics - don't know what will happen to the rink there, though, or whether it will stay. Hope so! I've not skated there, only put Husband on the ice at a competition, but it's in a lovely setting. Then, slightly further out, there are (clockwise) Romford, Chelmsford, Gillingham, Guildford and Slough.

I don't know whether they are going to build a permanent rink in the Dome, or just a temporary one for exhibitions/competitions. I do hope we get Worlds in 2008 - an awful lot of us are planning to apply for temporary jobs there if we do!

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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!