Well yesterday my husband and I had our first private lesson with our coach. She showed us heaps of things. Well anyway I was practicing afterwards and fell over doing cross rolls, basically I've banged up both my knees, they are bruised and sore when I touch them but not when I move normally. We went skating today to practice but I've lost any self confidence I had, I couldn't even manage to do anything harder than a swing roll without freaking out. Now my husband is way ahead than me in terms of skating was doing 3 turns, waltz jumps etc in front of me and told me just to forget about freaking out and try anyway. I started to until I fell over again and my knees started hurting. Anyway I got grumpy with him cause he always finds things easy to learn and do and the people in our adult skating club are always going on about how wonderful he is doing and how I will catch up someday. Now he doesn't mean any of this maliciously its just driving me nuts. I am seriously considering throwing my skates out the window today and giving up completely.

Anyway the other reason why I'm grumpy is because our ice skating rink is not giving the figure skating club enough ice time, we only get from 7 - 9 am weekdays, 7 - 8.30 pm on Monday night and saturday from 6 - 9 am for all 50 of us to practice on, we did initially have more hours than this. The ice skating rink was funded by the figure skating club, the curling club and the ice hockey club all paying a 1/3 yet we are not getting an equal share of the ice time. To make things worse the New Zealand speed skating team have shifted to our ice skating rink and are training on the ice for 4 hours a day 6 days a week and paying premium money for the ice time which is most of the reason why our ice time has been cut in half. It doesn't help that the manager of the rink is a curler and all he cares about is making money, and he told us himself that he thinks that figure skating seems a waste of time.

Sorry to rant about this I feel like I'm going to explode. And I have to go to ice skating practice tomorrow night, which I am now dreading.

You have my sympathies. I can offer no solutions, but I can understand. One of the things I hate most about being coachless is my ice time is dependent upon public sessions. I am getting sick and tired of having to stop in the middle of something because some person goes flying through my space (even if the space is marked off, as it was by cones today!) at break neck speed. I've been collided with numerous times, and it seems like the rink staff just isn't paying enough attention, since this flatly against the rules, especially as the center circle is clearly marked as being for freestyle and that break neck speed is against rink policy. Frustrating when rinks don't care about their patrons, isn't it?

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Owwww..... my knees feel your pain! Been there, done that! Just wait until (as happened to me today) your husband not only kicks you in the shin, which hurts, but denies he even touched you..... until you show him the mark, which was only just not bleeding! It's still sore, several hours later...

Always remember that in pairs and ice dancing, the first rule is that it's always the man's fault. The second rule is that even if the lady made a mistake, it's still the man's fault!

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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!

Well my bruises have now come into their own they are a pretty dark purple colour and have cat scratches across them due to one of our cats jumping off me.

I've been doing pilates 4 - 5 times per week which is good but my husband does it to so I can't get ahead of him there. I think my problem is mostly mental, its a pity I can't get a new brain, I don't know what more I can do I guess I just have to keep trying. The worst part is the comparison other people make between me and my husband.

I know it's hard, but you mustn't let what others think or say bother you. I know how tempting it is to compare yourself to someone else, and I can fully understand how hard it is to feel you are not progressing as quickly as your husband, but we are all different. I'm sure that in time you'll come across things that you can do better on the ice than him. He may grasp things quicker than you but once you grasp them, who's to say you won't do them better? So please stop beating yourself up over this. We all have down times where we feel useless on the ice - it's a difficult sport and sometimes it can get frustrating, but if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

As for the bruised knees, they will get better. Unfortunately bumps, bruises, sprains and strains are all a part of the sport. It's natural to lose your confidence after a nasty fall. It happens to me and I'm sure it happens to plenty of others too. Over time your overall confidence with skating will increase and you'll worry less about falling or skating after a fall.

Nicki

Yep you are right and I know it, I'm just not feeling it. It doesn't help at the moment that I'm trying to lose some weight I have put on over winter. When I'm feeling down I eat chocolate, candy or potato chips to make me feel better and snap out of it but at the moment theres no junk food in the house ...

The only thing I can do better than my husband on the ice is fall over