Sparkly: Robert and I got all our exercises over and done with in pre-lesson practice, which meant we didn't have to do them in our lesson! And the ones we didn't do before, we did afterwards - and our swing rolls in waltz hold are getting better, especially when Robert remembers to partner me and not use me as a prop!

In our lesson, we ran through our Artistic Pairs, or whatever it is called, which was a bit of a disaster because we cut the step-sequence too short, then got thoroughly lost! But it was a blessing in disguise, because our coach then choregraphed the step-sequence for us: LFO, RFO, bunny hop, 3 cross rolls, another bunny hop, RFI touch-behind, LFI touch-behind, and then we decided to go into a side-by-side spiral! So it's coming together now - we just have to work out the transition into the hydroblade sequence!

Dusty: Pairs spin.... oh dear.... enough said..... trouble is, neither of us can spin worth a damn, anyway! Our aim is for 3 revolutions by the beginning of October....

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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!

Mrs. Redboots - oh dear, spinning is tough enough on its own, let alone in tandem! As a child pairs skater, all I can say is hang in there because eventually those revolutions DO come along! The step sequence sounds great.

I'm thinking about the bunny hop out of cross rolls. I can't do cross rolls, they're more like cross steps with ugly toepick sounds, but I'd like to try that out.

Means you aren't bending your knees enough - cross-rolls take more knee-bend than you would think possible, they really do! And the bunny-hop into them is tricky - as is the one out of them. Do-able, but it took me a couple of goes and it's not quite smooth yet.

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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!

Mrs. Redboots you are always so ahead of the game! I just posted a long post on last week's 'running smoothly...' and didn't remember that today is the 25th. Today's post from you sounds like such fun!

Dusty:

• Power 3's on the LFO3's side. So what else is new??? (Actually, it wasn't that bad. At least there's now some flow and I could do the LFO3's consistently.. But power??? What power!?!?!
• The back crossovers to BO edges were that great, but still "passable."
• Backspins!!!
• Jumps also , but I think it's mainly b/c of my being protective from that calf injury.
• Starting to feel some pressure, b/c I know I'm getting close to testing the darn Bronze Moves. The thing that bothers me most is that I haven't even filed the paperwork and already my skills has already start going down the toilet.
• Camel spins half bad! (Can't spin more than one revolution.)

Sparkly:

• I still managed to land one loop and one flip too!!!
• Rest of my jumps are still intact, though obviously tentative for obvious reasons.
• The rest of the Bronze moves are fine, though I could definitely do better on the 5 step mohawk, particularly at the beginning when I do the very first FI mohawk.
• Camel spins are half good. (Can do 2-3 rev.)
• Forward spins and sit spins okay.
• Forward progressives are doing okay.

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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!!!

Thanks. It's only because I normally skate on Sunday mornings....

I can't spin either, so don't feel badly!

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

Sparkly Making progress, ever so slowly, on the bronze moves. My primary coach worked with me yesterday on all the elements that have crossovers in them, and all are looking better. I was able to do the forward perimeter crossover stroking on pattern now. Still have a ways to go on the backward perimeter crossover stroking, but it actually got better while we worked on them. Also ran through my program several times and it's looking better also.

Dusty Nothing really, except I nearly fell over on my salchow in the first runthrough of my program. Suddenly found myself spinning on my heel instead of rotating on the toepick to take off. Oh well, at least it didn't freak me out! Also, my legs felt like jelly after 2 40-minute sessions with so many crossovers (between practice and my lesson)!

Hang in there on those moves, Jazzpants!

Happy skating,
Pat

Dusty: Jr. Silver multi-turns suck. Plain and simple.

Sparkly: Westminster is coming along. I think this is probably the most difficult dance I've had to learn. There are a couple of awkward bits, but they feel better each time I work on them. Super sparkly: I tried it to the music for the first time and did great! I was expecting it to be a lot faster than it was, so it felt like I was just crawling along, instead, LOL.

Flying choctaws improved a lot today. I haven't worked on them for a while, and today my coach tweaked some things so I feel pretty confident with them. Power threes are improving too. Just have to make sure I don't slack off with them, since they are so boring.

Loops! Forward outside are the best, but all of them are really improving. I was extremely frustrated at first with loops, but they really are something you just have to keep practicing over, and over, and over again to get the feel for them.

Did a really nice LFO spiral at the end of practice today. I've never much liked spirals, mainly because I don't think mine are very good, but I've been practicing them off-ice and it made a HUGE difference today!

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~No thinking, breathing, or hesitation!~

What's a flying choctaw? I've never heard of this, but it sounds like fun .

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"The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary." -- Vidal Sasson

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." -- Unknown

A native American in an aeroplane???

Sorry couldn't resist.

John

LOL.

I'm not sure if I can explain it very well. On the pattern, they are done quite quickly; the focus of the exercise is power and agility. Actually, as I sit here and try to figure out how to describe it, I am at a complete loss. LOL. Anyone else want to try?

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~No thinking, breathing, or hesitation!~

It's what the Junior move used to be before the USFSA figured out too many of the kids were really only doing Mohawks and changed it to be more edgy...

They're choctaws that are hopped a bit. So instead of smoothly placing your foot on the ice after the turn, you jump the turn a bit before the foot hits the ice.

Still having trouble landing my loop on one foot. Why does my free foot become uncrossed in the air and then I two foot?

Tried a half flip/flip/loop combo and boy was it messy after the flip. LOL I think I'll keep trying them.

So far in my 1 min 33 second Bronze freeskate, I start out with a half flip/flip, then the next jumping passes are a salchow, then a waltz/toe combo and finally a toe loop.

Has anyone tried doing a LBI spiral then change feet to a RBO edge to set up for a waltz/toe combo? It works pretty good. I wish though that it was an axel/loop after the LBI spiral.

Dusty: My legs were so dead today, I barely made it off of the ice in my jumps. AFter a while I couldn't do my flip jump anymore. Just no gas in the tanks left.

Brigitte

__________________
"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

Sparkly: the loop was not a fluke, I was able to do them at about a 40% clip yesterday during freestyle. The other 60% was either underrotated or two-footed.

Now that I have moved up the ISI chain, coach Mandy has added work on the flip, sit, camel, attitude/layback, and more finessing of the loop.

Show practice went great, I have a higlight element, the sal-toe combination.

Dusty: The honeymoon with the loop is essentially over, now that I'm over the thrill of landing them, I want to land them consistently well. And oy! the back pain and hip pain of practicing them for over an hour!

Moving on to harder elements: I've been working on some things, but not giving it much attention until I passed to a new level, and wow, this stuff is challenging once you start in on it. The flip is high, huge, and still landed on two feet, although with the new improvements added yesterday, now I"m landing on two feet crossed instead of side to side. The sit is getting lower with more rotations, but closing that gap so it looks like a sit can be scary. And I learned I have been doing the camel aaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllll wrong, as I have been going into it with an open hip instead of closed. And least we forget the terror and thrill of the attitude/layback...

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Champagne in 2005, 2008, 2009 - who's next out of the pre-bronze club...?

Wang chung!

Sparkly: It sounds like there's been quite a bit of success from everyone here from landing jumps, getting edges and the competitions- congrats!
I like the flying choctaws, and have been trying to work them into next year's program. My double sals are going better, and I'm looking forward to working on them with the new entry of waltz three's. My coach changed the entry in hopes I would land more of the jumps on my foot. She had been saying "one foot or fall" but noticed that I really didn't mind falling. I think my left leg is longer than the right , and it just taps the ice on my way out of the jump.
Our show went well, we all had a great time. I asked one of our 6 year olds to be our flower collector - she was great, and really cute. Also there was a nice surprise, I won the club's Davis Cup, it's an award for the skater with the greatest accomplishments over the season.

Dusty: my voice. Woke up sounding like a frog.

Dusty:Most things after over a week off the ice due to the kids Opens being on all last week.
Most of my spins
Forward crossover/backward crossover Field Moves (UK) pattern. Havent practised crossovers in a while (slap wrists!) and still find the step from LBI to RFO extremely scary. Sometimes it just works fine but most of the time I wimp out.

Sparkly: salchow/toe-loop combo was looking OK - not sure why as individually both jumps suck!
One reasonable sit spin.
3 -jump (waltz) - could still do with more height though - coach says I dont look like I am putting in any effort - I am but it doesn't seem to get through to the feet!

__________________
'skating is not just a sport - it is an obsession'

Sparkly:

Passed the 4th element on the silver Skate UK Star dance test, and one of the gold ones.

Did some nice spirals.

Dusty:

Motivation, again. No oomph.

Toe loop wasn't really working.

Other spirals were not as good.

Spins were kind of in between - not awful, but nothing special either.

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"It’s never too late to skate at any age." - Alexei Mishin.

Dusty:

• Too hot to do anything productive. I came from an office whose AC decided to die on a HEATWAVE!!! I was dragging throughout the session when I came in from the heat.
• LFO3 decided also to do a disappearing act at the end of the session. There goes the power 3 again.

Sparkly:

• Had my power 3's somewhat in place at the beginning of the session.
• Rest of move was okay at beginning of session.
• WOW!!! I can't believe no one wants to be on the ice to cool off from this heatwave!!! It was simply DIVINE!!!

__________________
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!!!

Sparkly:
Something almost indefinable has changed for the better this past week. When I step onto the ice, I feel confident. I have much less fear in general, but I also just seem to have a whole new level of comfort on the ice. In addition to working on moves, I have been playing around with footwork of my own, something that I never used to have the confidence for.

As part of my severance package education grant, I bought two instructional videos, and just got around to watching them Sunday night. The first, "Stroking Exercises on Ice, the Dance Training Methods of Natalia Dubova" was very interesting, and got me doing chasses and thinking a little differently about FO three turns, which was helpful. The second, "The Magic of Style, Vol III", by Ann-Margreth Frei, I thought was mostly so far beyond me that it was really not worthwhile. When I got on the ice yesterday, though, I kept remembering snippets from this video that I could actually use. There were arm movements that I liked, and best of all there was a swing roll entrance into F power pulls. My coach has not yet showed me a one foot entrance, and I could actually do the swing roll entrance, but very slowly. Since my F power pulls still don't have much power (but nice deep edges), it didn't matter.

I had a mini breakthrough with the 10 step Mohawk pattern. I have known all along that it closely resembles the Fourteen Step, which was a Silver Bar dance when I was a roller skater, but that never helped me before. Yesterday while working up the courage for the CCW FO Mohawk, it suddenly clicked that I shouldn't be scared of that one, because it is the same as in the Fourteen Step (completely ignoring the fact that the turn is done differently on ice than on roller). I actually did the CCW with just a little speed, and faster than the CW, which is the easier one for me.

Here's the footwork sequence I've been working on developing:

RFI 3
XB-LBO
XF-RBI
XF-LBO (devil roll) maybe a few of these
XB-RBO into more B cross strokes

Dusty:
Spins I've had to go back to two footed spins entirely, and once again feel dizzy after a spin. I'm making myself do about 10 per session to try to get back to where I was months ago.

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Batikat: I have to do the figure of eight crossovers for the Level 3 elements and that LBI to RFO step scares me too, although not as much as it used to.

Don't usually have a lesson on Tuesdays, but with our Opens, everything is up the twist. Both coach and me very tired - had a busy day at work, and coach exhausted with no day off this week, poor man.

Sparkly: Arrived to find everybody very jazzed because One of Us had won one of the main, very important trophies at our open. As the girl in question was only in her second Novice-level competition, this is a real boost for her, plus she was the first Streatham skater to win it since her coach (also my husband's coach and my coach's wife, so very close to us), some years ago now! The trophy in question was first awarded in 1960 - we thought this was our 30th birthday for the festival, but maybe it's the 45th.....

Anyway, finally got on to the ice.

Dusty: Robert (who has been helping at the Opens, so is not at work) was tired, and although we tried to practice together, we spent more time squabbling ("You're supposed to track me!" "Well, I'm going to do curves, not zig-zags!" "I'm not doing zig-zags. And if I am, it's because you're pushing me off-balance", and similar unedifying remarks) than actually skating. So we abandoned that idea, although we did work on our step-sequence and side-by-side spirals, but that was about all.

In my lesson, my back outside edges were pretty dire, and my back inside ones even worse! My changes-of-edge were okay, but I didn't "sell" them - my presentation wasn't just so great. I also had trouble controlling my inside 3-turns - they are not well checked, yet.

Sparkly, again: HOWEVER, I spent some time in my lessons doing crossovers and holding the edge round the circle - all 8 edges. My BO edges were pretty dire, but suddenly I found, right at the end of both my lesson and the session, that I could hold a BI edge. Not as well or as beautifully as I can hold the FO and FI edges, but not badly! Ta-daaaa!

Oh, and I did a great run-through of my programme!

And Robert is getting supper (only preparing salad), so I don't have to!

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

As far as my skating went yesterday, it was all sparkly

I worked on putting together different "footwork sequences" with crossovers, mohawks, and forward 3-turns (since that's all I can do ). One that I did, which was just forward crossover - RFI3 - step forward several times in a row, and after working on it for just a few minutes it felt really smooth and confident, and I always had exactly the right balance going into the 3-turns and could keep the sequence going. Even a couple days ago I didn't always have the right balance and wouldn't even dare to turn at all because it didn't feel right, and I couldn't do 3 turns directly out of crossovers (because I needed a longer edge), but I did both yesterday. Also, all forms of crossovers and turns that I've been practicing are getting better, and we worked a bit on bunny hops.

Dusty
Forward crossovers in a counter clockwise direction. Very weak. I was at a rink this past weekend where the first half of the session you skate counter clockwise, and then after the ice is re-made you skate in the other direction. It confused the heck out of some of the smaller children.
Sparkley
Scratch spin and Waltz jump coming along nicely.