We spent a WHOLE group class session just working on back edges...but if you incorporate them into a warmup during every skating session, you will be more comfortable with them.

-do back crossovers then hold a back edge
-just practice the entrance and exit edges to jumps (that way you get used to holding them longer and not rushing them...my particular sin!)
-because you will eventually need to have good back edges when you least expect it (I love those bits of choreography...."you want me to do what?" which usually involves something i haven't learned yet or don't feel comfortable doing-which is just about everything!)

But, like Mrs. Redboots & NickiTsaid, ya' have to practice them!!!

Phoenix: Good Luck at your competition!!! I know you will do well!

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

Congrats!!! to Sonic, who was nervous but pulled it off and won gold anyway! And who definitely didn't look silly in her skating dress

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"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
(1) It's completely impossible.
(2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing.
(3) I said it was a good idea all along."
- Arthur C Clarke

Sharp Blades: Mrs. Redboots, NikiT and S@D.
Thank you very much for all of your advice, encouragement and kindness. I was able to put into practice a lot of what you suggested today during my skating session and had some positive outcomes. It is suprising how even breathing, as Mrs. Redboots said, makes such a small but significant impact.

With the loop, I also haven't really felt secure with the open space outside my right shoulder in jumping that direction. It seems different with waltz jump, salchow, toe loop, --while the rotation (ccw) is the same, with these jumps it seems more of an "inward" direction while loop seems more "outside"...not sure if I am making any sense there... but that mental block, or sensation, or whatever it is, is what I am trying to overcome as well.

skating pairs with Casey keeps getting better and more wonderful every time. Even fwd and back crossovers are beginning to feel very natural. We have even received compliments on them from other skaters. It has been a fun little game to play to see how close we can side by side salchow.

Blunt and sliding:
I had too much fun skating pairs so I will keep my focus on the positive progress for the day.

~ I just had an epiphany, I will be taking ice dancing. And hopefully compete in it too

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Tim David's Website

dbny: So glad you FINALLY solved your boot problems!!! So glad!!!

Major edge so dull it's only good enough for soft "buttah":

Well, folks! Looks despite my original assumption, I am NOT testing next weekend!!! Seems my test chair did NOT reschedule me on the test session that I thought I would be... AGAIN!!! Secondary coach was QUITE surprised too, b/c she went thru a lot of hoops to make sure I'm on this test session next week!

Email has been sent and we'll find out what the heck is going on... as well as WHEN THE HECK I'm actually going to test. But darn it! I want this thing PASSED!!!!

Sharp blades:
Had a wonderfully EMPTY public session and I did double runthrus of my Bronze Moves! Everything seems to be working out quite well w/the exception of the 5 step mohawks, which aren't necessarily BAD -- will probably pass with it -- but I am trying to fix some extension issues.

Spins are good. Jumps are okay w/the exception of my loop (to which I landed 1 out of 3 cleanly.)

I got bored with Bronze Moves, so I started on prelim alt 3's and played around with the prelim spirals. Oh, dear! It's gonna be a LOOOOONG time before I pass prelim moves with those GAWD AWFUL spirals!!! (The alt 3's were okay, considering that I haven't worked on them in a while. Just play around with it really...) Back crossovers and forward crossovers were fine for the prelim stuff. The rest are already on the Bronze Moves test (I think...)

Am considering just keep up with my Bronze Moves, but start working on my Bronze FS program now. At the rate that I'm going, I suspect I may end up taking Bronze FS the same day as my Bronze Moves, if not the session after that.

(ETA Update: A bit of a miscommunication problem on BOTH my part and the test chairs! I've straighten it out and our test session is for AUGUST 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!!!

Excellent! The ice-dancing world can always do with more men in it!

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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!

My knee felt a lot better today (did a lot of stairs yesterday, which seem to have helped!). I pointed out to Husband that his free programme is Under Level 1 and against one other skater, whereas his solo dances are Under Level 7 and there is a huge entry. So he sensibly spent his lesson working on his Willow Waltz. I did a crappy run-through of my artistic, but with the Lambeth next weekend the ice was packed out.

We then spent ages working on our Free Dance, with singular lack of success - after Bracknell, I am so going to change the step sequence! And the last few minutes on Poisoning Pigeons, which is coming-along-nicely if we can ever remember the steps! I think we'll have to devote most of our lesson to it on Tuesday - if we can't do our compulsories and free dance well enough for Bracknell by now, well......

Two competitions this week. Am I mad? (Don't answer that!)

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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!

Sharp Blades: The ice was smooth as glass and looked so beautiful! There was no music playing, so I could play my own tunes on my mp3 player. I ran through all my moves. I didn't do any spins until the end of the session because there 3 birthday parties and tons of little kids all around, most really little.

I also taught hubby how to do the 1/2 flip; and did some choreo for our exhibition program for September. I wanted to run through more but he kept getting off the ice (lots of kids makes him nervous).

My salchows ROCKED!!! The squats and lunges at the gym are paying off, as I got some nice height! I did remember to push my heel down on the landing, so they were solid! YAY!!! I was sooo happy!

Did some really high spirals also, that went the length of the rink. So, the person that said I'd slow down in these blades was mistaken.....yeah.

Oh yeah I wore my new skating pants (although I didn't have them hemmed yet). They worked out well, so it's hemming and bottome elastic and they are done, now to make the matching top. Hopefully, it will be a while before I put a hole in these! (yup, didn't do backspins today, didn't want to rip these babies!)

Blunt and Sliding: Well, my scratch spins have a weird thing going on...I go into them fine...when I push my arms and legs down I'm going well, but then it all goes bonkers and I end up falling out of them. It feels as though I'm going onto my heel. My spins aren't terribly centered but they aren't too bad, I'm still working on that (been an issue since last year and my accident and the muscle spasms). I'm going to video them next time I skate to see if I'm breaking at the waist or lopsided.

I didn't want the session to end!

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

Sharp Blades: Lesson went very well. I just changed coaches, and this coach caught ALL of my bad habbits, LOL. Which is a good thing so I can fix them. We started out fixing things like leaning over too much on landings, arm positions in spins, and then we worked on how the axel works. She had me do little exercises that will help me learn it, and then she put me in the harness. This was my first time ever trying the axel, and we got to work on it for 15 minutes. The first tries were awful, but you gotta start somewhere, LOL. And a few minutes later I was getting further into it. There were lots of awkward falls, as you could imagine. And a couple minutes before we were gonna stop, I did an axel! Complete rotation, and punch out landing. It felt AWESOME. My coach just dropped her jaw and had me yell up to my mom to see if she saw it, LOL. She had me do another one, and guess what? I did it again!!! It was SOOO much fun. I've been waiting to learn it for 4 months now, I had to wait because of boot problems, then I had to order customs, grrr.... Took forever. I'm just so excited that I was landing axels during my first lesson for it. Of course we weren't gonna try them off the harness yet, but to me it was a huge accomplishment. I can't wait till my next lesson, and maybe we can put some speed into them and MAYBE get off the harness. I'm extatic! LOL.

Blunt and Sliding: Nothing really went wrong, except some of the falls on the harness were really wierd, LOL. I didn't get hurt, but they were very awkward. As I said earlier, my new coach found a lot of my bad habbits, so I have to work my way out of those, which hopefully won't take TOO long..... Otherwise, I was very happy with how my skating went.

Sharp: Competition went well! I was fairly relaxed & not at all shaky-legged, so that in itself was great. I won both my events, though I didn't have any competitors in one of them. The other was valid though, which is a nice feeling. Coach was happy with me.

Blunt: The ONE step in my straightline footwork I really wanted to actually do--I bailed on. *sigh* And though I liked my bargain dress when skating in it, the video reveals that it adds about 15 pounds on me so it will never see the light of day again!!!

Also, during my massive off-ice warmup, which is my secret weapon for getting rid of nerves & jelly legs, I actually over-did it, so felt a little too tired when skating--and was actually sore today! (will not be admitting that to coach, but *will* learn from that mistake!)

WELL DONE!

Now let's just hope that Batikat, NickiT, FRBSkate, Chantelly, the Husband, I and anybody else who's doing Bracknell this year (Twinkle? 2Loop2Loop? Anybody?) will do as well!

What was the step that didn't happen?

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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!

Hmmm..thanks Mrs R!!! I must admit I'm feeling quite nervous today. I skated last night and after one good run-through I completely messed up my first two elements and landed my lutz-loop on my backside! I did manage to pull myself together for another clean skate of my programme but messing up like that sort of spooked me. Just skated and all was OK today. Just wish I could shake off these nerves.

Good luck to yourself and everyone else competing this week!

Nick

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www.myspace.com/insatiableskater

Congratulations on your competition!!!!! Hooray for you!

I would get a second opinion....the video camera ALWAYS adds pounds! It's a distortion thing. Trust me!

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

Yes - I will be there on Thursday for the interpretive only, not ready to do free this year.

I'm there doing freeskate on Thursday.

John

Rocker/choctaw, like in Novice moves. I can do it fine, but in the footwork it has to be done FAST to keep in time w/ the music, & then I have issues. I need another split second to set it up......and I don't have a split second! I'm up to about 50% as far as doing it vs. bailing, so that's actually better than it was a few weeks ago, when I missed it every time. And the good thing is, to someone just watching, they'd never know I missed a step, so if it's omitted at least it isn't a glaring mistake. But *I* still know.....

Husband is doing free on Thursday morning, I'm doing Artistic Thursday afternoon. Then on Friday he's doing solo compulsory dance in the morning, and in the afternoon it's couples' compulsories and - ta-daaaaa - the World Premiere of our new free dance! Which is awful.....

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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!

(Always looking for the silver lining. . .) Maybe the Skating Gods are giving you these annoying delays as a blessing in disguise. I mean, August is a hot month so the ice should be particularly soft, which is much better for holding edges, and I bet all these delays will work like reverse psychology and make you totally attack this test!

Yeah... and it's also good on the joints too!!! I won't be as stiff in the early morning times!

And since I'll eventually take prelim moves later on, I better keep up with them anyway. Just have to get those alt 3's (which aren't too bad now! ) and those nasty spirals and I should be okay.

Good luck to those doing Bracknell this year!!!

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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!!!

Hey - I'm not ready to do free this year either. New coach, new programme -barely practised partly due to.. new boots (ouch!!!), new jump, (not consistent), no hope!!!

I'm doing it anyway though - but don't think I'll be retaining my cup from last year somehow. Ah well - it's a challenge - and fun when its over!

Ooh I'm famous already! My dances are looking ok now, and my new dress is finished I have no practices now before the comp so if its not ok now it won't ever be! I'm really excited as its my first adult comp! Good luck every one else! Who else is skating friday and I'll look out for you! xx