Heavenly had a good practice, i worked on my extensions and the little things. My lesson went well did moves for the first half and then worked on the foxtrot some more after. I was told to sign up for a test session in November wheee its about timei test these moves! oh and i got to skate with the hot guy on the ice twice ::drools:::
Hellish it was a tad bit crowded today on both sessions so it made dancing and doing moves alittle hard, but it's been worse...i think

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Waffles & Vodka

Breakfast of Champions

Heavenly:
Well, my coach is getting tired of my choreographer (her brother)
taking so long to choreograph my interpretive program. So today we
worked on it together and got some things moved around a bit. He will
be shocked when he see what we did it the program. ROTFLOL Anyway, we
were about 10 seconds into the program and I covered about 3/4's of
the NHL size rink and she wanted a spin. I didn't want to do the same
spin every time, so I tried to do a sitspin. That was the end of us
choreographing the program for the session. She saw that I was
getting down trying to get a sitspin going, so she switched to the
sitspin lesson. I really tried to get her to demo it for me. Nope,
she said on the ticket ice next week she'll do one for me. yeah, she
wants time to show me up. LOL Anyway, after she showed me the very
very basics at the boards, I went to try and try and try. The first
time was not pretty, one rotation, bad arms and didn't stay down.
Second time the same. Then something clicked. I was able to get my arms in the right place when down and got 2 slow revs. Then I did it again and got 2 fast revs and finally just before it was time for me to coach Learn to Skate, I got 3 fast revs before getting another in the upright position before exiting.

Now I only need to get my backspin to be 3 or 4 revs (OK, I want 5 to
9 like my forward upright spin) and I need to get a camel going. I'm
having trouble getting into the camel spin. Seems I'm not leaning
onto my left outside edge enough.

Hellish:
Flip and loop are still at the football game. LOL
Backwards inside and outside swing rolls getting cleaner slowly.
Still a bit of scrating. Back alternating Crosscuts getting cleaner
too. Funny my coach wanted me to do 6 of them to get to the other
side of the rink and I had to cut them down to 2 to fit the ice. LOL
Who's got power on ice?

Heavenly:
If I haven't already told you guys, my coach is lining me up to
become a Skate Canada CanSkate Coach. Hellish:
That's why she's getting really
picky on my backwards edges. She wants that Sprint sound; nothing.

Almost Heavenly:
Group Stroking Class was good today. Brook Coatsworth, who coaches my
stroaking class, liked my forward and back crosscuts but had to get
after a skater working on her junior bronze for her slopy posture and her execution. This skater has her prelim FS but is slopy in her
general skating skills and is about 12. I wish I would have had group
stroking classes from the start.

Hellish Coaching: I got this kid that wouldn't stop crying in Saturday Learn to Skate who was 3 years old and was taking a fit hyperventilating(sp) who would not stay up on his skates and kept pulling at my leg while I had another child on my right hand who was also a beginner. I had to stop, get down on my knees and talk right into the whiners eyes telling him that no matter how much he crys that he wasn't going to get off of the ice and that he was there to skate. I then worked to get him breathing normally and to stop crying before going for a short 20 minutes around with him and the other child in my hands around the rink. I was soaked with sweat from nerves head to toe from this. By the way, no other coaches could ever get this kid to stop crying and try to skate. Hopefully, he does better next time.

Heavenly: Saturday's CanSkate session. I got my own group to teach, 10 of them working on level 4 and 5. Yes, I got movers who wanted to try to improve. What a relief from the session before (Sat. Learn To Skate)! My coach came about with only 10 minutes left before freeskate with the CanSkate page of elements. Before that, I just had the kids do what ever came to my mind. But as it turns out, the stuff I was having them do was on their level on the sheet. So I didn't have much more to teach them before freeskate time. One thing I was having trouble teaching them was to glide on their outside edge of the circle's inside foot before crossing over with the free foot. they totally just skipped it no matter how many times my assistant and I showed them. Then, there was also my coach's daughter in my group who just didn't take anything seriously. She thought everything was a joke.

Hellish after Sat. CanSkate: Couldn't find anyone with the coach's change room key to lock the door. I was the last one out but being a coach in training, I don't have a key to lock the door. I went upstairs to the Club Tecumseh office to find out that the lady doing the office work, didn't have a key. Then I went to find Shaun who runs Tecumseh arena to see if his master key worked to lock the door. Nope. So that means that the door is not locked and the club will have the door unlocked all weekend. Hope our sterio equipement is still in working condition by Monday. I think my club should give a key to the Club Office so that whoever is last out of the coach's room can lock the door. I know I would have if I could.

Brigitte

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"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

Hellish *and* Heavenly:

I had an Adult group lesson on Saturday. It was mostly stroking and I got a heck of a lot of information and a set of rubber legs. I couldn't do it without my teenage Program Assistant who would translate the coach's instructions "okay everybody, Russian Stroking, let's go" and I'd say in a whisper "what's that" and get a quick demo and off we'd go. I could do it, I've never been good at putting names to things. I'm liking this. I need my skates sharpened, the ice is terribly hard at the rink.

I've been at Skate America and didn't have a chance to post this efore I left. This is for last Wednesday and Thursday morning before I left.

HEAVENLY I had the ice to myself for almost forty minutes Wednesday afternoon, so I decided to wrok on the Argentine first. The Arge is my newest dance; it's two levels ahead of where I am test-wise (it's Gold; I have two Silvers left) but I really want to skate Junior at the non-qualifying competitons this summer so I've started working on it now. Anyway, I was having my usualy problem- after the twizzle I had zero speed and wasn't pushing through the cross-behinds so my step forward for the repeat was about six feet short of where it needed to be. But I was finding that every time I did it, I was pushing more and getting farther down ice. I decided my goal was to get to the edge of the hockey circle, and I did it on the next pattern. So then I decided that I was going to try to get the enxt one far enough down to do a second pattern- and I did it on the next one! With more than nine months to go until Lake Placid, I did my first full run-through of the Argentine, with music, on pattern and on time. It needs depth and power, but my goal was to be doing full runthroughs in December, and I'm doing them in October! Thursday morning wasn't quite as good, but it was close.

HELLISH The hours in the car to Reading, and then the hours sitting at Skate America, have stiffened up my knee considerably. I did bring the ice pack with me and ice it in the evenings, but I have a feeling it's going to hurt when I try to skate in the morning.

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Shae-Lynn and Victor: We knew you were champions, and on 3/28/03 the whole WORLD found out! Thank you for twelve wonderful years!

Heavenly:
- my microscopic axel decided to be not-so microscopic today (the tracings went from backtracking to almost 2 bladelengths between my take-off and my landing - yay!).
- one really good layback that arched, leg got nice and high and just went on and on.
- choreographed almost my entire skills creative program (I'm debating working towards StarSkate triathlon) this morning.
- a couple of really nice Romantica end-patterns (the choctaw, back twizzle bit) during my dance lesson today.

Hellish:
- after that beautiful layback spin, my spins decided that they'd done their work for the day and could go home: couldn't center ANYTHING from then on.
- can't take what I can do really well in sections and put it into the whole dance: the part of the Romantica that went so well on it's own was HORRIBLE in the actual dance: I could feel my butt sticking way out, my freeleg bend at funny angles, my edges flatten out...
- really bad fall on rhumba yesterday: caught skate blade on my pant leg (too bad: I really was enjoying skating in my yoga pants) on the change of edge at full speed and kicked my own skating leg out from under me... think both wrists are now mildly sprained.

Heavenly: First hour of practice... started out okay but got better after the half hour mark... Spins and jumps where coming along well. But still need to get in even more speed going into them.

Hellish:Well the getting more speed part. It's not that I can't stroke up to it. It's just doing mohawks and transition stuff that I don't go fast on. Coach is NOT happy about it, since he wants to fit in FOUR jumps (well 3 jumps, one jump combo) and two spins (a sit spin and a scratch spin... coach originally wanted a camel spin but settled for scratch since it's my best spin.) And this is an ARTISTIC/interpretive program (not a technical program.)

And because of the fast trasition between each jumps and spin the coach wants me to do, I've been having A LOT of trouble with practice keeping to the music. I'm very tempted to drop out of the competition now (given I keep the program as is), but everyone tells me to stay with it since I've put in a lot of work into it.

HELP????

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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!!!

HEAVENLY: Saturday lesson, as always, was fun. Once I remembered to keep my nose-over-toes on the one foot spin, I got a couple of revs out of it. Still a long, dizzy was to go though.

Worked on a footwork sequence of back crossover, tap-toe forward, step behind, mohawk, repeat in other direction. It's not too difficult, but challenging enough for me. I've always admired a good footwork sequence more than jumps and spins.

HELLISH: Nothing really, just glad to be on the ice.

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Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. - Henry David Thoreau