Fair -
-Loops and flips were still there.
-Got a lot accomplished on the public session even though it was only an hour instead of the normal 2 hours because they wanted to fit in old-man hockey.

Foul -
-Sit spins! Nuff said.
-Was shown a change foot spin in lesson on Monday and attempted to practice it today. Not cute.

__________________
Happily defying the laws of physics when I skate...and not in a good way

If I could meet ole Axel Paulsen, I would kick him in the teeth

President and Founding member of the I hate Toe-Loops Club

Still a member, but trying to get out of the Pre-bronze peanut gallery.

Visit my skating journal

Fair: After not having skated for 9 days (ridden with germs!), I expected disaster so was pleasantly surprised

Back Crossovers- made a 6.30am appearance, in both directions, with the use of my own glove (coach is on holiday) which apparently also has magic properties.

Forward Cross Rolls- these seem to be coming along nicely enough, helped by some shoulder advice from Mrs Redboots

3 Jump- it's still tiny but it's tiny away from the barrier so I'm hoping that, once my confidence builds (and my constant amazement that I actually have a running RBO edge goes away!), I'll start to gain enough height to actually call it a jump.

Foul: 2 Foot Spin was more miss than hit this morning but apart from that, the only negative was that I had to leave a lovely quiet patch session to go to work!

Clare

Fair weather: Finally did a fully rotated double lutz. It wasn't perfectly clean but it was a major step forward. (I hate the Lutz)

Almost landed my double axel!!! It is so close now that I can taste it. My coach bet his ice dance coach that I can land it by November. They bet a bottle of wine.

I did a 7-rev camel spin. I've been working on that spin entry for weeks. The trick is waiting a sec before you rise up in the skating knee. It's a really weird timing. And it's actually starting to look centered.


Foul weather: My double toe was not working. I could not land it.

I couldn't center my forward scratch spin. It was traveling cross country!!! My back scratch is good though.

I was over-rotating my double salchow. I was landing forward each time I tried it. Maybe I should start working on the triple instead. LOL


All in all, this has been a good week of skating.

BlackManSkating

__________________
Proud to be one of the few black men out on the ice

Goals
Pass my Silver Moves Test
Finish Choreography for Silver Program
Land a Clean Double Toe and Double Lutz
Work on Double Axel and Rockers
Speed up back Camel

Congrats on your double lutz and double axel progress, blackmanskating!!!

You know... since you're working on the double axel, why not??? See what happens... (No, I'm not kidding 'ya!!! I'm saying this from watching a lot of my fellow skater working on both the axel and the double sal at the same time... I don't see why not!)

So when do we see these videos of your jumps, huh, huh, huh???

Foul Weather:
I've been having a rough week with my overall skating. Last week I was at the gym working on my interval training and I guess I should have listened to my trainer and take some time off even from skating. My legs felt heavy and it just didn't want to jump or lift up. Flips and loops are on vacation this week. Of course, my job gladly took up more of my time too (both in training and skating!!! )

And the spiral for Wednesday lesson???? Well, put it this way... my secondary coach NOW says she wants to talk to my PT (Hunky Trainer) about my overall physical training. Of course, she also said "If he has to break a few sockets to open up those hips, I don't care!!!" " Oooooh, dear!!! (In her defense: She did say though that she's happy that my posture is better and I'm gaining strength on my legs for the forward stroking, but still she wants a LOT more flexibility on the hip flexors and my foot turnout....)

Fair Weather:
Well, not exactly skating related... but primary coach is having a skating video luau party at his home tomorrow... and since I know how good of a cook he is... I'll be enjoying some REALLY good food!!! I get to see his beginner skating videos tomorrow.

__________________
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!!!

I would KILL to see beginning skating videos of my coach! I did see a video of him in a russian ballet on ice done in the 80's and he was all glammed out with a davidbowie pompador/mullet (a la the cover of Diamond Dogs) and makeup and flowly androgenous costumes - which is why I now refer to him as DavidBowie or DB, even though he no longer looks anything like that.

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3turn
The Great Skate Experiment

The first time and only time I've seen that video was on his 40th b-day party and they were playing this video of some young guy that skated crappy but sorta looked like my primary coach, only to find that it WAS my primary coach and it was back in at least 80's that he was skating like that. I think the one program I remember a loop and a flip... and could barely do a sit spin and couldn't even get into a camel spin. Sorta like me now!!! LOL!!! As I continue seeing the videos, I see that he steady improve and he could get into a camel for maybe one or two rev and from then on improved. Later on I see him doing pairs with this 10-11 year old girl too and he's like 24-25 at the time and he's really big compared to her.

When I get discouraged about my own skating, I remind myself of those videos and it usually motivates me enough to back into skate mode! It's probably one of my biggest motivations now. Of course, I still won't show my videos or buy one for myself, but I know that I have improved since that 40th b-day party. (He's 46 now, but he will still say he's 34... Shhhhh!!! )

__________________
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!!!

Skating-related- sort of, and

Fair-ish weather: I just had a skating meets real life moment at a work lab today.

Slippery floor + protective booties + rushing to get an instrument for a surgeon= me falling with a HUGE thud. My body kicked into gear and I managed to fall the right way so that I really didn't get hurt... a tiny bit bruised, but nothing special. It wasn't even embarassing, because everyone was slipping.

Everyone stared at me as I got up, convinced that I was really hurt. With a shrug, I explain that I'm a skater and that fall was nothing My boss still doesn't believe that I'm not hurting.

Yay, skating!

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When asked what his "secret" to success was, Wayne Gretsky said: "Skate to where the puck is going and not to where it has been."
Is the figure skating version of this: Skate as if you're doing an axel and not just learning how to hop?

Man, i've been sooo busy this is the first block of a few hours that I've had!!! We have been doing the ice show for the fair and it's been an experience!

Fair Weather: Most of the time, I'm on it. Which is good. As the oldest member of the cast (at 45) I try to set a good example and not embarrass myself or anyone else...

One of my closests friends came to watch me skate and brought his kids. He loved it and it happened to coincide with one of my best skates!!! Yay! I was glad about that! His kids enjoyed it and that was the main thing.

Foul: The night when the guy (i.e. husband of skating director) taped the show, I had a brain spasm and went blank on one of the numbers....recovered but eh. It wasn't my best skate.

The main drawback about the show is the lack of time between some of them...not really enough time to go out onto the fairgrounds and grab a bite of food; we get comp food from the rink but it's all fried stuff. Bleh. I'm down 2 pounds because I'm not eating (and that means a lot because I don't normally eat a lot, just little bits throughout the day). And one of the little girls got sick yesterday because of it too. So, I'm hitting the store today and getting some good food. We do three shows today.

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

All Fair!: I'm still revelling in being back on the ice from injury, and finally able to skate hard for a sustained amount of time, pain free!

I was kind of sick of my Int. moves, so I went through the book and carefully went through all the Novice Moves elements! I was pretty surprised that I could do all of them. I always assumed Intermediate might be the limit of my ability for passing moves tests, and thought Novice was probably beyond what I can do. But they weren't that bad--not like I was skating with any power whatsoever, but I could actually *do* all the exercises, and I can see that with a lot of practice, they would get better & faster. It might be possible! So that was very fun.

And in general, I skated like a rock star all weekend!

The other fun thing was that there was an Irish Folk Dance competition going on at the rink this weekend--fun to watch. They used live music a lot, fiddlers, flutes, accordians. And pretty dresses. What really caught me by surprise was that every. single. girl. had her hair (or more often, a wig) in tight Shirley Temple curls--I guess to accentuate the bounciness of the dancing. Picture hundreds of children who look like this: http://www.irishdanceshoes.org/wigs.htm
Pretty interesting, though you get used to it after looking for awhile. As one of the coaches put it, after walking through the crowds to the ice, "This little culture makes skating look a whole lot more normal!"

Thank you JazzPants!!! Okay, I just bought a camcorder finally!!! Yay!!! Now I am saving to buy my MacBook and I'll be posting videos hopefully in a few months. And when I finally land the double axel I will post it up for the world to see.

I was kidding about working on a triple sal. But what you said does make sense. I was working on my axel and double sal around the same time too. However, I want to fully focus on getting this double axel solid before I step it up to triples. But the idea of working on triples in less than 2 years of skating sounds really awesome. My coach and I are focusing on testing through Gold level right now. So I don't know about the triple sal. We haven't even discussed it. But I'm not ruling it out.

BlackManSkating

__________________
Proud to be one of the few black men out on the ice

Goals
Pass my Silver Moves Test
Finish Choreography for Silver Program
Land a Clean Double Toe and Double Lutz
Work on Double Axel and Rockers
Speed up back Camel

I just had the longest break since the end of April when my husband and I went to Mississauga and Toronto for a miny vacation. I ditched skating school on Wednesday (18) and Thursday (19) but skated and had a lesson on Tuesday (17). I needed the break because my lower back and left hip have been giving my pain and trouble not to mention the fact that I was getting shin splints. Shin splints feel better. Hip is still tricky though. If you read up on my the thread I started about Weight transfer, you'll see why I'm having hip pain.

Fair:
Was able to do run throughs of my possible prelim test program music twice and once with my prelim creative dance music.
In my lesson we worked on going into and out of jumps with more speed. I did alright for speed with my waltz, toe and salchow but when it came to the loop and the flip it was like I was in the ozone layer.
I had some improvement on my camel spin. One time I got 1 and half rotations but soon, I had to stop doing the camel spin because my left hip was paining me.


Foul:
I couldn't get my body to transfer the weight properly and I ended up doing the full rotations for the loop and flip jumps but either I would land on both feet at the same time or my left leg would touch down. Also, I didn't generate much height on my toe loop jumps. And my backspin was more of a no spin. My left foot seemed to get in the way and didn't swing forward properly. So frustrating but now I understand my problem.

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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