As I was warming up prior to last night's lesson, a familiar face glided by and said "hello!" It was Mike my coach from back in winter. I hadn't seen him since I broke my arm and didn't expect to see him again until the fall series of lessons kicked off. But there he was. He'd come home from his vacation at Nags Head and was helping Christine with a skater-camp for kids. With a little arm twisting he agreed to coach us three adults instead.
Now don't get me wrong, Christine is a good instructor but she and Mike observe different aspects of my so-called skating, and of course have difference solutions for dealing with the numerous problem areas. A single comment from Christine got my pathetic hockey stop to report back for duty--an element which Mike and I had seen only fleeting success.
Just to put the shoe on the other foot (pun not intended), I took the opportunity to have Mike reassess the presumed alignment issue that Christine had posited during the last session. Mike watched me glide on the left skate and said he thought the problem was more me dropping my right hip than the blade being out of kilter. I made a conscious effort to keep the right hip under control and voila the curve to the right while gliding on the left skate disappeared. My CCW three turn and Mohawk also benefited from attention to keeping the right hip under control. I guess I just don't like going left! There are other issues as well: I need to pay better attention to arm position in the CCW direction (the correct position just doesn't feel natural). So much to think about and so many bad habits to unlearn while in the middle of a turn. I'll be glad when the thinking part is converted to muscle memory so I can think about other stuff! It turns out that Mike was just helping for the day and will probably not reappear until October. All the same, it was nice to come under his tutelage once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment