Thursday, February 14, 2013

Notes from my St. Valentine's Day lesson

Do you take notes after a lesson?  I've started.  I went to Office Depot and bought a little spiral bound note book to jot down nuggets of coach wisdom.  Tonight's lesson focused on my poor wandering Waltz jump.  As I recall, coach Mike emphasized the following points:

1. I need more follow through with the free leg during the take off stage.

2. Upon landing I need to be mindful of keeping my left shoulder and arm forward.

3. Upon landing I need to point my free leg toe more to keep things tidy.

Beyond that, he showed me a refined way to set up for the jump:  enter via a LFO3 then into a couple back XOs, then step around and jump.  Yes, yes, I know.  All this is fairly cut and dried for the aviators in the audience but for a geezer skater it's worth revisiting all this and freshly re-ploughing this particular furrow.  I wonder how much practice I'll need to actually have an elegant Waltz jump in the tool box rather than the one that looks like a drunk jumping out a saloon window two steps ahead of the law?

After I had enough of that we next looked at my inside pivot and two foot spin.  The main focus was for me to make a conscious effort to keep my weight on the heel of my right skate for the push part of the inside pivot.  Beyond that it's all a blur.  Although I go out on boats frequently, I can only do a couple of spins before things get a bit swarmy and I need to do something else--so note taking was a bit lax on this element. 

So, that's tonight's report.  For the up coming three day weekend I'll be over on the Jersey shore.  I'll take my skates and hopefully get to be an ice tourist at the Flyer's Skate Zone in Atlantic City.  Until then, don't eat too much Valentine's Day chocolate--it kills those jump take offs...

--Ta

1 comment:

  1. Trust me George...one day you will fill that little book with only notes on that jump!! I've got enough material for a doctoral thesis on the axel....doesn't mean I can do it though :)

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