Thursday, July 31, 2014

Head Games: Get nervous before tests and competitions? Brian Orser's got an App for that.



Are you all needles and pins before hitting the ice when your name is called?  Conversely do you have trouble sleeping the night before a big event?  For around $20 bucks, maybe this App by two time Silver Olympic medalist Brian Orser is for you.  One segment of the App gets you pumped up.  The other segment lulls you to dream land.  You can read a little more about it at Peak Performance's web site:

http://www.peakperformanceskating.com/

Nope, I don't have stock in this venture.  Just something that caught my eye.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Joining the Club--Setting some goals.




Up 'til now I haven't bothered with club memberships with either the ISI Team or the USFSA Figure Skating Club at my rink.  I was, and still am, taking group lessons under the rink's ISI lesson system but decided not to join anything until I was good enough to consider testing or competing.  At Bowie Ice Arena, club and team memberships begin on the first of  July and dues are in synch with the reopening of the rink after the annual two month closure for maintenance.  The ISI Skating Team seems to mostly cater to kids.  The only adult activity I've seen is the adult synchro team.  Nothing against synchro, but I'm having enough trouble attempting ice dance with just one extra person.  If I was on the synchro team I'd probably be like that first domino that triggers the fall of the entire kit and kaboodle. 

With that in mind, on 1 July I sent in my membership application to Bowie's USFSA FS Club.  I've yet to hear back from them but one of the coaches said to expect a goodly lag time since membership cards, club magazine, etc. trickle down from the National organization.  There's no real hurry. I'm not going to rush off for any tests just yet.  However, testing was in the back of my mind when I decided to join up.  Another inducement was that for first time joiners, dues are roughly half price for the first year of membership.  So, now that I've joined this opens up a whole new testing territory.  Time to do the easy part--make up a list of goals for the new skating year and see if I can pick any of them off.

 Goal Nr 1 is to pass the USFSA's adult pre-bronze moves test.  My ice dance partner was packing to go to the ISI Worlds or Intergalactics (whatever, I can't keep the names of these contests straight) up in Boston this week, so Coach K. and I worked on the elements that are part of that moves test.  All fairly basic stuff:  forward stroking, front and back consecutive inside and outside edges, front and back cross overs, waltz eight pattern and forward spirals on each leg.  Nothing here that an ISI FS-1 skater hasn't seen.  Should be a piece of cake, right?  Ha.  Doing these elements is one thing.  Doing them at the level which Coach K. indicated would be the passing standard is another.  The waltz eight pattern will definitely require quite a bit of work on my part and elements like the consecutive edges which I haven't bothered with since passing them back in delta and FS-1 will take a bit of polishing.  Even my forward stroking needs work to refine extension to qualify as passable .  But this, I tell myself, is why I wanted to take tests like this--testing will force me to clean up my foundation skills and in turn become a better skater.

Goal Nr 2 is to pass at least one of the three preliminary level ice dances before the end of the skating year.  This goal should directly benefit from the work required of goal nr 1. The rub here is that my partner is an ISI club member but not a USFSA member.  I don't know if she wants the expense of two club memberships.  We shall see.  If not I suppose that I can skate with our coach as my skating partner for testing purposes.

Goal Nr 3 has nothing to do with my new membership.  I plan to keep chipping away with free style group lessons under the ISI system and hopefully will pass FS-2 this year.  My one foot spin is improving at a glacial pace.  At some point I need to come to grips with the various half jumps that are included in FS-2.  I think I can, I think I can...     

Friday, July 11, 2014

The dreaded Click-Clack

Tuesday's and Thursday's summer rink schedule tends to bring out the over-achiever in me.  Adult group lessons run from 6pm to 6:30.  On Tuesdays, a two hour public session starts at 6:45 after ice resurfacing.  Thursday's schedule is the same except that the public session is replaced by a two hour freestyle session which mercifully can be purchased in one hour chunks.  So, I take a group lesson and then after a 15 minute break go back out for thirty minutes of practice followed by an ice dance lesson, followed by more practice (on Tuesday's less spendy ice).

This Thursday was going to plan.  I'd just finished the group lesson and walked from the rink barrier into the lobby to pay for an hour of freestyle time.  In my haste to pay for ice time I forgot to put on my hard guards as I walked the short distance from the ice to the rental counter where the ice time sign on sheet is kept.  This memory lapse was to soon prove important.  After paying, I walked back to a bench so that I could retie my boots and be ready as soon as the gate reopened.  As I walked I kept hearing a faint clicking noise.  The penny finally dropped--the noise was coming from my left skate.  I sat down and grabbed the heel of the blade.  Yep, it was loose.  The guy behind the counter had a Phillips head screw driver but even thought he's a beefy guy he couldn't get the slop out of the blade.  I looked through the lobby windows and the Zamboni was half way through resurfacing.  In a few minutes the clock would start ticking on my expensive hour of freestyle time!  I hobbled into the pro-shop and luckily my favorite skate tech had just finished sharpening a pair of skates.  Without having to remove my boots he was able to take a battery powered drill-driver and tighten the offending screws in the heels of both blades.  After thanking him profusely I quickly got out on the ice, wondering if my blades had shifted position during this little episode.  Fortunately they hadn't.  The upshot was that I missed a few minutes of ice time but it could have been a lot worse.

There are a couple of take homes from this little cautionary tale: (1) although my hearing has diminished over the years it's reassuring to know that I can still heard the faint warning signals of impending doom (!);  (2) more importantly, along with keeping track of the hours between blade sharpening, I need to be a little more attentive to inspecting the screws which hold the major parts of my equipage together so that I don't emulate the horseman in the old rhyme "for the want of a nail the kingdom was lost".   When was the last time you reached down and gave your blades a good yank?

Oh, and how did the first ice dance lesson of the new season go?  As I suspected, my partner and I have become quite rusty during the two month hiatus when our rink was closed for annual maintenance.  Having said that it felt good to be back in the harness.  Our coach didn't apply the lash too severely and I predict that we'll make good progress this new season!

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Recently discovered on the Blog-o-sphere

I'm always trolling for new and interesting Blogspots related to figure skating and ice dance.  If you're interested in ice dance I recommend the "Ice Dance Analysts".  I've added that blog to the "blogs I follow" list at the right of this page.  They don't post daily, but each post which I've read is very comprehensive.  A taste of that blog's content can be sampled here.  Enjoy!