Bad Dog.

I was working on my one-foot forward spin last Thursday during group freestyle.  A day earlier I was actually hooking the spin and getting a couple revs maybe every fifth attempt or so.  But during the lesson I just couldn't seem to get it to work.  Coach M. suggested several things and there were tiny improvements.  Finally he said "I like the preparatory and entry edges but after that things fall apart,  you're not keeping your back straight.  A skater at your level should get this."  Ouch!  A skater at your level should get this.  Ow, Ow, Ow!

I think every skater and coach have these "motivational" moments; the skater just can't seem to grasp and produce something that the coach has been going over ad nauseam and also thinks of as level obtainable.  It's a double edge critique.  On one side, the comment suggests that the student in question is good enough to be at a "certain" level.  The other side is, despite that, the student isn't producing the goods.  Along with this is the accompanying faint wave of disappointment which briefly washes over the coach's face as the student continues to produce one failed attempt after another.

Sigh...  Yes, I know exactly how your dog feels when you discover the broken lamp in the living room or dog hair on the sofa that the dog "knows" is off limits.

He left me with another observational tip to think about and turned his attention to the other students.  I kept plugging along and did manage to hook a couple.  I some how managed to hold on to one spin for at least four well traveled revs.  One of the better kid skaters who was practicing for the rink's up-coming showcase event next Saturday looked up and said "Wow, nice Twizzle!"  I thanked him and indicated that it wasn't supposed to be a Twizzle... He gave me an "Oh, sorry" and quickly went back to working on his program.  So, yeah, I now know what a Twizzle should feel like, just don't expect me to be able to duplicate it any time soon.

At the end of the lesson my coach skated over and said "I saw improvement in the ones you managed while I was working with the others.  Ah, the Carrot!  And--also confirmation that teachers really do have eyes in the backsides of their heads.

Sunday we skated the afternoon public.  It's March now and diaristdaughter and I agree that the crowd seemed a little thinner, indicating that the novelty of all those Christmas ice skates is starting to wear thin as the days grow longer.  The center circle didn't have as many kids milling about as in the immediate past few weeks and so I got to work on that forward spin.  It is getting better.  Maybe by this Thursday's lesson it will pass muster. 

Slow but steady

Diaristdaughter and I are back taking summer group lessons.  I've been skating with the free-style group while she's been sticking with the mixed bag of adults.  This past Tuesday my group was flooded with extra kids dropping in from Bowie's ISI team, so I decided to wander back over to the adults and skate with them since the two groups share the same time slot.  The usual instructor, coach Mike, takes the  summers off so there was a new person at the helm of this group.  I told the new gun that one of  my persistent issues in advancing up the free-style ladder is that my CCW turns suck.  She asked me to demonstrate and after observing a couple of LOF3s and CCW Mohawks she offered several suggestions that immediately improved those turns.  She also suggested that I try entering the half-flip jump from a Mohawk rather than my wonky left 3 turn.  I tried it and while the jump was not a thing of beauty at least I got in the half rotation.  This experience reenforces my opinion that I really need to concentrate on cleaning up foundation elements rather than beating myself up attempting jumps that require strong execution of those preceding turns.  It also was good to have a different coach take a look and make suggestions.  Sometimes you just need to hear advise from a different angle to make a concept click.  I plan to continue with group lessons but I hope to hire this particular coach for occasional private lessons to refine foundation stuff and give me fresh perspectives so that I continue to advance in the group lessons and don't plateau.

One of our pre-teen nieces from Georgia (that got me back into skating two years ago) is up visiting for a few weeks. I've tried to talk her into taking lessons while she's here but she's a hard head and just wants to skate fast and turn left.  Must be that southern NASCAR influence!   I've tried to teach her the snow plow stop without much luck.  Her mode is to just hit the boards when she wants to stop and that's OK since it's summer and the public sessions are relatively uncrowded.  She is enthusiastic, and has become noticeably steadier each time out. She's taught herself a couple of little spins and things like forward swizzles mainly by observation so I know she'd benefit from formal instruction.  But while you can lead a mule to water you can't force one to drink.  In her defense, back home there are no ice rinks close to home, just roller rinks.  I recon she'll be prefect for roller derby some day...  

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

Power Stroke Class

Encouraged (perhaps "egged on" puts things more succinctly) by several of the rink instructors, your old diarist dropped in on the rink's Saturday morning Power Stroking Class this past weekend.  This 45 minute class is designed to help figure skaters gain power and speed through skating drills which focus on footwork in both directions at a pace designed to crank up the heart rate.  The skaters who make up the two dozen or so at our Power Stroking sessions are typically young (teens to early 30 somethings) and good (most are mid to upper level free-stylers; skaters lower than gamma level need not apply).  The week before, I came over and watched and after wards the rink director invited me to drop in to see if I'd like it.  And, so I did.  I showed up bright and early and told the kids to be kind to me, an old, brittle recreational skater.  They just laughed.  One 30-ish woman who had, until I arrived, been the tail end Charlie was delighted to learn that she'd no longer be, to momentarily borrow from cycling parlance,  the group's "lantern rouge".

The first take-home from this outing is that your diarist indeed was the oldest--and slowest skater out there.  The second take-home was that although my forward swing rolls, cross rolls, cross overs, inside and outside edges, power pulls, etc. are good enough to hang with the young dogs, my back edges and cross overs plus (perhaps more importantly) the body-box/arm movements/muscle memory/brain processing speed required for fast alternating changes from one foot to the other--all while skating backwards in fast traffic need serious work.  Don't even talk to me about back cross rolls or back power pulls--those tools simply aren't in my tool kit at present.

Part of my hesitancy was being unfamiliar with the patterns used for some of the drills.  Going forward was OK since I could see the skaters ahead of me and could more or less follow the leader.  Skating backwards at speed, on the other hand, is spooky enough without having to keep in mind where you are in a "peanut" pattern that weaves around the red dots on the rink, all while being passed closely (on both sides!) by faster, more powerful skaters.  While I didn't crash and burn and didn't tangle with other skaters, I was slooow-o and had to "two foot" the back power pull and back cross roll drills.  The other drill which gave me big trouble was the one requiring alternating forward three turns immediately followed by back cross overs.

So where does this baptism by fire leave the aging skater?  Well, I figured since Madam Director didn't throw me off the ice at the end of the class that I may as well sign up for the next flight of Power Stroking sessions which kick off next Saturday.  Two months from now some things won't change--I'll probably still be the oldest (and slowest) in the group; but other things will change--I will be one hell of a lot better in at least some of the back skating skills; either that or I'll be dead.  I now better understand why the good free-stylers and coaches who occasionally drop in on a crowded Public Session are so fearless backwards in traffic--they've got right stuff in their tool kits.