Sunday, August 11, 2013

Birthday Axel!

The day finally came. I got to try my first on-ice axels. On the harness, of course. And, it was my birthday! I got to say, that is a great way to start out a birthday.

We actually spent my entire lesson adding some style to my compulsory program, at the request of my primary coach. But I noticed when we were finished that no other students had showed up for a lesson, so I asked if we could take a few extra minutes and do the axels on the harness that she had promised in our first lesson.

She strapped me into the harness and we started with a couple waltz jumps to get a feel for the harness. Then she had me try a waltz backspin and after that we were off. The first few felt so much like the waltz backspin that I wasn't really sure that I was doing anything different. We tried getting more explosive, we worked on the take-off. Some attempts were wild, some were underrotated. And some were actually pretty decent, I think.

The strangest thing to me about the harness is that you can't hold a landing edge for very long because it pulls you away from the harness track. I was never really sure if I was standing up on the landing because shortly after I'd land, I'd pull against the harness and couldn't keep my balance. I had to rely on feedback from the coach to know how it had gone and she pointed out some things on one and other things on another.

I loved trying them. I was so excited at first, my legs were shaking and that made everything a little harder. I can't wait to try them again and it was a birthday event I will never forget!

Monday, August 5, 2013

Not Flutzing Around

Coach Picky is moving sometime this month and I decided to go ahead and end the relationship. It's been hard for us to make our schedules mesh and as I'm preparing for multiple events in upcoming competitions, I wanted to make sure I was getting lessons on a regular basis without turning my life upside down. I told her in person at our last lesson. She completely understood and we went on to have a really good lesson.

We worked on the lutz, and she focused on getting me to stop leaning to the left on take off and to bring my right arm close to the body. I never completely got it, so those are things that I need to work on. But she did say that I'd made tremendous progress since I'd first started working on it. And she told me, "Not a single one of those had an edge change." I nearly flipped over that because I did a LOT of lutzes in that lesson!

The rest of the lesson was spent on spins, and she had me play around with different combinations. She confirmed that it's a good idea to put more difficult spins into program run-throughs, because you can always simplify them if they're not there come competition time. I've already been trying camel-sit and sit-back sit in my program, but she suggested even camel-sit-pancake or sit-pancake-back sit. I've thought about it, but honestly, the camel-sit is still inconsistent enough, that when I get a good spin going, I don't like to try the extra position and mess it up. Same for the sit-back sit.

I haven't had another lesson with my potential new coach yet, the one who wanted to start my axel in the harness. I'm hoping to get one this week. But in the meantime, I've been working that waltz-backspin and I've even tried salchow-backspin. Coach Picky mentioned that she was a big proponent of getting the axel rotated off-ice before trying them on-ice so I revisited the off-ice axel after a freestyle session recently. There was a skating friend who's a coach hanging around as well as the friendliest senior mens skater ever and they both gave me some pointers. That was so much better than practicing them at the gym where I don't get advice, I get strange looks! I so hope to get to try these on the harness soon!

It's a little more like a jump twizzle, but it's a start.