I've had the pleasure of having a few friends in skating with whom I am competitive, but completely friendly. It's so fun to compare notes on how we're progressing on certain elements.
One friend keeps staying one step ahead of me in her tests, so we've never competed against each other, but we're both trying to get our axels right now. We have the same coaches. She's dying to land her axel, and often talks about my attempts spurring her on.
She reported to me a recent conversation she'd had with Coach.
"How is my axel looking?" she asked him. "Does it look like an adult axel? Or a kid axel? How does it compare to Alejeather's?"
Coach was reluctant to compare our axels, but she pressed him, and he finally admitted, "She gets around more than you do."
"He said I get around more than you?" I asked when she told me the story. "That's only a compliment in figure skating!"
Monday, January 20, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Never Enough
I did a clean run-through of my program in my lesson this morning. I landed every jump. I hit all of my spin positions, I didn't stumble in any of my footwork or transitions, and I finished on time. I was beaming when I finished.
There were still a few minutes left in my lesson and my coach asked me if I could do a split jump. I told him he'd seen me do one before, because he'd said, "I didn't know you could do that!" He didn't remember, but sent me out to show him one. I had no idea where he was going with this.
Then he said, "This time, after the split jump, do a mohawk into a flip jump." So I tried it.
Then he said, "Do it again, but add a loop-toe loop after the flip. Now that's a sequence!" So I tried it... and it wasn't so bad. I do a flip-loop-toe as the opening jumping pass in my program, and so I thought he was maybe trying to strengthen the combo by making me try something more difficult.
"That's pretty good! I want you to add that into your program." Um, what? I thought he was joking, but he wasn't and told me to show my choreographer/coach in our next lesson.
I'm not so sure about it. I think my split jump is okay--my extension isn't what it used to be and my arms always go way too high. I also think it takes away from the combo, which isn't as big and floaty with the split jump first, but maybe that will get better with practice. And finally, I don't know that it works choreographically. But we'll see what my other coach has to say.
The moral of the story is, you run a clean program for your coach 7 weeks before the competition, and it's never enough! You'll get more troubles heaped on!
There were still a few minutes left in my lesson and my coach asked me if I could do a split jump. I told him he'd seen me do one before, because he'd said, "I didn't know you could do that!" He didn't remember, but sent me out to show him one. I had no idea where he was going with this.
Then he said, "This time, after the split jump, do a mohawk into a flip jump." So I tried it.
Then he said, "Do it again, but add a loop-toe loop after the flip. Now that's a sequence!" So I tried it... and it wasn't so bad. I do a flip-loop-toe as the opening jumping pass in my program, and so I thought he was maybe trying to strengthen the combo by making me try something more difficult.
"That's pretty good! I want you to add that into your program." Um, what? I thought he was joking, but he wasn't and told me to show my choreographer/coach in our next lesson.
I'm not so sure about it. I think my split jump is okay--my extension isn't what it used to be and my arms always go way too high. I also think it takes away from the combo, which isn't as big and floaty with the split jump first, but maybe that will get better with practice. And finally, I don't know that it works choreographically. But we'll see what my other coach has to say.
The moral of the story is, you run a clean program for your coach 7 weeks before the competition, and it's never enough! You'll get more troubles heaped on!
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