Thursday, March 12, 2015

New Axel Goals

So, on November 14, 2014 I landed an axel for the first time.

It's been about 4 months since then, and I'm really pleased with how the jump is going for me right now. It's getting easier, it's getting more consistent. I'm having the opportunity to work on quality. I don't get a lot of flow out of the jump, and am hoping to change that. And of course, I want to be able to skate into it with more speed. For the time being, though, consistency is still the primary concern.

I tried it in competition for the first time last weekend. It's funny to say that, since the axel has been in my program since last June. I just planned to do my under-rotated attempt as always. But one of my goals for 2015 is to land a real axel in competition. I'm not surprised that I wasn't successful in my first go round.

I landed a great one on the warm-up. Good enough that other coaches who do not see me skate on a regular basis commented on it when I got off the ice. I don't know what happened in my program. It was just the competition nerves I think. I went into it and next thing I knew, I was on my butt. Observers tell me it was fully rotated. I didn't have the bandwidth to evaluate that at the time, because it was up and on to the next thing!

Well, this weekend is Sectionals, so I get my next chance right away. I'm even more glad, now, that I decided to do this small local competition last weekend, just to get the experience of trying the axel in competition before going to a bigger competition. I have 14 skaters in my event, which is twice as big as the largest FS event I've skated in so far.

I'd reaaaaally like to land a real axel in my program... but if I miss the axel and skate everything else well, I'll be okay with that too ;)

I'll let you know.