Thursday, April 26, 2012

Lesson on Private Ice

My lesson today was on rink #2 as they are still redoing the ice on rink #1.  The ice was free from 9-10 am so we got to have a lesson on private ice.  What a treat.  Aside from not having any other people skating, there was no loud pop music playing.  That's a subject for another day.

We split the lesson to work on Moves In The Field and Freestyle, but ended up spending more time on the Moves.  I don't normally skate at 9:00 am.  I haven been off the ice for 6 days and I wasn't properly warmed up.  It's not just about having your muscles warm and stretched.  You have to actually execute some spins and turns, small jumps and get "familiar" with how you connect to the ice on that day.  You may skate on the same ice every day, but each time the Zamboni cuts the ice it may feel different.

One of the things I need to incorporate into my training is an off ice warm up ritual, followed by an on ice warm up ritual.  I do warm up now, but not thoroughly or properly and not fast enough.  At a test or competition you may or may not always have access to "practice ice" preceding the event.  You are always allowed a 3-5 minute warm up with the other skaters who are in the same event.

At my first test experience last month I was able to skate on a public session for about 1 hour prior to the test time.  Just before the test, my group of 3 went on the ice to warm up for 5 minutes.  After the warm up I was the last of 3 skaters.  Staying warm was difficult even with an overhead heater and a counter top heater nearby.  My rink is super cold.

Today my warm up consisted of:

1. Sitting in my hot tub before getting dressed to go to the rink
2. Doing a few stretches on the floor of the rink before putting my skates on
3. Skating around (forward stroking, crossovers and back crossovers)

That was it.  Recipe for disaster!

We practiced all of the Adult Bronze Moves today.  Establishing the things I need to work on:

1. Forward and backward perimeter power stroking
More even cadence
2. Forward power three-turns
Smaller lobes
3. Alternating backward crossovers to backward outside edges
Work toward 5 equal lobes
4 Forward circle eight
No work needed.  My coach said it would have passed a "figures" test!
5. Five-step mohawk sequence
Work toward 5 equal lobes + stay on proper edges + hold/extend 4th step longer


Then we walked through the parts of my program that are loosely choreographed.  Rather than perfect each element as we go, the plan is to finish adding the required elements and choreography and then start working on the trouble areas!

When the lesson was over I had 15 minutes to enjoy clean private ice.  The last thing my coach told me was "be careful" and "don't try anything new until you have your legs back under you".  She knew I wasn't really warmed up.  Here's what happened during practice:


Here are a few things that went right:


1 comment:

  1. Well, technically you did complete the spin and a nice one at that.

    ReplyDelete

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