Skating Alone Is Not Enough ..

25 days before my test ...

I have known that my stamina wasn't adequate for testing, yet I haven't yet begun to work in gym time to my daily schedule.  I need to get on the treadmill and/or elliptical for 30 minutes and do some circuit work in addition to my skating and stretching at home.  That's my goal for the week.. to make time for everything.

I am still tweeking the choreography my coach gave me.  Trying to throw in a loop jump we forgot I needed and make up some time by cutting some connecting moves.  It's still a work in progress.

Sunday Bruise Day

Spent the morning watching football.  Decided to skate at Frontier Ice Rink in the afternoon.  Got on the ice and promptly fell 10 minutes into the session doing back crossovers ... click-plop-slid-spin .... kind of looked like a break dance.  People came up to me to ask me if I needed help or was ok....

EMBARRASSING

The rest of the session (on bruised bum) was less than productive:

Beginnings and Endings

Today the rink was busier than usual.  Stray little hockey people, parents, really loud music drowning out the endless repetition of Schindler's List music in my headphones.  It wasn't happening for me to keep running my program.

I set up my camera in the middle of the ice and just worked on the back spin.  I made some progress on it toward the end.  Nevertheless it's a very slow version of what I hope will someday be a spin I can do without thinking.

I struggle most with the beginning and the ending of my program (and a few places in the middle), but today I just worked on the beginning and ending.  I need more ice time to spend working on the nuances of holding starting and ending positions.  It's so much harder than I remember.  Need more stamina and core strength.  Tomorrow pilates and ballet.

Where Did My Back Spin Go?

Let's start with the positive.  A few days of sensible eating and daily exercise has resulted in a 5 pound difference on the scale.  Yippee.

I took a day off skating yesterday to play golf with the gals for the last time of the season.  It started out bad and got progressively worse.  I wish I had skated instead.

Back on the ice today ... and PRIVATE ice I might add ... I was hoping for everything to start clicking.
Each day I skate I feel a little stronger, but along come these little hiccups.  I felt like I was getting close to getting a handle on my backspin and today it was gone.  I must have tried 15-20 times (which I didn't put on the video because it was awful.)

Secondly my footwork is not coming together.  I will have to confer with some skaters to see why I can't seem to get this little hop into my footwork.  Too difficult to explain here - TOO SIMPLE TO KEEP ASKING MY COACH!

I only ran through my program 1 time due to the difficulties I had with my back spin and my footwork.

I did attempt the Silver Moves In The Field.  They are in bad shape.  The edges are so fundemental to skating ... I should do them every day as it would help all the other aspects of my freestyle.

We'll see what tomorrow brings... as for today .. this was it:

Not As Motivated Without My Coach

30 days before test date:
Several run throughs of my program with music dubbed in afterwards.
The footwork sequence is killing me.  Not giving up yet.

One Month Till Test Date

Today was the official start of my training season.  No more time off.  A month from now I will be traveling to Missoula to take the Adult Bronze Free Skate Test.  As you will see, there is a lot of work ahead to get this program ready.

At this point we are still working out the step sequences and my timing is way off - mostly due to my poor stamina. Two weeks from now I expect to have much more energy....

3 run throughout of my program followed by a 30 minute lesson. We spent a great deal of time on a footwork sequence that I couldn't get my brain to sort out.

Back To Work

Despite having family visiting this week, I forced myself to skate and have a lesson today.  I really don't have another minute to waste if I want to make it to Adult National Championships next April.

I have to qualify to go by passing the Adult Bronze Free Skate Test and that requires a 1:50 program with:

 * Back Spin (min 3 revolutions)
 Sit Spin (min 3 revolutions)
 Waltz Toe combination jump
 Toe Loop jump all by itself
 Salchow jump

* The Back Spin is currently my nemesis, but the practice went extremely well considering I have been off the ice for so long and I am overweight and out of condition at the moment.

Frontier Ice Arena - Coeur d' Alene ID

Short clips of my practice today.  Seriously behind schedule.  15 pounds to lose and a lot of strength to gain.  On the other hand, I was happy with my backspin.

I couldn't do much in the way of jumping, but I tried running parts of my program.  Changing out the sit spin in the beginning to a backspin for testing -- potentially in 1 month.

Weird looking spread eagle...