Pre Coffee Club Pairs Practice

Hank and I haven’t skated all summer.  Between our summer travels and clashing schedules this is our first practice in months.  We had about 20 minutes on coffee club ice before the group lesson.

Here's What's Left ...

.... after a summer of mostly traveling and eating.

It's going to take some real dedication to get any strength, stamina, flexibility and skill set back.
I have talked about this before.  For me .. without having to "answer" to anyone or anything (like a test date or competition looming) I tend to just wane off practice (is that a double negative?)

Tried some warm ups today, little jumps and a spin before coffee club.

Coffee Club Returns

We had a great start to coffee club with 2 coaches: Chris Anders and Lori Benton who gave us a great "edgy" class ...

Back To Basics

A beautiful empty Olympic size ice arena .. all to myself.  What better time to practice the fundamentals of figure skating. All my basic skills are hurting right now.  I know I can improve them, but it takes days like these of endless practice to make any noticeable improvements.




Afterwards I tried a non-stop "run through" of the Gold MIF.  Mind you these are nowhere near passing level yet.  Sadly, the rink at EWU has lots of background noise so you can't hear my edges - so I just muted it and put some music on so you can pass the 8 minutes with a little Bolero!




Lastly I tried a couple passes at the Hickory Hoedown and the Willow Waltz...
Skated so slow on the HH I had to speed up the video to keep time with the music.

12 Minutes of Agony On Ice

Ok subscribers .. don't yell at me for criticzing my skating.  It's my blog!  Ha ha.  I'm still posting even though my skills have deteriorated.  It's incredibly true that too much time off the ice makes the muscle memory go away!

I'm glad I got out there and I did my best to warm up some things I am planning to conquer this year. Gold Moves In The Field and Bronze Ice Dances!

Sun Valley Adult Skating Week

I will post all the videos as they come in and get edited.  This first video is from Tuesday morning patch class (compulsory figures) with Michele Monnier.  I am skating in my "old boots" with my patch blades .. Silver Test ... no toe pick ... but the hollow isn't correct.  They are sharpened right now with a 7/16 ROH (like my free style blades... too much bite) ... So I am not falling off the blades, but I am not getting enough momentum to get around comfortably.



I also took a private lesson on Tuesday with Michele.  It went something like this:

The video below was my personal favorite this week.  Anita Hartshorn gave a clinic on moves in the field.  We were split into groups: No test - through Bronze went with Frank and Silver and up went with Anita.  We focused on Power Circles beginning with the best preparatory exercise ... pump and chasse with no crossover.  Learning to stay low in the knees or "stay loaded" is the key to creating the proper stroke.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION FROM ANITA

"On the front crossover you don't STEP WIDE...it is the FREE LEG that come around wide - like moving on the furthest spectrum of the rainbow not the middle spectrum."




Friday's Coffee Club with Ryan Bradley was all about Three Turns.  Another staple of figure skating and something we all need more work on doing properly!




The next videos are from  the 2nd of two private pairs lessons I took with Frank Sweiding.  Darn it.. my camera was off for lesson number one when we did warm up patterns and a pivot spiral.  Today's lesson was on a few connecting moves he likes to use when testing his pairs students.  Video 2 is from another camera inside the rink.




Here's a very short clip of my friends and I on beautiful Sun Valley ice.



My final video is my ice dancing lesson with Chris Obzansky.  I'm working on the Bronze Ice Dances and this lesson covered the Willow Waltz and the Ten Fox (but the Ten Fox isn't filmed) Chris was a fantastic instructor.  I wish he lived closer to my home rink.

Summertime Skating Woes

Summer is usually difficult for adult skaters.  Where I live we have limited public ice that is not good for freestyle skating.  I try to hit 1-2 free style sessions a week - when I am home.  This year it seems I have been off the ice much more.

So far I have only skated 2 times since July 7.  I've just returned from another 9 days away. As you can imagine, most of the session was spent trying to "feel the ice" again.

Last Coffee Club of the Summer

This is our final Adult Drop In Coffee Club of the summer.  We will resume on September 15th back on rink #1 at 9:00 am.  Today we just had 3 skaters for our last class, but it was fun.  Stephanie Krupke-Parkinson is just a joy to skate with.

Summer Madness

We have both been going in opposite directions for the last three weeks. We finally got a chance to skate today.  I rolled my ankle playing golf on July 2, so I am skating  very cautiously..  balking at a lot of my jumps.  Wait - who am I trying to kid? I've been balking at my jumps for quite a while -- ankle or no ankle!!!!

 We had a great time skating today and some things worked miraculously well considering ....

 We also had the privilege of meeting another adult skater.. I believe her name is Miriam (sp?) from Tri-Cities...  an absolutely amazing skater still doing double jumps  after a 25 year hiatus!  She was working on her standard track Junior moves in the field … Wow !

Coffee Club June 23, 2017 ...Privé

Normally I would never complain about private ice time, but in this case I was sorry.  Only 2 of us showed up for Adult Drop In Coffee Club today.   It's summertime and today was beautiful out.  Some of our regular attendees have moved away for the summer and one moved to Sweeden!  One went to Missoula to take a MIF test .. (I'll let him off the hook!) Another got a job and as for the rest.... the jury is out.

I have worked so hard to make this coffee club a reality and I don't want to lose it.  I hope I can get some more skaters to show up next week.  We have a guest coach coming up from McCall Idaho!

So Hank and I were the only ones who skated.  We had Stephanie Krupke-Parkinson all to ourselves, which was both fun and interesting since Stephanie is not a pairs coach!  We worked on crossovers, Waltz jumps and Toe Loops.  We were introduced to the Toe Walley.  Basically a Toe Loop with a different entry.  I have never been able to do one - nor have I tried.  I think I am going to try to learn to do one this way.  According to Stephanie you can get more spring from it.  We also worked on getting our sit spins lower.  I found out today that Hank can actually squat all the way down.  On the video I have a typo... I said "He can't get all the way down" and I meant to say "He CAN get all the way down"! ... now we just have to incorporate that squat into a spin!