Last month's skating was... hard. I guess the main reason is that my life is busy and it is hard to carve time for skating. It doesn't help that it is taking a long time to drive to the rink where I take the weekly lesson. Also I am building muscles, and that hurts and it is tiring, so it makes my busy life harder. But... I can feel progress in skating! That is motivating to me, except my coach doesn't seam to think that I'm close to testing and that is demotivating.
I take a half hour lesson focused on ice dancing every week and I skate 3 and one week even 4 days to practice. I'm working mostly on the dance exercises and the Ten Fox. The exercises need patience to actually correct things. The dance got more precise, more flow, but it is slower than it should be. We haven't partnered yet with my coach, as I am still correcting things.
When I get bored or impatient with the dance I go through the double 3turns and brackets and I can do them usually without stepping down though the flow is modest. Friday it was also a good day for spins, I finally gathered the courage to cross the free leg for the forward spin (I think the boot that was too short messed up my forward spin, the alignment on that side really, and just now I start to "feel" the alignment) and the back spin actually rotated (usually it stops after a couple of rotations because I don't balance correctly). The twizzles maybe start to improve, the CCW ones go consistently 2 revolutions, the CW ones I occasionally hit 2 revolutions but again, I "feel" the alignment is stronger.
Some acquired wisdom from these weeks
- listen to my body, when it is very tired, don't go skating let the body rest... maybe go back on the idea to be very careful in building the muscle progressively.
- when I am a little tired work on less taxing stuff on muscles, with less knee and less extension. And work on breathing and "finishing" the exercises, enjoy them
- whenever the ice is emptier, practice all kind of backward skating, the posture and rising on the left foot need work
- whenever the ice is very crowded, practice quicker skating, especially pushes
- don't sit and rest/ watch others, the muscles get cold and then I get more muscle pain
Plan for this month, keep going I guess and hope that the satisfaction is bigger than the effort.
