Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

Lots of things happened last month, one great, the rest, not...

The great thing is that I had days with absolutely no pain! My initial hip injury was from a fall in March. Then one by one, all the muscles around the hip started to hurt from compensating (working harder because the injured and painful spot wasn't working properly). I was feeling kind of ok in thesummer, when I fell again... then again 2 months ago. The last 2 falls haven't hurt my hip, but the pain was in the same area, so the muscles around the hip were compensating again, and hurting again. The pain made me unable to work on extension both back and to the front, and power. Recently, with no pain, I started working on these, but guess what. I've got another kind of pain, quad pain. As I was bending, pushing and holding the edges and extensions more I worked the muscles that haven't worked in months. I mention this because it lasted weeks and I started to get worried. I googled muscle pain from exercise and the majority of the results were from body building kind of exercises and that wasn't what I was doing. But I've got the idea that some culprits could be lack of enough protein, vitamin D and B12, I think it's not the case because I watch what I eat, but it's not impossible as I'm almost vegan. Lack of adequate sleep, and I think I wasn't sleeping well that period, I rescued a kitten... Other causes, not enough hydration. And not warming up the muscles before exercising hard like skating. I think it was mainly building muscles and being tired from not enough sleep. But it made me add moving exercise to my warm up that was just light stretches before. Besides probably helping with the muscle pain,  I'm feeling so much better on ice, more quick and efficient. Anyhow, I'm quite good now with both the hip and the quads!

The not so great thing is that after the last fall,  I developed a terrible fear of falling and injuring myself again and another terrible fear of bumping into somebody or somebody bumping into me and make me fall... Whoever skates knows that you cannot skate if you are afraid. Lately I was always cautious, tense, obviously neither enjoying or progressing. I was talking to my coach about this and he said that I have two options, to be patient and to wait for it to pass, or to push trough it. Then, we answered at the same time: he, push trough it, me, wait for it to pass.

So, last month when I skated without my coach, depending on how crowded the session was, I was running trough things cautiously. On my private lessons with my regular coach we concentrate on the Willow Waltz as I plan to test as soon as he thinks I'm ready. My rink testing session for November was full before we decided if I'm ready, next session is middle of January, or I can go to another rink in December.

The new coach that it's gonna choreograph a program for me  was busy with his old students that were competing at ISI adult national competition so we didn't meet the last 3 weeks.

AND, my rink is closed for one week. It is a very busy rink, so a studio rink was built. They'll use the same cooling system so the main rink will have to be disconnected and then both rinks will be connected. It is a good thing as more classes will be offered. It's just that it messes my skating week. I decided to do not take any lessons and I went skating on Tuesday on another rink. I'll try to go once more...

I would say it was a "meh" skating month but I'm finally feeling physically better so I'm overall happy!

Goals for next month, just one: be patient... Well, and start working at my Freestyle program.