Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

Last month went like this: the two weeks in the middle were great, the first and last week of the month not so much. The problem with these two not so good weeks was that th rink a different schedule, so I've got to skate less and I also lost my rhythm.

MITF: The skating that I did, went almost entirely towards the moves and the coach agreed that I am ready to test, well, unless I have a bad day. So I'm registered to test at the end of this month.

And talking about bad days, this last week I really didn't skate too well. I'm trying to find explanations on why, so I don't get discouraged... Firstly, mid month the coach didn't ask about more power so I thought I'll take the opportunity to work on perfecting things, mainly the alignment. Then, I was tired. I think the combination of the two (not purposely pushing so letting go of some speed, but then pushing even less than I thought I was, because I was tired), made my skating hesitant. Also, maybe I'm getting a little bored with these moves. I had few runs that went really well so in my mind, I think I've got them. But I have to still stick with them for a full month for the test.

Just 2 posts ago I talked about power in figure skating. And this last week was such an awareness. My coach's approach for progress in skating is to work on precision and then to work on speed. Of course with more speed you lose from the precision, so then you need to start working on it again, and so forth. That doesn't mean to totally let go of the speed... I think this last week I made the mistake of letting go of too much from the speed. But the edges are hold better at speed. I'm very curious to check this theory this week.

One thing worth mentioning, is that my coach made me work on the 5 minutes warm up that I'll do on the test day. The elements in the test are around 10 minutes, so there is no time to time to do all of them and there is no time to warm-up. My first tries were around 7 minutes, so I needed to cut a lot. Now I've got it down to 5 minutes but I still play with the order I do them. My coach said to consider that on the test day the other skaters probably will follow the test order so it may be better to do the same. So on the test day I'll have to warm up of ice. Then, on ice, I'll have to use some of the elements as a warm up, in the sense that I shouldn't try to do them well but just get used with the ice. The power crossovers are one like that, but I do just one line, first half forward, second half backward. I do the next line edge presses, 2 outside forward, 2-4 backward outside, the rest of the space backward inside.  These allow me to work on my alignment. I need them... Then I do the 3 turns, but just one of each. If I have problems with one of them I have time to do it again. Next would be the power pulls, back circle 8 and 5 step mowhak.

Ice Dancing: I did occasionally some warm up lines of chasses, progressives, swing rolls and the Ten Fox (the last of the Bronze dances I have to test) so I don't totally forget it. Some days it actually went good. Some days... you know... not. What I found myself drown to, were the dropped 3-turn for the European Waltz that I'll start working on after I finish with this Ten Fox. The Pre-Silver dances are way more interesting. Harder too, of course. But if my interest is high I work harder too.

Freestyle: I let it go again... I did some spins (forward and backward) and a Waltz Jump here and there. And I've run my program just once.

As for the plan for the next month, I do have to keep the moves a priority. The ice schedule will change middle of the month, and as the kids will be on vacation there is no way to know which sessions will be crowded and which not. So, I cannot count on that ice, I'll have to be really for the test by the middle of the month.