Stretching with cats and mid month update

As the last blog was about feeling "overstretched" mentally because of me being involved in too many activities, well the cats mostly... it's just fitting to tell you what just happened while stretching with the cats.

Because my hip bothered me for a long while, I'm trying to care for it as much as I can. I'm really bad at doing strengthening exercises systematically. I do them now and then, plus I take once a week ballet. But, I do stretch each time after skating and I feel it makes a big difference. I stretch the quads, calves, IT band and mostly the hips, trough twists, so the tense muscles will relax. At home I roll. So it's no stretching with the cats, it's rolling with the cats. I have this big foam tube and I roll on it. Then I have different size balls and other "torturing devices" to help me get into the smaller muscles and press them to relax. The one I use the most is a tennis ball. But you know how cats and balls are a natural match. So I really have to hide mine, otherwise I never find them when I need them. The cats have their own ball-toys. Well, as I was rolling on the tennis ball on the rug, my phone rang and I've got up to get it. I went back to sit on the rug and roll, while talking, only that my tennis ball was nowhere to be found. It took them like 5 second to steal it from me... So that's how stretching with cats goes... always...

I'll continue with the cats, just shortly, as this is a skating blog... I'm working in setting a blog about alley cats, I hope that will help me put my thoughts together, so I can help them more. I'm still fiddling with both the design and the concept of the blog, because I want it to be more then a diary. I'll share the blog title as soon as I feel I've it right.

Now, the skating... I think it was good at the beginning of the month, then I've got frustrated by not making the progress I wanted on the dance 3-turns and I pushed too hard both physically and mentally. As a result my hip started to hurt and I've got my mind stuck in a negative state. So last week I tried to reset, skate without a purpose, or even not skate if I didn't feel like I really wanted to. I keep trying to get a balance between training for progress while enjoying the process, and I'm not finding it. I found that taking breaks form training helps a little. I feel mentally better now, but let's see how it's gonna translate on ice.

The dropped 3-turn definitely got better, I would even dare to say good, when I do them slowly. When I go faster into them I still skid, but not as badly as before. I was complaining to my coach about maybe feeling scared when having more speed and he asked if I felt is the velocity that scares me or the quickness. Good question... I wasn't differentiating between the two, and I thought is the velocity, but now I find it's actually the quickness. And it's not even fear, it's more that I'm not quick enough to find the right alignment over the hip when I go faster. So, as my coach says, I need to drill it, for that alignment (that I have when moving slower, because I have the time to think about it) to became muscle memory. I also feel confused about the timing of it, I'm so busy aligning I'm waiting to feel that alignment and there is just no way I can also think about putting it on a count. Back to work then...