Process oriented training day plan

Well, all the skating rinks are closed as part of the effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. We also don't know for how long they'll stay closed. But I skated last week 3 times and I find I've made some progress about following a training process. I'm writing this so I won't forget where my thoughts were at. This is kind of a bookmark...

I usually skate on Mondays from 12 to 1.30, and I have half an hour private lesson after. I usually don't skate Saturdays and Sundays, and on Monday I feel way stiffer compared with the other skating days. So I always took the time to warm up longer. But I felt that this time, as I was thinking what I wanted, I got more out of it.

This is what I want:
1. pay attention to the body alignment
2. bring awareness to pressing into ice (something that it's not in my nature to do)
3. push myself to catch some speed (something that's against my nature...)

I feel that until now I've paid attention mostly to the body alignment. I generally start my sessions with forward/ backward slalom, forward and backward power stroking and edge presses and focus on alignment. The pressing into ice I used to notice if it was there or not, but not try to correct. I think I was thinking I'll pay attention to it during the rest of the session. But I don't feel I was successful. As I was working on more difficult skills I wasn't able to concentrate on the ice pressure. This Monday, I didn't feel I was "in the ice", so I've done the edge presses again, this time focusing on pressing. Better! I was then, able to take this awareness into most of the rest of the session. I've decided to continue with the moves (Pre-Juvenile level) starting with the many 3-turns that I now rework. That gave me the opportunity to keep working on both body alignment and ice pressure. I continued with the backward circle eight (alignment) and the forward/ backward power pulls  that I've done 3 times (pressure and alignment), then the 5 step mohawk where I surprised myself with more speed then I usually put in. That gave me the idea to do again the forward/ backward power stroking concentrating on speed. See, in dance I need that speed, but it's hard to get it concentrating on all the steps. It's a better plan to already have worked on the speed as a warm up, before starting to work on ice dancing. All this took like 45 minutes.

Then I had 45 minutes for dance. I started with forward/ backward stroking concentrating first in posture, extension then in ice pressing and speed. I feel speed is not comfortable if the posture is not there. Extension helps to hold the posture. The ice pressing is both in the ankle pressing at the push into each stroke, and in pressing into the skating foot while gliding and holding the extension. Next would be forward and backward chasses, progressives and swing rolls. I'll tell you that at this point I was kind of loosing my patience to "work" on things, especially because I knew that I wanted to work on 3-turns (as I always do), then on the Ten Fox. But I've gathered my will as my coach corrected on the previous lesson to stay on the skating hip while rising and rebending to change lobes going backwards, and I forgot to do it lately. I feel that skill holds back my dance 3-turn too, so I've "worked" on all those too. On the forward exercises I was also paying attention to press the outside edge at the end of the lobe, that I usually release too soon. Again, I feel this will help in many places, but on the entry edge of the dance 3-turn too. Then came the 3-turns, concentrating on the entry edge, lifting over the hip while rising AND pressing into the ice. Then concentrating on counting and holding the exit edge and keeping the weight on the skating side while rebending.

At this point, it wasn't much time left from the session, just like 10 minutes and I've still had to run the dance. I  was feeling exhausted, both physically and mentally. Also, I was having a lesson next, and I haven't done the dance yet... pressure. But I had a big surprise! I knew the dance it's gonna feel good after all these work, but I wasn't expected to feel that good. This is proof the process oriented training works! I writing this down for me to read it when I'll start skating again!

 I'll tell you about the rest of last week on my next post. There isn't gonna be new skating to tell you about anyway...