Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

Last month I recovered from a flu and so I couldn't skate as much as I wanted. I skated 3 times a week. The last two weeks I added Thursday to the schedule and I added an half hour lesson to the one I take on Mondays. But... both these last two weeks I didn't skate on Friday. Something came up and it would have been a stretch to get to the skating rink.

Freestyle: I've done zero jumps and spins. As I was still congested after the flu, I was too out of breath to jump and not finding the balance for the spins. I'm feel excited to get to work on them again.

Figures: I've introduced figures in my training. Read about my reasons and the first lesson from two weeks ago, here. It seams I'm settling in practicing them around 20 minutes on Wednesdays and Thursdays at the very beginning of the sessions when the ice is clean.

MITF: The big change here is that I'm doing the backward 3-turn holding the free foot out, before I was bringing the free foot at the ankle when I turned and extended it after. I worked on them in isolation in cluster of two: forward 3-turns into backward 3 turns. I'm planing to start putting them on the pattern now, so 3 sets of two on the length of the rink. I think the rest of the moves I'm doing, those from the Pre-Juvenile, test are strong. I plan to start doing all these exercises with awareness on presentation, with entry steps and exit steps as I would do them when testing. I also plan to start working at the 5 minutes warm up, that's what I would have before the test. I don't want to do this as soon as I step on ice, as I remember it used to unsettle the whole skating session in the past. It made my rush and push too hard and then I felt tired.

Ice Dancing: it's definitely improving. The proof is that I finally got to partner the Ten Fox with my coach, on music. It could still use a little more work so I haven't registered to test. The 3-turns are stronger, but they are different in different days, I have bad days when I cannot really make them good, meaning they are still not reliable. Partnering is better. I added speed at the end pattern and that made me scared of the outside Mohawk, but it is happening now. I should start working on a 5 minutes warm up for dance, as soon as I step on ice, then do the dance so i would really mimic the test session.

Training process: Not being ready to test the Ten Fox got me disappointed and made me wonder if my goal of testing standard is appropriate, or I'm setting myself for failure. Then, I was questioning the training process. You can read my thought on process oriented training versus goal oriented training in the previous post. I feel that lately all I had in my mind was testing the Ten Fox and I've lost sight of the process. But I'm realizing I've never really figured out a training process... So, that's my goal now! Plus, of course, I want to test the Ten Fox...