Mid month updates

To balance the joy of skating... I'm hurting, I feel tired and some frustration is sneaking in. I did say I wanted to balance my skating life, just two posts ago... right? Well, it's not what I've meant...

This week, on Monday, it was the first time skating after the quarantine break, when I allowed myself to not hold back at all... and I don't know... ... Firstly, some of my hip muscles were more tired then on the previous weeks, hopefully they are building up not getting hurt again. Then, my whole body was feeling tired and hurting. I went through this tiredness before, as I was building muscles and stamina, and if I remember well it took weeks to months to feel strong, I hope this time is gonna be easier.

On Wednesday I had my lesson. We corrected the Ten Fox, the dropped 3-turns, and I wanted to learn the theoretical technique on the  backward cross rolls and the backward outside edges from the European Waltz. I felt it was a productive lesson, but it was my least energetic day on ice since I've been back on ice, so not a happy skating day. I haven't said it before, because I didn't want to jinx it, BUT... when I first got back on ice with a refreshed awareness on alignment, my dropped 3-turns worked like a charm! And now, they are not :(

That brings me back to the goals I've set at the beginning of the month: to keep the alignment awareness and to work off ice on my core strength. I've done the core exercises, and got sore muscles after, proof that they've got weeker. But it seams to me that the alignment awareness is not as strong... The first step in fixing things is identifying what is wrong with them. Some reasons I can think of: body feeling tired and hurting, less mental engagement, rushing, feeling less excited to "feel" the ice, probably because I was tired and hurting.

As for the frustration... On Ten Fox, the coach gave me 3 corrections. I was unable to do what he suggested on the 3-turn as my mind took over and gave me extra stuff. I was disappointed, but my coach pointed out that the 3-turn was better, and I corrected the other 2 things he asked for. Then, he asked me for speed/ power and instructed me to just go for it and not think about mistakes. He was happy with what I put out there, I was unhappy about the mistakes!

I don't think there is another way to learn then to have something explained, then corrected until you do it. And there are so many corrections in skating... This brings me again to the goal I was working on just before the quarantine break, of having my skating training (learning), process oriented, not goal oriented (that led me to feeling frustrated a lot). And I feel I'm trying...

And still, I feel I need something more to balance the effort of learning. When I first got on ice after the 3 months break, I was soo into what I (me, me, me...) was feeling. I'm trying to remember what I was feeling. And I remember I felt that I didn't care if somebody is watching or how do I look, I've just stepped back on ice after 3 month, I was allowing myself to " re learn" without judgment.   But I also remember I actually felt "pretty" (like not awkward). And that may be because I was doing easy things that I was comfortable with. And this may be what I'm yearning for... to have some time on ice when I don't learn/ train, to be there, on ice, feeling "pretty". I used to think of this as a goal of skating for my own enjoyment. So I'm planing to look for exercises that are comfortable enough so I can enjoy skating trough them, and also try to not "work" when doing some harder exercises, just go trough them...This may add joy to the training process and give some confirmation of progress.

About my progress... After the break I was lucky I skated the first three times at a rink with uncrowded sessions, we were just 4, 6 and  2 skaters on ice. Where I skate now, we are 10 skaters on ice and in the Monday session all skaters were high level and fast. I felt intimidated, but way less, then I was felling lets say a year before, and I felt I've held my own way. That's the biggest proof of the progress I've made!