Dance lessons

This was my first skating lesson in almost a year, and before that I had only one lesson the previous year... Basically I stopped skating in an organized manner since before Covid. I attribute this mostly to the trouble I had finding the new boots, then I lost the motivation to keep the strict schedule that allowed me to skate 6 to 9, at some point, sessions a week. Whenever I was on ice after Covid, on and off, I tried to continue the instructions I had from before and maintained the skills. I decided I want to test the Ten Fox, mostly to motivate me towards something.

After I wrote about the first lesson I realized it makes sense to add here all the technical corrections from the following lessons, so I can use them in training. The 30 minutes lessons, in general, use around 15 minutes for exercises that teach the technique and they are kind of like a warm up, and 15 minutes for the dance in training. I get corrections that I will work on until the next lesson, and so hopefully I improve and I get to test. On the not so perfectly in unison side, my coach  does not seem to be a fan of virtual testing. I want to keep this idea of testing to motivate me and I like virtual testing better.

F Stroking, my extension for the left leg is weak from when I had my hip injured. I'm trying to build it slowly. My coache's correction was to the posture, to lip more, shoulders back, upper chest projected forward

F and B Chasses and Progressives 

- I was wide stepping so we went on to revive the instruction I had few years ago. After finishing a lobe, I have to rise, rebend, maintained the upper body axis (stay over the feet), flip the pushing leg from an outside edge to an inside one and press into the ankle and push while opening the foot at 45 degrees. We used around 15 minutes for this. I remembered the instruction, but my body seemed to have forgotten to rebend.

- I was not holding the extension on the last step. I had the excuse that my muscles cannot do it, but my coach had the point to hold it to fill in the measure of the dance, even if the extension is not high. Not holding the extension in the past also contributed in me not "finishing" the lobes, I was changing the edge way too soon losing power too.

- Some instruction that didn't catch my attention until now was that the lobe is "finished" by the skating foot getting out of the way (by deepening the edge, almost like a hook) (and then flipping in the inside edge to push), so that the new skating foot has room straight underneath the body to be pushed straight ahead (perpendicular to the axis, so on a true edge)

- For Progressives concentrate more on the underpush, that gives half the power. Also leave space between feet before the underpush so I can push diagonally

Backward skating: shoulders more to the back and to balance push the ankles, the heels back too

B SwingRolls: swing just before the mid lobe, direct the swing toward the end of ice, lean inside the circle not outside

3 Turns:  twist upper body while rising and pull skating shoulder back,  rise completely, don't stick the butt out, the body is an axis. Also I discovered by trying to add flow to the dance, that deeper knee bend on the 3's entry edge gets me to rise quicker, I guess I have the flow to bring me up.

The Ten Fox:

- on the B SwingRoll I should push straight back and I shouldn't rotate the shoulders so I can stay square with the partner

- "finishing" the lobe as described above, helped the step forward after the B SwingRoll and stepping on a true outside edge for the 3turn

- step forward with left arm forward

- the waltz 3: I need to rise completely, the body is an axis (not to bend forward and stick the butt out) so the feet can turn undisturbed

- the step forward after the B progressive: turn upper body as rising but keep knees together, rebend and open knees to step, step outside (wider) the circle to step on an outside edge

- stroke the underpush on the end pattern progressives 

- the outside Mo: right shoulder back (to be parallel to the partner), the back is back over the circle, at the point of turn rise completely (do not have upper body lean forward), place the free foot on pinky toe, draw the right heel towards forward-left