Crossovers Galore?

A month ago I wanted a formal breakup with forward crossovers. I hated them with passion. Every time I got on the ice I would have to warm up for an hour before even attempting my good side of crossovers. My bad side? I’d do two to three around the circle with pushes in between and then I’d hit my toe pick and get frustrated. I was introduced to crossovers in the very last lesson of my first learn to skate session over four months ago. They’ve definitely improved, I now have more power and speed, but I have to learn to hold the cross longer and make them less choppy.

In these last few weeks I’ve worked on crossovers over and over again because they make up a third of my program (I have to do a figure 8 forward and backward). Today, I was having a difficult time with a move and decided I needed to rest my skills practice. After 2.5 hours on the ice I was close to a breaking point. Now in the past, I would spend this time doing slaloms or half-pump swizzles (alternating) down the rink, but today I naturally moved into my crossover pattern down the rink with more crossovers on the ends.

It occurred to me about halfway through my second pattern that my “rest” involved crossovers! The skill I ultimately thought would keep me from progressing in this sport. I’ve learned many new skills in these last few months, normally my coach introduces me to something and it looks awful the first time around. I work on it either on my own or with her for the next few weeks and in time it looks better and becomes easier to do.

I used to have to work my way up to crossovers and waltz jumps, even slaloms and now I just do them. When my coach introduces me to a difficult skill I don’t react like I used to, with fear and whining, I just do what she tells me (even if it looks and feels terrible) and I take her advice. Sure it seems impossible, but having done the “impossible” over and over again, there just isn’t a good reason not to do what she says.

“You want me to pick up one skate and glide with the other?? This is the first day of class, how?”

• Said while learning one foot glides

“You want me to pick up my foot and cross it over my other one without dying, how?”

• Said while learning crossovers the first time

“You want me to pick up one skate and put it behind the other skate without tripping on my toe pick? Haha”

• Said while learning cross behind step

“You want me to pick up my body and rotate in the air, muhahaha, so not happening”

• Said while learning waltz jump

As you can see, I complain a lot on the ice, but I am working on it! Whenever my coach shows me something new I make an honest attempt not to joke or whine about it. Yesterday I did crossovers for fun, to relax. Maybe in the future I’ll start doing jumps like the toe-loop or Salchow in my warm up!

Why is it that I train as hard as I do?

I asked myself this question over and over again yesterday and I feel like I couldn’t come up with a decent explanation. I like to think that I am training like an Olympian - I know it’s a stretch but I eat, sleep, and breathe figure skating. I train 6-7 days a week, 4 on ice and 2-3 days of off ice. When I am on the ice I train for 2-4 hours, so on average I am on the ice 10 hours a week.

How I train:

“Ice time is precious time”

My time on the ice is no joking matter. I don’t like to chat with the other skaters, I don’t appreciate when people interrupt my valuable practice time. I go from one skill to the next with short water breaks in between so that my solid 2-4 hours are used efficiently. I have even started using this idea of deliberate practice where I write down everything I need to practice in my skating journal and check it off as I go through.

During practices I challenge myself

I often write down 2-4 skills that are very difficult for me and I try my best to do at least a couple of them during my practice so that I can learn to be fearless. Sometimes I look up a skill or move online and attempt it on the ice, within reason (again, trying not to injure myself here).

I train with a coach!

I train with a coach for an hour and a half each week, 3 out of my 4 practices happen with a coach present. This makes a world of a difference for my skating. When I was on my own for most of my weekly practices I was picking up bad habits and not spending all my time on the ice wisely.

I warm up

I never get on the ice without a proper warm-up, on busy days it is as short as 10 minutes while on free days it sometimes lasts up to an hour. Warm-ups make figure skating more of a “sport” for me. My body has grown accustomed to many of the movements I make on the ice so I feel like I am not burning as much as when I am learning a new jump or skill. As an adult skater, I feel the need to warm up my body before stepping on to the ice. I jog around the ice 2-4 times, run up and down the stairs of the stadium 4-6 times, jump rope,  and  stretch in the ballet/off ice room. My coach recently told me that I have “a pop” in my waltz jump now, so basically more distance and height and I can honestly attribute this to my exercises. Running up and down stairs allows my knees to be more flexible on the ice and gives me the “umph” I need when jumping. Do yourself a favor and warm up before ice!

Why I train:

It’s a dream

I am fulfilling a dream of mine. Every time a land a jump, or finally “get” a new skill I feel like I am one step closer to my dream. I can honestly say that I can see myself standing on the adult nationals podium in a few years. Whether or not I place, I will be satisfied with the progress I’ve made. After all, just five months ago I couldn’t skate around the rink without holding on to the boards with my life.

It makes me happy.

Figure skating gives me a whole new understanding of satisfaction and confidence in myself. Growing up I played sports, but I never considered myself an athlete. Sure, I had coaches who pushed me, but never a coach who truly inspired me to want to do my absolute best (Shout out to the amazing Coach T). Figure skating gives me the opportunity to shine and present my passion to the world. It allows me the freedom of artistry and creativity while honing in on skill, power, and control. Figure skating cannot be easily compared to any other thing that I have experienced in my lifetime, but it has become my life. I want it in every possible way. I want to breathe it, live it, achieve it, and succeed in it. And that ladies and gentlemen is why I train as hard as I do.

All Day at the Rink

Today was incredible, I spent my entire day at the rink...honestly at this point it would be so much easier to just live at the rink...or at least a little closer to one, but I digress. I had three sessions on the ice today and two warm-up/exercise sessions. The first session on the ice was a makeup LTS class with my favorite coach. We worked on BXOs ( I really need to work on holding the cross!), consecutive 3 turns (I still have to learn to step forward on the outsides), spins, waltz  jump from BXOs, and believe it or not the toe loop. When my coach asked me to do one I straight up said no. Again. I have really been working hard to stop saying no and giving her sass on the ice, but it’s difficult when you’re trying not to like die.

Just under one month ago, Coach T introduced me to the toe loop. I was overjoyed. My first big girl jump. We did it together a couple times and then she let me do it on my own (I was so nervous!) and I landed it on my first try then looked up at her and said “there’s no way that was it” and she said,  “no Gina you got it!” Her expression was priceless. Most people don’t just get this on try #1. Since that day I have psyched myself out of that jump, until today. In the makeup class there was one other woman who was just above my level, so we did a lot of similar moves but she basically did them way better than me, haha ( totally cool, she’s been skating for two years). Coach asked us to spin, we spun. Coach asked us to waltz jump, we did. Then coach said to toe loop and I said, woooahhh, please no; but this woman motivated me and told me I could do it. I took a leap of faith, literally, and did it solid. I even jumped on a line (I had been jumping on a curve for the longest time due to a lack of control on the three turn). Victory lap anyone? Of course I did, because I was overjoyed. It was near the end of practice and coach wanted me to run my program in the last couple minutes. It wasn’t a very smooth run, but it definitely improved throughout the day.

For my second session on the ice I hopped on to public free skate. There was about a half hour left of adult skate and then there would be about an hour and a half to go of regular public skate. During this time I ran through my program a few times, did both sides of lunges (even though I kept falling on the left side, I didn’t quit), worked on my spins, change of edge, mohawks, and even my toe loop and half flip (but without the actual jump - coach and I haven’t really worked on it yet). It was a very productive session and I still had one more to go.

I had about an hour and a half between public skating and my private lesson so I intentionally scheduled an interview in that time (more about that later) when I had finished my meeting I got dressed, had a quick snack, and began warming up for my final session of the day on the ice with Coach T. We worked on all consecutive edges, spins, the program, crossovers, spirals (in test format), lunges, and the toe loop.  It was a great lesson, but unfortunately it was my last with Coach T for this session because she will be out of town next week. I still get my lesson, but I will be working with another coach, argh :(

I spent about 4 hours on the ice today, training. I didn’t goof off, I tried not to let conversations on the ice take me away from the work that I had to get done. By the end of the day I had also spent an hour exercising to prepare for ice. That’s a total 5 hours of activity in my day, so naturally sleep was calling my name. Seriously incredible day, I hope that I will continue to have such successful practice sessions over the summer!

Perfection? I think not.

I am not a perfectionist, not even close, but I am a hard worker - especially on the ice. I do not have natural talent in this sport...it takes me ages to learn new skills and I often feel foolish when my coach presents a new skill to me and I come no where near re-creating it. So, when someone tells me I look good on the ice or have made a lot of progress, I am not sure sure how to respond or how I should feel. Yes, I feel awesome when I’m on the ice, but that doesn’t mean much. 

I know people hate being recorded on the ice, but I love it. I record myself learning new skills and then I record again in a few weeks to see my progress. I record because I like watching myself skate. I see a girl who is pursuing her dreams. I see joy.  I see a girl who is fit. I see a figure skater in the works.

When Coach Doesn't Show Up....

Teach class? Sure! At my last group lesson we didn’t have a coach for the first five to ten minutes of class. So, we all decided to start off with stroking and crossovers on the ends like we usually do. We did a few laps and then I asked the group if they were ready to switch sides. By this time, we finally had a coach show up. Side note: I love this rink, I like the staff, the coaches, but most importantly I love the ice. So, the fact that Coach B couldn’t make it today is one thing, but then she couldn’t find a sub so they were looking for someone to fill her spot at the last second and this played a big part in how the lesson followed.

In all of the adult classes that I have attended I have always had an adult coach who was able to accurately describe exactly how to do certain moves and how to fix my many mistakes. For this session we had an oh so young coach who didn’t know what our levels were and clearly didn’t have a ton of experience coaching. So naturally (I am a teacher in my other life) I decided to kind of take over...without overstepping of course!

I come to my lessons knowing what I need to work on. I no longer rely on the coaches at group lessons to come up with something new for me to learn because outside of class I am learning moves and jumps in freestyle (the usuals at the rink tell me I’ve outgrown group lessons, but I am trying to keep them up as long as I can because they are cheap compared to contract ice). For this reason, when asked, I told the coach that I needed to work on my consecutive edges. The others were about to start working on their crossovers (again, ugh don’t they get sick of these?), but when they heard I was going to work on edges a few of them followed me. Coach drew a line for us on the ground (that intersected with the circle - that became a problem because there were two others in class learning fxo’s there argh, but I digress). I started off with my backwards edges because they are weaker than my forward edges. One of the girls hadn’t yet been introduced to forward consecutive edges, but she wanted to try so I showed her how to do them and the other women followed suit. At this point the coach was still working with the beginner in the class so I decided it was time to work on my next skill that needed work, consecutive 3’s.

The other women who were practicing on the line continued with edges until they saw that I was doing something different. They asked me what I was working on and I said they were consecutive 3 turns down the line. I told them I had just learned them and didn’t know if what I was doing was correct, but they wanted to see what they looked like so I showed them and they followed suit again.

Next we did a few lines of power 3’s which they pretty much had a handle on, me not so much haha. While they continued working on those I headed to center circle to work on my one foot spin. This is the point in class when I noticed how little coaching experience she had. When sub coach finished working with the other student I asked her if she could help me count my rotations. I normally get between 1 and 2 rotations, if it’s a really good spin I get between 3 and 4 rotations (but that rarely happens!). Sub Coach said I got 3 rotations on the second try, I barely got one and a half in. I don’t know why she would say I got it when I know I didn’t. Either I can’t count or I am way too hard on myself.

Even though I didn’t fix a lot of skills today, it was a great class. I initially signed up for Wednesday nights so that I could just get some extra ice time and that’s exactly what I got today. I even got to run my program a few times before the Zamboni came on the ice. More than that however I got a little feel of what it would be like to coach. During the lesson one of the other adults asked the coach how to do a change of edge on a line and she didn’t explain it very well, so instead she asked to see how I did it and I explained it to the best of my ability. Then substitute asked me to do it again so that she and the others could see (this obviously makes me feel pretty great about what I’ve learned and how far I’ve come especially with the change of edge on a line. I’ve been working on getting that skill for a couple weeks now and during that lesson I was able to do it successfully several times in a row without stepping down).

I am starting to seriously consider coaching in the lower levels of learn to skate. Coach T says I am capable and my Coach C says I will be soon. I still don’t have a summer job, so I would really like to do it. How fun would it be to be at the rink and get paid to teach someone to skate? It’s not great money, but it should at least get me by this summer.

Program Preparations w/ Coach T

Private Lesson W/ Coach T

I had another private lesson with coach T today, it was very productive. We worked on my program elements for an hour which meant a lot of repetitions! The following required elements are in my adult 5 level program: crossovers (forward and back) in a figure 8, t-stops, change of edge on a line, beginning 1 foot spin, and inside 3 turns.

The first half of my program is fine, I have some cheesy arm movements, a couple swing rolls and slaloms, and then I get into my figure 8. Then I stroke towards the center, do a couple more slaloms with arm movements, my inside three turns, and then my one foot spin. Everything after goes downhill. I am exhausted and very confused, I often forget my steps or go in the wrong direction. It’s basically a mess.

It was my goal to have this program down by mid-May so that I could just clean it up and make it more smooth by competition, so I basically have five more days to do this. In these five days I have two LTS lessons (Wednesday) and (Friday), then one open skate this weekend. I believe in myself, but yes I do have some doubts that I am going to get this where it needs to be for competition. I am by no means a perfectionist, but I’d rather not make a fool of myself in front of my family and friends who are all coming out to support me.

The change of edge on a line and one foot spin have been my hardest elements to learn in the last two weeks. They were the last elements to be presented to me by a coach so I’m still in the very beginning stages of picking up on them (If you don’t skate, skip down to the last paragraph!)

Change of edge on a line: My coach showed this to me about 10 days ago. Since then I have done it successfully maybe 5 times after attempting it about a hundred times in five ice skating sessions. For those of you who don’t know what a change of edge is, you basically do a swing roll, then bend your free leg so that its behind your skating leg calf and your edge changes. With that change of edge, all my body wants to do is continue on the same edge, so in order to switch to an inside my top half also needs some restructuring. One of my biggest problems with skating is my inability to totally relax, my shoulders are stiff and mentally I am timid, approaching every new move with caution. In the week that I have been working this I’ve come home sore, incapable of doing anything but eating and sleeping. My abs are sore from the resistance that I am putting on them from my change of edge. My abs are also sore from spinning. Over and over again.

One foot spin: My one foot spin is hard to come by, nowadays I think I hit my sweet spot two out of every three tries, but I only rotate 3 times if I give myself a really good push. My coach told me something interesting yesterday...she said even if you start to hit your toe pick you need to keep spinning, so if you feel like you’re coming out of a spin, get back into it. This morning I was watching the ladies free skate session on contract ice and I noticed that before getting into a camel spin most girls were hitting their toe pick and then getting on the blade for the spin. Other girls were just barely managing to land a jump and would hit their toe picks one or two times to land it - somewhat. This whole idea baffles me, if I am “going down” or feel like I am coming out of a spin I just follow what my body tells me. I rarely if ever push myself to complete a move when I think I am going to fall. This is clearly something that I need to work on. The idea that I can continue spinning even if I hit my toe pick or if my body is feeling out of balance is unnatural, but much of what I do in this sport does feel unnatural - because I haven’t been doing it since I was 3. One of the adult blogs that I follow closely really summed up the one foot spin experience for a beginner, here’s a link to it if you want to check it out: http://icedoesntcare.blogspot.com/2016/05/why-my-one-foot-spins-go-wrong.html.

I have a lot of work to do between now and June 4. I need to learn those two elements and make my program a whole lot smoother. I’ve taken a chill at the gym because I just can’t seem to manage two jobs, family commitments, figure skating 4 days a week, and working out. I get mini workouts in before I skate each day and I make sure I walk at least a half an hour at work so that seems to be working because I am continuing to lose weight (more on that later!). I just really hope I can get this program looking decent in a few weeks, I know I am cutting it close. Most figure skaters put programs together in the fall and work on them the entire year. I put mine together a couple weeks ago for a competition that is oh so soon.

Happy Skating!

I Hate Something About This Sport

It occurred to me yesterday driving home from the rink. I hate something about this sport. I was shocked, I mean I know there are positives and negatives to everything, but despite the falls, the soreness, the bruises, and the expenses I love this sport and know that there are costs associated with every success. So, when I came to this grand realization I felt normal again. I know it’s going to sound stupid, but I hate the fact that I can’t skate whenever I want.

I played several sports growing up, soccer, basketball, and tennis. If I wanted to shoot hoops I walked outside my house played in my driveway. If I wanted to play soccer I would either walk to the park by my house or I’d just kick the ball around in my backyard. Tennis? I’d drive 5 minutes to the nearest courts. I could practice those sports whenever I wanted. If it rained I could go to an inside court/field. Figure skating is oh so different.

Open skate occurs during the day from 10:30-2. On the weekends there are a couple afternoon and evening sessions, but they are filled with children attending birthday parties and couples on dates. I wish I could skate early in the morning before work or after I finish school in the evenings, but that just isn’t the case.

So, when I tell people I am headed to the rink to skate at a specific time they usually say things along the lines of, “well can’t you just go later?” or “can’t you be late for skating?” No actually, it doesn’t work like that (insert eye roll here). I know my body can’t stand me right now, I want to skate all the time. I guess it’s not a bad thing that I am limited by the times at the rink. On the other hand, I can’t keep paying for somewhat mediocre classes in the evenings just so that I can get ice time.

It’s good that I’ve found something I don’t like about this sport, it was about time. Life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies...even if I want it to be.

Skating is good….in moderation.

My name is Gina and yes I know I have a problem. I am obsessed with figure skating. If you know me at all in real life you probably know that I am easily obsessed with things. A nicer way to put it is perhaps that I become passionate about everything that I put my heart into. When I was growing up I was obsessed with Harry Potter, the High School Musical Series (Zac Efron to be exact), and the Twilight Series. As I got older I became obsessed with the ideas of a “perfect” future so I planned a fake wedding, designed my dream home on floor planner, and pinned to my “for the future” boards on pinterest.

So, when I began to take figure skating seriously in late February it was clear that it was becoming another obsession of mine. I lived and breathed figure skating (and still do). I ate healthy for figure skating. I went to the gym, for figure skating. I didn’t play other sports, so that I wouldn’t get injured...so that I could skate. I slept, so I could recover from skating. I ate more after skating to recover from skating. I even read about skating for hours on end. It quickly became a lifestyle rather than just a sport. Unfortunately for me, it is clear that I need to be careful with this rather obsessive lifestyle.

My knee is injured and when I skate for several days in a row, usually by the end of the streak I start falling...a lot. I’ve decided to mandate non-skating days. I am absolutely, positively not allowed to skate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and at least one day on the weekend. Since I have skating classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday it’s really all the skating time I need. This mandate has gone into effect this week. The pain I get in my knee is from over training, I am almost positive of this now despite not yet having MRI results.

If I want to be healthy and fit for my competition I need to be more aware of what I am doing to my body. If that means limiting my skating then that’s what it means. In the past two months I’ve skated for more than 75 hours (averages out to ~10 hours per week). I’ve learned a lot. It is time to perfect the skills I am presenting in my program. I will have two months in the summer to learn some new skills. I’d love to learn a couple more jumps and have my pre-bronze test passed by September #goals.

Skating on Monday Nights Too? Sign Me Up!

About a week ago I mentioned that I had visited a secondary rink to skate at and initially I thought that I would end up at the rink in Royal Oak, but after some serious consideration I decided to give the rink in Troy a try. Despite the fact that I’ve had bad experiences there on the ice (it’s just not as smooth as the ice at Onyx) I figured that I needed to get used to it before my competition there in June. If skating there was anything like the public session ice I did a month ago, I would probably fail at my competition. So, after talking with the learn to skate director and adult coach (I’ll be referring to her as Coach M on my blog from now on) I decided to sign up.I attended my first class today and have mixed experiences about it.

Coach M did give me a heads up that there would be a couple children in the class and I was okay with that, but it basically became a four level class with four students. There was one other adult that was working on two foot turns and half pump swizzles, the children were starting crossovers, and I needed to really start to “feel the edges” on my crossovers because I was cutting them too short. Sure, I have made advances, I am working on skills like the waltz jump, toe loop, and footwork patterns, but I still really need to work on the basics.

Practice time was okay, I worked on several of my elements but forgot to work on spins, argh! We moved to the class space on the ice - which made me somewhat anxious because I wasn’t anywhere near the boards where I keep my binder, skating journal, and water but I got over it...somewhat. First we did stroking with T-stops for me, the others were doing hockey stops. Then we moved to the circle for crossovers (forward and backward) which took most of the class time. I am so sick of spending my money on these classes and just working on my crossovers, but they need work. I know it and I am still annoyed by it. Why can’t I just break up with crossovers in this sport?

After class I showed Coach M my binder so that she could see where I was at and what I needed to work on. I made it fairly clear that I really just signed up for the class because I needed more practice ice time to prepare for the competition and she seemed understanding so that’s good. It looked like we were missing some people today, while I spoke to coach M on the phone she had mentioned that there were some women who were practicing 3 turns and other adult 4 elements. Hopefully next week they’ll work with me and I won’t feel like there’s such a big gap in the class.

I think that overall the money I spent on the class will be worth it to prepare for my competition. It seems like it might just become practice ice for me, but I am okay with that. Plus, it’s another valuable day on the ice, even if it is only one hour. I guess I’ll have a better idea of how it went once it’s all over.

4 Month Skate-versary

Well, it’s my 4 month skate-versary! I haven’t made a ton of progress this month as far as actually crossing (or highlighting) skills on my curriculum guide, but I do feel like I’ve improved on many of the skills I have learned in the last month. So, even though I will be posting my curriculum guides on here for the month, I don’t think they accurately describe how much I’ve actually improved. For that reason, this will probably be the last time I post the basic skills sheets. My coach has showed me everything I need to know from the list, so what I haven’t already learned is “outdated” or unnecessary to learn according to her. Once I have more of these skills down, I’ll start working on my freestyle curriculum guide!

This month, I am going to do things a little differently by describing what I need to work on for each skill that I am currently working on.

1. Stroking - stay low, keep knee bent on the hold and extend free leg longer with more control.
2. Forward Crossovers (Fxo’s) - hold the cross for longer. These babies have really sped up over the last month!
3. Backwards Crossovers (Bxo’s) - hold the cross for longer, keep looking back to keep body in control, use “other” leg more in order to keep on or near the circle. I also need to remember that I don’t have any pumps before I cross on the figure 8. I don’t even think I could do these consistently a month ago and now I’m doing them on figure 8’s!
4. Forward Consecutive Edges - give myself some self some space when starting these, I don’t need to start right next to the wall. Remember that the first circle will be the size for the entire line. These have gotten a lot smoother and more consistent in the last month.
5. Backwards Consecutive Edges - Both outsides and insides are miserable still, but at least I have the patterns down. A few weeks ago I kept switching between insides and outsides. Remember to pull hip up and bring knees together for insides, and for outsides I need to remember to keep my shoulders pulled back and more relaxed (I tend to hunch and have too much weight on my knees - hence the issues I am currently having with my knees).
6. Mohawks - I can do these more consistently and with arms! Now, I need to work on doing them with speed and not on the line. I am almost there with the left side since I do it on the crossovers figure 8, but I have a lot of work to do on the right side.
7. Waltz Jump - I am landing pretty consistently now with decent posture, until I psych myself out. I am practicing these from backwards crossovers now. I’d like to see myself getting some more height on these in the next month and possibly doing a couple in a row for a simple combination.
8. Mohawk Crosses - If I pay more attention to my arms and pay less attention to the ground, I might actually get these down soon. Less toe picks as well, those things are going to be bare soon if I continue scraping them on every cross.
9. Consecutive 3 Turns - Once you have a skill semi-down in this sport we make it more difficult by looping it to other skills, in this case it’s doing these consistently down the line. Outsides are terrible because I miss the LO3 half the time but also because I am not going in the right direction after the turn. I need to get the pattern down. Insides are better since the turn is more natural for me and I actually hit the 3 turns each time - unless I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing…
10. Swing Rolls - Don’t bend the free leg! Bend skating leg and stand straighter on the “swing” for more speed and “technically” control, but I don’t have that yet. I feel like I have less control when I do this.
11. Toe-loop - This jump barely exists, I jump one out of every five or so tries. I can’t believe I landed it on my first try, but now I just psych myself out. I need to remember to keep my free leg straight while bending my skating leg (this is awkward and unnatural). I also need to keep from hammering my toepick into the ice, beginner problems...I thought you were supposed to do that.
12. Spins - I have the two foot spin with some speed and 4-5 revolutions on a good try, not always the case. My one foot spin is coming slowly but surely. I need 3 revolutions by my competition on June 4 and right now I have 2 revolutions on a good try - which is rare. I need to remember to bend my left knee and straighten out for more speed, I also need to remember to keep the weight on the balls of my feet while spinning.
13. Waltz 8 - I did this with pretty good control and speed a couple times at my last practice and then almost fall due to lack of control on my final run. So, it’s obvious that consistency is an issue here (and on EVERY single skill I’ve “learned”). I need to remember keeping my free leg forward for the backwards one foot glide.
14. Spirals - Look good according to Coach C and Coach T (on separate occasions) which shocks me because I never feel like I have my free leg up high enough. I need to remember to keep my weight in the back of the boot so I don’t fall on my face (again).
15. Lunges - I love doing right foot lunges! I need to practice my left foot lunge though, half the time I can’t go down and then when I do I can’t get back up without falling.
16. Bunny Hops - I can do four or five consistently on my right foot, my left foot I can do 1-2 while feeling like death. Easy to say that my left foot is not as coordinated as my right foot. Coach T always makes me do these on both feet, but I asked Coach C if I need to learn them on both feet and she said no, but it’s good to learn them on both feet so that my left foot learns to be more coordinated. The joys of having two coaches!
17. Forward Crossover Pattern - I did this with Coach T one time more than a month ago and I had to hold on to her the entire time. Last week she had me do these around the entire rink and I did them on my own. The pattern was off, but after doing them at practice a million times I got them down and with a lot of speed. I need to remember to that there are three steps on each side and that I can’t have two feet on the ground at the same time.  Can’t wait to learn them backwards, it will be challenging, but I am so pumped!
18. Program - My program is slowly coming together. In a month I need to have it down for competition, but I’d like to have it completely down in two weeks so I don’t make a fool of myself in front of my family and friends.

I began skating in late December and started taking group lessons in early January. It's been about four months and I cannot believe that I've made this much progress. When I first began I thought I'd be doing jumps in 2-3 years and I started jumping more than a month ago. I can't say that skating comes easy to me, because that's far from the truth, but I love it and I spend between 8-10 hours on the ice each week. On some days I am on the ice between 3 and 5 hours! Sure, I'm in grave pain afterwards, but it's worth it because I'm following my dreams. I am determined to get better at this sport. They say you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but I do it anyways. I've made progress in this time that many other adult skaters make in 2-3 years of skating. I hope that I can continue to progress at this rate, but I know that I will plateau soon unfortunately. The things I am learning are getting harder and my ability to do them consistently is fading. In this upcoming month I will be spending most of my time on the ice working on my program to prepare for my very first competition so I am not sure how much new stuff I will learn. I think I am going to slow down the pace that I am learning and practicing at so that I can be in good shape for that competition. This summer I will be contracting ice and working with a coach at that time, so I hope that I'll get back to learning a lot during the summer months! Happy Skating!