Adult Skaters Practice and Competition Thread: Jan 20 - Jan 25, 2013

[singerskates]

Hi Everyone,

It's been a long time since I've been here.

My practices have been mixed. Sometimes I get ahead technical wise and otherwise I fall back.
I'm having issues with landing my loop, flip and lutz on one foot. I have the rotation but can't seem to keep the free leg in the proper position once in the air which causes me to tap down on landings.

I'm suppose to be competing in Womens Adult Bronze FS but had to compete up in the 2012 Pat Abela/McPhersan competition this past Sunday, where I came in 2nd=Silver medal in Womens Adult Silver.

I almost totally trashed all my elements in my program while competing and because it's marked with CPC, which is the same as US IJS, here in Canada for Adult competing StarSkaters (level in between recreational and competitive) I only earned .47 TEC scores. My mark was mostly made up of my PCS. In the US if they were marking Adult Bronze and Silver FS with IJS, my second mark would have been 10. Not bad considering that I volunteered at the same competition the day before on my feet for 8 hours after training for 2 hours and then teach learn to skate for an hour before heading to the competition to volunteer. I also only was able to get 6 hours sleep if I was lucky before competiing.

[ioana]

Hope you managed to get some sleep after your event, singerskates! Having to skate up can be a little daunting at first, especially with a longer program.

My program is all done (but I don't remember the last 20-30 seconds that well ). I actually landed a few decent axels last week, but there's no way they will get consistent enough for me to put them in my competition program in 3 weeks. Focus for the next few weeks will be to get through as many runthroughs as possible, and even hit a few musical accents. Eys, feeling ambitious now. I will say trying to connect all these moves in a program has been a very good learning experience. For the first time in years, I have a program that made me go when we first started choreographing it. But that worked out well in the end since I learned a lot more that way. And fixed traveling 3turns!

Things I need to work on for the next few weeks
-camel entrance where I actually keep my back level
-stop dropping my head to the side in laybacks (I clearly like uneven things!)
-toe jump as the end of a combination. I'm still not drawing back as much as I should be, unlike in a single.
-flip takeoff where I don't drag my free foot too much. I actually did a few good ones without any speed. Too bad that would look like crap in a program :p.

[jp1andonly]

I can tell you the reason you are landing on 2 feet is because your weight is not on one side, rather then in the middle. You need to go back to basics to find where your weight placement is. I know because I had a baby and am at a higher level but am now two footing. It is where my weight is balanced...if I get it right, I land the jump, but if it isn't right it's a 2 foot. My suggestion would be to go back to half jumps.

I would look at my detailed score and find out where I made my mistakes. Honestly you might do better putting easier jumps in your program then putting jumps in that you don't get called for. You can always do a waltz, toe, sal, add. Combo in like waltz-toe and I bet a million dollars you would score better.

A for standing on your feet all day...welcome to my world...I do that all day long, then run after a toddler. I'm lucky to get 6 hours sleep. I don't make excuses about my lack of sleep or standing on my feet. It is what it is and if you knew it would impact your skating you shouldn't have volunteered and you should have gotten more sleep if possible.

[ioana]

Even though I finished last in my competition, I skated fairly well and am happy I put out a good program after a year and a half away from skating. Need to make sure my camel-sit is fixed for my pre-juv test in a few months and try and make sure I move across the ice (well, at least more than now) to fit in a last spin at the end. It will need to be a camel for my test, but I think I'd go with a layback otherwise.
And, yes, I know my footwork was a straightline stumble this time around. Am working on getting that fixed .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8QrYHDn_PU

[smileyskate]

Thanks for posting your vid ioana. You move really well, especially for an adult skater. Good luck on your upcoming test. Do you take those on the standard or adult level?

[ioana]

Thanks for posting your vid ioana. You move really well, especially for an adult skater. Good luck on your upcoming test. Do you take those on the standard or adult level?

I'm trying to test standard track, standard passing level for as long as I can. Taking adult gold MITF is an exception, but I needed some reasonable goals once I came back from my knee injury. Once that stops being doable, I'll look into doing masters-level testing standards. Thank you for the good luck wishes on my test -am sure they will come in handy once I go into freaking out mode .

[jp1andonly]

What level did u skate at ioana? Great program

[ioana]

Thank you . I compete at adult silver in the US.