Practice Thread

[GarrAargHrumph]

The rink in Staten Island is actually a nice one. It's just one ice sheet, but the ice quality is good, the rink itself wasn't terribly cold, it was well lit, the bathrooms were clean, and there was parking. All good. Tests ran on time if not early, which is a wonderful thing.

 

[Bunny Hop]

Congratulations!

 

[misskarne]

Congratulations Garr!!!

Tonight's lesson focused on the pattern test. Everything else was fine. Some improvement was made on the other three turns. The less said about the FI3-BO3 the better.

 

[MadMac]

I passed my bronze MITF test today. I even found Staten Island! I only accidentally drove passed the rink once, so I didn't even get that lost.

Oh my goodness, congrats! I hope you're still reveling in the afterglow.

I'm looking to take my Pre-Bronze MITF test this spring and am a little preoccupied with that, so I am EXTRA excited about awesome test results right now.

Ooof, and bonus congrats about successfully navigating SI. I'm a Jersey girl who is routinely terrified any time I head up that way for work.

 

[Clarice]

Argh! I have a competition this weekend. My last lesson with my dance coach is supposed to be Friday, but that rink is over two hours away and we're going to have a huge snowstorm. I'm being told highway driving is going to be next to suicidal. This is not doing much for my competition nerves.

 

[eonice]

The rink in Staten Island is actually a nice one. It's just one ice sheet, but the ice quality is good, the rink itself wasn't terribly cold, it was well lit, the bathrooms were clean, and there was parking. All good. Tests ran on time if not early, which is a wonderful thing.

Are you talking about the Pavilion?? I specifically hate that place for the ice quality because it's full of holes no matter how many times they zamboni the damn thing. Double congrats on your test for that!

 

[Bunny Hop]

Second week running nobody has been there to open the rink for the first session on Thursday. Had to wait longer this week than last. By the time they did the ice cut husband only got 8 minutes of his lesson. Mine at least didn't start until half an hour in, but I'm useless without warm up time. Understand that early in the morning people are sometimes going to oversleep, but 2 weeks in a row (2 different people).

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

Are you talking about the Pavilion?? I specifically hate that place for the ice quality because it's full of holes no matter how many times they zamboni the damn thing. Double congrats on your test for that!

That's the place. Perhaps I'm used to worse, but their ice was good that day.

 

[Clarice]

So I lived through my competition! I placed 3/3, which I knew I would going in because I was doing a free dance in a free skate event. I was able to chat with the chief referee for the event, who is a gold dance judge, and he gave me some excellent pointers, so I'm excited to get back to the rink today. The best part was that all my adult dance students passed their tests! Yay!

 

[antmanb]

Practice last night was not the best. It's Sod's Law that I managed to get there in plenty of time with no particular injuries and....I just wasn't feeling it. I never really felt over my skates. It didn't help that there had been a disco session earlier and they hadn't done a proper resurface, just a dry cut and turned the coolers on higher so the ice was really hard and quite rutted, and I need a blade sharpen so everything felt a little unsteady.

Hopefully I'll back in the right frame of mind for next time.

 

[misskarne]

Oh, I hate those days, @antmanb . Chin up, this will pass!

 

[treesprite]

I skated about 40 minutes, which aside from guard skating, is the most I've done since being injured and getting my new boots. I am really sleep deprived, so I had little energy. Some private schools were out, so there were kids on the ordinarily nearly empty 12:30 session, and the ice was scratched up too much to do edges. However, there was only one person in the center and that was not scratched up, so I spent the whole time in the center doing mostly waltz jumps and scratch spins. I did a few apprehensive tiny toe loops. I tried to do a salchow a couple times, but couldn't do it (last time I did them was in I think November). Scratch spins were a mixed bag. Some were centered and some were all over the place. The travelled spins made counting easy, so I know my shortest was 8 revolutions and the longest non-centered spin was 12 revolutions. I at least was entering with my leg high enough for my foot to be at my knee when bringing my leg in, instead of all the way down on my calf. I think I was only looking down on a couple of the spins. My arms were too low on a some, and I was leaning sideways a little on some. I really wish I could spin like I did 30 years ago.

Last night when I was working at the rink, I was goofing around trying to do an off-ice flying sitspin (used to be able to do real ones) and I was too close to a wall of rental skates. My foot hit a blade on a rental skate which was sticking out of a box due to being an adult size 12, which put a hole on the top of my shoe and bruised my toe.... I won't do any more flying sit spins in the skate exchange. I do little off ice jumps back there between the isles of rental skates, but those don't need much space.

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

My practice tonight went better than expected, perhaps in honor of the men's LP tonight. I went to the rink I don't like as much, which often has ice like @antmanb experienced. But the ice wasn't as horrid as expected, and most of the skaters left *just* as I got there, including the two guys with quads. I started practicing the moves from my next upcoming (by upcoming I mean next year) MITF test, and some stuff from my upcoming (perhaps also next year) free skate test.

 

[overedge]

A little late to the party, but congratulations, @GarrAarghHrumph!!! Were you happy with how the test went?

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

Very. I passed it with extra points; something that's never happened before. They told me it was a very well prepared test. This was a test I wasn't sure I'd pass, as when I looked online at other people's power 3's, mine are not as big by far. Or I thought they weren't...

 

[misskarne]

Lesson tonight. With only 8 (or 7 now) sessions between now and the first comp of the season (artistic) I thought it wisest to work on my program. I had already assembled the mainframe, but needed coach's guidance on how to polish it up. With a bit of back and forth I think we got it done. She wants me to practice it in two parts this week and move onto full runthroughs next week, which might be sensible.

 

[Theoreticalgirl]

I nearly died from the flu one week, and then somehow placed first in my competition a week later. It was my first time using IJS over the weekend and loads of fun. Not even sure how I willed myself to do it, but I skated clean (no >/!/e) and received only a single neg GOE, with the rest being 0 or positive. My PCS was kind of nuts and was pretty surprised by it, but I think I know how I can get it better for Sectionals. A very positive experience overall!

 

[antmanb]

Practice last night was a mixed bag again - I never felt fully over my skates, moves were ok. I did notice that I've developed a strange (and bad) habit of trying to do back inside three turns with the free foot turned out and leading with the heel. I didn't notice until my coach pointed it out. She had me keep my foot lower and to push through the turn with the free leg turned in. Suddenly I felt more grounded and had more tension in the free leg that meant I got the turn almost every time. This goes to show the kind of mistakes that creep in when you practice something without your coach for a long time.

We abandoned jumps as I was even struggling with a salchow last night and moved onto spins which were working quite well. I had a few moments on not getting my weight completed over the spinning foot and dropping in slightly to make big circles on the ice but I did manage to fix that after a few attempts. Managed a couple of nice camels and not-low-enough sit spins. I managed to get the correct leg position on the broken leg spin too, but it did go round at a crawl and not low enough. After a few attempts I even did a version of sit-broken leg which might get better with practice. I managed a few A Frame spins too. My coach really compliments my position....I think it's because it plays to my strengths in skating - being hunched over and sticking my bum out

The good spins were all at the end so it was a positive end to the session.

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

That's why I knew I'd do well at the sit spin - hunched over, butt out

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

I didn't skate this morning. My daughter's coach couldn't take her this morning, and we were at a play last night, didn't get to bed until 11:15pm. We'd also had early skating yesterday, so I was just, like... let's sleep in. So we did. I'll skate tomorrow.

 

[misskarne]

Had a decent jump session and spin session tonight. Then did the Elementary patterns again. My three turns aren't improving. I need to really focus on doing them every time I skate.

But I think the chances of me doing my test in April are getting slimmer by the day.

 

[treesprite]

That's why I knew I'd do well at the sit spin - hunched over, butt out

In the days when I was learning sit spins, being hunched over was a very bad thing, and having the free leg curled was a bad thing. Of course nowadays, things thought of as bad technique back then, get extra points for difficulty! Some of the skaters at my rink learn how to do those ugly things before they are taught proper traditional sit spins, and I almost never see anyone doing a traditional sit spin anymore in freestyle sessions. The main things that disappoint me as a returning adult, are that skating now rewards bad techniques, and that skating basically requires people to be contortionists.

I haven't practiced since Wednesday, because I got food poisoning for the second time in a month, from the same brand of a particular dairy product as last time (never using it again!).

 

[MadMac]

I recently added a Sunday group lesson to my practice schedule. I'm not sure I'm gonna stick with it once this round of sessions is over (it is SO disorganized, the practice session is mostly navigating around kids playing Crack the Whip, and I haven't had the same instructor yet--though I have liked all three of them so far) but it IS why I finally got my spins back. And despite the chaos of lessons (which could very well be because it's a Winter Olympics year), the skating director impresses me in a very genuine way and I do kinda love the practice-class-practice format. So we'll see. It is a great place to practice the things my primary coach and I work on during our double-header Saturday lessons, but I'm so distracted by watching out for other skaters that it's hard to stay focused for long.

My most recent Wednesday pre-work practice was one of my worst ones in months, though after fighting to get my spins back for 10 freaking months, at least THOSE are only getting better. But I rushed through my MITF test practice and am probably going to die doing a waltz-eight of all things. And that frustration definitely got the best of me. Gotta work on my mental game.

But my loops and flips are coming together nicely, too, especially when I do them on my living room floor and the dog doesn't try herding me in the process.

 

[treesprite]

The ice is perfect, there are only 3 skaters on the ice, and I'm sitting here taking off my skates because I was having to sit down literally between every time around the rink. After the 4th time, I just was too weak to go out anymore. I guess I'm not recovered enough yet. It especially sucks because the next chance for skating this week isn't until Friday (except guard skating). At least the forward edges I was doing were good. My boots are still too stiff to do proper back edges, though they were better than last week. That was all I could do today.

 

[MadMac]

You did the thing though, @treesprite! It's always so frustrating to not do as much or as well as you wanted, but progress and recovery are both notoriously slow in this sport. And it's so hard to stop pushing yourself when you want to keep going but your body just won't cooperate. But yaaaaay to finding some optimism in today's session! You skated as much as you could and can say that something's improving, which are both awesome. I so hope Friday comes quickly for you and that it gives you some great ice time.

 

[treesprite]

Thank you for the encouragement!

 

[misskarne]

A short session tonight, with the primary goal of testing out my costume for my new artistic. It worked out pretty well, except that it was unexpectedly rather hot, oops. I did a few jumps an spins an some choreo work, then did a full run-through with music which also went very well!

 

[clairecloutier]

In the days when I was learning sit spins, being hunched over was a very bad thing, and having the free leg curled was a bad thing. Of course nowadays, things thought of as bad technique back then, get extra points for difficulty! Some of the skaters at my rink learn how to do those ugly things before they are taught proper traditional sit spins, and I almost never see anyone doing a traditional sit spin anymore in freestyle sessions. The main things that disappoint me as a returning adult, are that skating now rewards bad techniques, and that skating basically requires people to be contortionists.

This is off topic ... but I really miss seeing beautiful classic sit spins like Michelle Kwan's!

 

[GarrAargHrumph]

Well, then; don't look at mine.

 

[treesprite]

This isn't really figure skating practice, but I feel very loud of myself for being able to go around the rink twice in hockey skates without touching the wall, plus being able to stop in them, plus doing some rink guard turns in them (f-->b--->quick look--->f continuous without having to stop; usually 2-footed turns). Skate Guy agrees that I need to use these for guarding so I don't wear out my figure skates which were such a pita to get right. Before I put my guard jacket on, I put the figure skates on.