Practice Thread

Glad he's (relatively) ok . . . and that you got to practice.

Usually I wear a brace on my left knee when I skate. Two weeks ago I did a public session with an FSU friend and forgot to put it on at the beginning, couldn't do anything so I got off, took off my skate so I could put on the brace, but then it was a bit to crowded to concentrate so we just skated laps and chatted.

After my singles lesson that Thursday the felt weak so I got off a few minutes before the end of the freestyle session. As I mentioned above, at last week's ice dance lesson it was still weak. And yesterday it was shaky just walking around so I wrapped it in an ace bandage at home for support.

Today I went for a long walk with my sister so I put on two braces, one stretchy and tight. I didn't worry about my knee collapsing while we walked, but by the end my calf was cramping up.

Should I wear both or just the usual non-stretchy one for Monday's dance lesson?
 
Realised I hadn't updated this for a couple of weeks, ha!

So I think I'm getting sick (again, joy) and the last couple of weeks I've been really on the struggle bus. Despite wanting to be doing full runthroughs by now, I just haven't had the energy, and when I'm skating like an oversized slug my coach doesn't let me do runthroughs (because that's when I'll actually hurt myself).

Today we did a spin-only lesson, which was quite fun. I even did a few decent camels! :D
 
This morning I was warming up with forward crossrolls with more speed and deeper edges than usual, and the ice was a bit scratched up from earlier sessions.

I tried leaning more than I could support and/or hit a rut and went down, rolling over once or twice on the ice before coming to a stop a couple yards from where I fell.

Falls at speed are always more spectacular and often less painful than plopping straight down in place, even if the ice isn't slick enough to slide.

And the good news probably related to un-slickness is that I was able to get to my feet without assistance but getting both blades under me and sticking my butt in the air. Unattractive but self-sufficient. I'm not sure I could have gotten both blades under me unassisted on slippery ice.
 
So nice to read about you all! I haven't updated in a while either, no ice since camp (which was great) but now the ice is back for the hockey teams. Lots of public sessions in one of my local rinks, but also lots of hockey. I wonder if they've ever seen a figure skater in that rink:D We were allowed to skate if we didn't jump or used toe-picks. Can you imagine? But the rink guy was so worried about the ice, it was brand new. I can understand him though, and he was really nice. For me, it's a brilliant opportunity to work on the most basic basic. I'm doing three turns, double three turns, rockers, and working on edges. I need it so badly, as the LFI three turns are still kind of evil. But they're getting better. And I can work on the take offs, even if I didn't jump. Really good with continuity - three sessions last week, three sessions this week. Next week there's camp again, YAY! So happy season has started.

And I guess I will have to write about camp later, maybe in the camp thread. But I landed my first loop!!!
 
No ice for me either at the moment, so I've been doing extra off ice jumping classes. I think my axel has finally stared to click! My issue was always that I can only land it on one foot if my legs aren't crossed in the air - as soon as I cross them I was 2 footing the landing like I'm Ashley Wagner in 2010. But last week it's fiiinally starting to work, and amazingly feeling like it's all under more control. Still a long way before I think I'll feel comfortable to try it on the ice though.
 
gkelly said:
And the good news probably related to un-slickness is that I was able to get to my feet without assistance but getting both blades under me and sticking my butt in the air. Unattractive but self-sufficient. I'm not sure I could have gotten both blades under me unassisted on slippery ice.
Click to expand...

I think the biggest reason I don't want to fall, is that I will have to get myself up and will look awkward and stupid. I rarely fall. Before I started doing jumps, I never feel even a single time. Axels (decades ago), however, were nearly the death of my knees and to this day I have knee issues. I have osteoporosis, so I don't know if I will ever want to try doing axels again (have broken 3 bones at the rink, which is probably quite enough).
 
gkelly said:
Should I wear both or just the usual non-stretchy one for Monday's dance lesson?
Click to expand...
Husband has bad knees and was told by his physio that knee braces were virtually useless. Since he's been properly strapping his knees when skating he's had a loss fewer problems with his knees either being painful or collapsing under him.

Ran through Dutch Waltz and Canasta Tango in my lesson this morning. Canasta has always been the better of my lowest level dances but I haven't done it in ages - guess who couldn't remember the order of the steps. :lol:
 
I've been mostly on and off the ice this summer on account of spraining my takeoff/spinning foot (and then re-injuring it), but I was cleared to skate by my doctor because skates are more supportive than an ankle brace. Since I can't jump and most spins are a challenge, I've been going through all my figure tests. Aside from the pains associated with the injury, re-learning them has been fairly easy, save for BO loops and the Schafer push. Out of nowhere this past weekend, they came back to me. I don't know if it was catching the Phila Summer Champs IRL or what, but it was a pleasant surprise.

Semi-related: Has anyone attempted the Adult figures track? I passed my 8th decades ago and am grandfathered out of MITF, so I figured (lol) this might be fun to try, if there is anyone still alive to judge them.
 
I had to go research. It looks like there is no crossover from standard to adult track.

I have a barely-used scribe just going to waste.
 
Theoreticalgirl said:
Semi-related: Has anyone attempted the Adult figures track? I passed my 8th decades ago and am grandfathered out of MITF, so I figured (lol) this might be fun to try, if there is anyone still alive to judge them.
Click to expand...

There are. My skating club is talking about being able to offer figures tests. You might want to talk to the test chair or the head of your local skating club.
 
GarrAarghHrumph said:
There are. My skating club is talking about being able to offer figures tests. You might want to talk to the test chair or the head of your local skating club.
Click to expand...

My club offers them (we still have patch sessions as well!). I was curious as to whether anyone has actually taken the adult track tests.
 
I am very happy now! I finally was able to do salchows again today. Pre-rotated, but at least I could get past the back inside edge. I couldn't do them anymore when I got these awful blades, then broke my wrist and had all sorts of problems over the last couple years, so was going to wait until I got my new skates to work on them. However last night I had an extensive dream in which I was doing loops and flips again. There were no salchows in the dream, but I know I can't do the loops and flips, so I tried salchows again.

Also had a scratch spin that was nearly perfectly centered, around 12 revs (hard to tell when circles are on top of each other).

I started to have an asthma attack because of the jumping, so I had to get off the ice after only about 45 minutes, before I would have a need for the inhaler, because I hate albuterol. Even when I was a kid, getting through a program was hard; that is another reason why I don't have a plan for testing, at least not for freestyle.
 
We worked on the salchows in my lesson today. According to the coach, I am not pre-rotating. What I was doing was keeping the free leg straight through the jump, so it was swinging around to the front. Then did waltz-toe jumps. I need to take my time, keep my head up, and not let my arms go wild.
 
My lesson yesterday was pretty good. I'm still being careful with the groin strain so we started doing moves...and none of my back three turns were behaving at all. Not even the "good" ones. Eventually my coach made a few corrections and I managed to get them all done without the pain and struggle of my previous attempts :lol:

I am also continuing to work on the tension in my leg whenever I execute an edge or turn and it really is helping.

Jumps were working ok - though it took about ten attempts at a loop before I finally got one on one foot and round. It is infuriating because when I hit one it just happens so easily but the 9 previous attempts were such a struggle. Once I landed it - it was fine - I even managed to do a salchow-loop on the second attempt. I also finally (after trying for about three weeks) manage to get all the way to the end and land waltz-half loop-toe loop-side hop-jumped LFO 3turn-salchow sequence! Coach actually squealed when I landed the salchow.

We then had enough time to work on spins which were back to normal this week. I still rush the entrance and cut it short, but I centred all my spin attempts so coach didn't say anything. She's also had me start working on some different spins, including an A frame! That makes me sooooooooo dizzy. Apparently I can hit a reasonably good position but I can never actually finish the spin because coming back up from the that position makes me so dizzy I just have to stop. I did one last night where I looked at my boot and nowhere else and I did manage to attempt to push out of it, but apparently the position wasn't as good....it will be a work in progress :lol:
 
Today was a bomb for me. I only stayed on the ice for half an hour, during which I was so sleep-deprived that I kept stumbling.
 
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I'm jumping into full comp-prep mode. The feared cold hasn't appeared (yet) largely thanks to a preemptive strike involving litres of water and stacks of chewy vitamin C tablets. But I now only have three weeks to prepare not one, but two programs for competition.

The comp I'm preparing for has technical on one day and artistic on the other, so I'm trying to wrangle both programs at once (and as I usually wind up doing every year, the artistic will probably take more of a back seat and will have more ad-lib than the technical. A dreadful habit which I swear I will break one day).

Did a lot of jump work today and then a full runthrough with music. I muffed three of the four jumping passes, but got both spins away and the ChSq, and I was only half-dead at the end instead of completely dead, so all in all, I'm pleased. And I started a new job today; and for the next three weeks while I'm in training I get to finish significantly earlier than expected, which means I should be able to go three times a week in the leadup to the comp!
 
Back from a great practice/lesson.

Got to the rink in time to be able to skate my warmup on the last half-hour of the previous session, which meant my coach and I could leap straight into my lesson instead of spending time on warmups. I did two full runthroughs of my technical program with varying levels of success (but making it all the way through to the end), and a runthrough of my artistic program (okay). Between the intensity of that lesson and my excited rambling to my coach about how I can come nearly every day now, she actually had to warn me against overtraining myself (which I bet is something she never thought she'd have to worry about with me!).
 
I was hoping last week would be as great as the one before it, but it was horrible. Hopefully this week will be at least average. My new boots are finally in, so maybe that knowledge will gear me up to have a good week.
 
I had a really good practice last night :cheer2:

I got to the rink and there were maybe 10 skaters max skating. That would have been good news but for the fact that three of them are pretty high level (for our rink) all doing double axels and one doing a few triples too. They skate really fast and because it was quiet they were taking the opportunities to practice their programmes so I felt like I was constantly in someone's way - and at one point two of them nearly collided (which kind of proves that none of them were looking to concede any space :shuffle: )

Anyway groin issues seem to have totally cleared up and I had a good lesson on jumps I even landed loops from my very first attempt. My coach was trying to make me skate with a bit more speed into them and try and get more spring, and I did manage to land some of those. Then we tried the flip for the first time in about 6 weeks, and even though I was getting a nice jump I kept two footing the landing and getting really frustrated. Finally after at least 10-15 two footed attempted I was angrily asking my coach why the hell I could just keep my free foot off the stupid ice blah blah blah, and pushed into a 3 turn, picked in and landed the damn thing on one foot. My coach burst out laughing. I half-laughed but was still annoyed with myself for not landing it sooner when there nothing wrong with the jump!!

Moved onto spins and I even managed to do 3 revs of an A frame (which my coach said had a really good position), but most importantly even managed to push out of it despite being dizzy. I did a really good camel spin too, I had a strange wobble on the LFO entrance edge, I actually thought I was going to fall and reached the ice with my left hand, but I didn't touch the ice or fall and did one of the best camels I've ever done. It made me think that perhaps I don't get over that left side enough normally, and nearly over shooting it put in the right position. I played around with this a bit later on my own but sadly couldn't recreate the entrance, but its food for thought.
 
I'm really glad for you to be over the groin problem. It took several months for mine to go away.

Yesterday when just talking with my coach about lesson schedule, she said something to me about starting to do lessons on the freestyle session because she wants me to use the harness. Even when I was a kid, I never used the harness, so I'm a bit apprehensive. Usually I do lessons on empty public sessions or the studio rink, because I would rather skate with 5 or 10 people on the ice who don't do much more than skate around casually, than with 30 little girls flying around and jumping without looking where they are going. I think I would rather wait until I'm used to my new skates to work that hard on jumps on the old ones (picking them up Sept 9th).
 
Probably a good idea to ease into it, @treesprite. It can take a while to figure out the patterns of sessions.

I'm having a little sulk for two reasons: first I've had a cold since Tuesday night and haven't been able to go to the rink (on Thursday I couldn't even get out of bed), which is of course completely ideal the week before a comp, not. The other reason is that I have been planning out next season's artistic program as I intend to go away and compete more next year, only to discover yesterday that when I imported the song into Audacity, I can't cut it down to anything less than 1:50 without starting to lose the song's feeling, and the max time for my level is 1:40. I was really into the idea, too.
 
Things I'm probably not well enough to be doing: skating.

Things I did tonight: one technical program run through with no jumps and one artistic program runthrough (full).

Me: dying.
 
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