Category Archives: Skating

Skating club: We worked on fancy entrances and exits for jumps and spins: Ina bauers into salchows. Spiral to bracket to half-lutz. Forward spin to back pivot.

So I adapted things to my level: Salchow. Spiral to bracket. Forward spin.

I got a good tip from the coach on my salchow, and I can do one now, again. I never have the timing right for when to actually jump off the ice. It’s deceptive. You don’t really jump while gliding backwards, you get to turn on the ice a bit first. This makes it much easier.

We did a bunch of different stuff in skating club tonight: spirals (straight line, outside, inside) (ok-ish), double 3s (forward then backward on the same foot) (ok), waltz jumps (ok), loop jumps (ha ha), swing rolls (fwd and back) (ok-ish), scratch spins (ha), and footwork (ha ha ha).

The footwork was:
FI3, back crossover
double 3 (BI3, FO3)
mohawk, mohawk, cross
mohawk, mohawk, cross (other way)
…and then maybe a turn fwd and another double 3?

I had to do it in mirror image of the instructor because I can only do BI 3s in one direction right now. But they got much better as I worked on them tonight.

It was pretty much a “why Elizabeth can’t keep up with the advanced class” night. And the less-advanced (we finally got the coaches to stop saying “beginner”) class was doing pretty basic stuff. I really wish there was a middle group. Or that the less-advanced members of the advanced group, and the more-advanced members of the less-advanced group, would have been there. I like a challenge, but it’s tough to always be far behind what everyone else can do: they’ve all done this stuff before, and I’m just learning it. Once I felt like I was figuring out how to do something, we’d switch to something else.

Skating club. Got kicked out of the beginner class and into the advanced class, which luckily was not jumping today. Afterwards the coach that bumped me up asked how it went and told me to stay there; I told her my story about how I used to be in the advanced group and then stopped skating for a year, and needed to get my feet back under me again. I don’t think she believed me when I said I can’t keep up with them when they’re jumping, though. (Not only are some of them really good, but also I tend to nearly collide with other people because they all spin in the other direction from what I do.)

We worked on turns. Right forward inside turns only, which meant skating on one foot for half an hour, which got kinda painful.

Three turns I can do, though not perfectly. Brackets I learned once before, and luckily the one we were doing meant turning clockwise (which is easier for me), so that came back pretty quickly. Rockers and counters? I think I broke my brain.

Skating club! Broken zamboni; took half an hour to get the spare and make ice badly. Dances again. Progress on progressives? THREE GOOD SPINS. For “good” = “several rotations” = “good for me, not objectively good”.

Skating Club:
Dance again – the Blues. Mostly ok except for a forward cross-behind, where you skate on your left foot and cross the right behind it and pick up the left foot. I can’t do it (I get stuck with both feet on the ice, crossed) but was making good progress. Practiced my alternating FI 3 turns and backwards outside 3s. Tried not to envy the advanced class’s spins and jumps.

Skating Club:
Excellent. We worked on so many things that I could be doing better, mostly mohawks and alternating forward inside 3-turns. Supposedly those are easier than alternating forward outside 3s, but since my inside 3s aren’t great, being able to take the step to the next three 3 and still have the balance to turn is … not guaranteed.

After class I played around with some other stuff, working on back outside 3s and a T-stop. My basic skating class at school was so disorganized that I only ever really learned to stop by doing a snowplow, and my snowplow is very very bad. You’re supposed to point your toes together, and my feet don’t go that way. I am the opposite of pigeon-toed. I am going to work on spread eagles and Ina Bauers, because I have the turn-out for them.

Couldn’t spin to save my life last night, so it’s a good thing I didn’t have to.

Skating club:
Frustrating. We worked on basic stroking and crossovers, which meant I actually had to pay attention and do them properly, which I never do because it’s boring. And I know we need to learn basics before we work on more difficult stuff, but I’ve learned them. And I hate the way the class is divided into beginners and advanced and ne’er the twain shall meet. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of teaching us footwork and dances, but still. I want my spins and jumps back, dammit.

Anyway, we didn’t do basics long enough for me to get too bored, before we moved on to the Canasta Tango, of which I can now do the first three steps before I forget what comes next. If we do it another 3-4 times I’ll figure it out.

When someone actually explains it well.

Back at skating club for the first time in a few weeks. We went over the Dutch Waltz, which we’d done on two previous occasions – but this time, with the other coach. She actually explained the steps in a way that made sense to me, and I can now do the dance properly. (Except for the progressives – I’m on the right beats in the music, but I don’t do the progressives right.) Not well, but properly. Now instead of stumbling around feeling lost, I can enjoy the challenge of trying to get all the steps in the right place on the ice and in time to the music and with good posture and my shoulders squared…

Another fabulous evening at skating club. During class they had us do figure 8s. This is much harder than it sounds. After class I pulled out some old printouts of ISI dance steps (a set of moves they make up for tests/classes) and worked on one. I’ve gotten really bad at forward outside mohawks (forward outside edge to back outside edge on the other foot).

Dunno what progressives are supposed to be. They’re a dance move. The coach kept saying “they’re not like crossovers”, which was not so helpful, since what she was doing didn’t make me think “crossover” at all.
We learned the Dutch Waltz. That’s the most basic ice dance: just progressives and swing rolls. Swing rolls I get. It’s just a stroke onto an outside edge with a swing of the leg.

After we went through the dance a few times, and I realized there’s a prescribed number of steps, not just “when you get to the end of the rink, turn”, I started paying attention to the music. Not that I could do the progressives in tempo, since I am not so clear on what they are.

After the lesson I did a bunch of very very bad spins. Eventually gave up and worked on three turns – hadn’t tried back ones in a while, but I can still do them – and backspins, which didn’t, and waltz jumps. Amused myself by seeing how many waltz jumps I could do in a row (as in, jump, land on left leg, turn and push onto right leg, jump, repeat), which turned out to be 4.