Goals for 2018

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goals

Last year was kind of a big question mark for me, skating-wise, so I can’t say I had defined goals or even plans — I was just glad to resume skating again after being out with an injury, and relieved when my skills started to come back. I also went coachless for the better part of the year, and skipped competing and programs altogether, so it was only fairly recently that I started to look forward with concrete goals again.

For 2018, I would like to:

• Compete my silver free skate at Adult Sectionals. I have no idea how I stack up against the field so my goal is purely personal: skate everything clean and get credit for every element.
• Go to Nationals. I’ve wanted to go every year but something always came up (or I decided against it at the last minute because of the expense), but I have my eye on going this year. Fingers crossed I can manage the scheduling!
• Practice the axel. I’m not aiming to land the axel, but I know that there’s zero shot of that ever happening if I don’t even attempt to practice it! I have padding and guards and I feel like I’m ready to move on from prep drills, but I have a hard time mustering the courage to actually practice it.
• That said, I also need to be careful about axel practice, because I was recently attempting them and tweaked something in my bad hip (that I had surgery on). It’s hopefully a minor thing, but it scared me into remembering that I’d rather skate forever without an axel than to reinjure myself, require more surgery, and have to quit skating! I haven’t figured out where the line between challenging myself and being protective/careful is, because I’m not ready to give up on axel hopes yet. But I will if it comes to it.
• Test Intermediate moves in the field. I’m not in a rush to pass tests, but Intermediate has several overlaps with Gold, which I passed, so only 3 new moves to learn. I think getting this sometime this year is a reasonable aim.
• Double twizzles in all directions, triple twizzles on the easier ones. I’m getting more comfortable with the forward (1-and-a-half) twizzles on the Intermediate test, but my coach challenged me to try for triple twizzles, because “Once you’ve done triples, the test will be a breeze.”
• Get 3 revolutions in a flying back camel spin. I’m making good progress on the back camel, but currently I’m at the 1-revolution-and-fall-out phase of the flying version.
• Level up the spins. My coach was going over all the spin possibilities for my Silver program, and it’s kind of mind-boggling all the combinations and variations that give you levels. I feel like a Level 1 would be within reach; Level 2 is a stretch goal.

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September spin practice

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spins

I’ve had a sporadic summer of skating — I’ve been going, but not as often as I’d like, and my practices have been a little unfocused. I’m actually in between coaches at the moment, and when I don’t have weekly lessons and a game plan, I find my practices can get a little random. I don’t mind, necessarily, since it’s nice to be able to relax and practice at my own pace, but I do feel like I work best in the long run when I have more of a set goal and direction. That’s next on my agenda!

But for now, I’m working on the same ol’ spins and jumps as ever, trying to make them better and more consistent. Here’s what some of them look like at the moment:

Notes to self:

• Sit spin is looking okay – can get lower, but almost there. Back sit is coming along, thankfully! I haven’t been able to get more than 1-2 revolutions on that until this summer, so that’s a new development.
• Camel is always a struggle. All my forward entry spins have been giving me trouble lately, and the problem seems to be in the entry hook. My most common error on the camel spin is that I don’t rise up smoothly and hook the spin into a nice centered circle, but rather the entry looks like a big 3-turn (hence the falling out early).
• Layback still looks crooked and ugly, but I think I can see what’s going wrong now. I’ve thought all this time that my problem was one thing, but looking at the video I see that it’s actually something else altogether! I’ve been trying to lift the free leg because it feels like I collapse on that side, but the free leg is actually high enough. In trying to lift it, I’m not tucking my hips under me properly, which results in that peeing-dog position I hate. I don’t think I’ve recorded my layback on video enough, and doing it sooner would have helped.
• Back camel is clearly falling on a very large outside edge/circle. It’s a miracle that upright backspin pulled up instead of falling out!

Relearning my limits

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injuries

I’ve been skating regularly all spring, and am mostly back to regular lessons with my main coach and moves coach. When I first returned to skating after surgery, I wasn’t sure how many of my lost skills I would get back, or how long it would take me to bet back to where I was. Having been back at it for about six months, I can say that I’ve gotten most of my skills back and can do generally all the jumps and spins that I used to do. (Probably not at the same quality level—spins are slower and jumps aren’t as high, for instance—but at least I can do them.) That’s a huge relief for me, because I was worried that I might not be able to jump anymore, and was dreading the possibility of having to quit freestyle skating.

Even though I am back at freestyle and feel optimistic now about continuing to progress my skills, I have found that there are new twinges and pinches and signs of weakness that I am hypersensitive to now, and that I’m not able to approach skating with the same amount of confidence. Sometimes I feel great and can skate like I used to, but I find that most days, I feel things in both hips (I only had surgery on one, but they’re both a little off)—those feelings aren’t necessarily painful, but I take them seriously as signs to be careful. I notice that I can’t skate as long as I used to before I feel that ache in my hip—it feels like there are only a limited number of jumps I can try without overdoing the joint, and the same for spins. I don’t feel that skating is reinjuring me, but I do think I’m more liable to be injured if I’m not mindful. So every practice is a constant assessment of how I feel and how much I think I can attempt safely. I stop often to check how I’m feeling, and often cut my practices shorter than I want to. Before my surgery, I would just push through because I wanted to skate more, but now I force myself to ease off, which is frankly really tough to do.

It’s a bummer to have new limits holding me back when skating is hard enough as it is with a completely healthy body, but I suppose I’m grateful that I can continue to skate at all, so I try not to get too disappointed by the new restrictions. I tell myself that I love the feeling of skating even without the fun tricks, and even if I have to hold back the desire to go all out, I’ll do what it takes to keep me skating longer.

Skate like you want to be noticed

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moves in the field

At my last moves lesson, my coach started me off with the usual warm-up drills around the rink. It was a busier than normal day, because there was an upcoming local competition and a lot of young skaters in costume were running programs back to back. The session is usually predominantly adults, but today I found myself dodging skaters, not quite able to fill out the whole pattern.

“I know it’s a crowded session,” my moves coach started off, “but… you skated like it was a crowded session. Like you didn’t want anybody to notice you.”

Ah, guilty as charged. I don’t usually think in those terms — Don’t notice me — but when it’s crowded, I do tend to shrink away and put myself in evasion mode, rather than actively attempt to skate. So I’d been more focused on dodging people than completing my moves, even when I probably was okay to continue, because I have a thing about not being That Adult Skater who gets in all the flashy teenagers’ ways.

It’s partly because, as an adult, there’s a certain amount of teenage know-it-all-iness you encounter, where the show-offs get annoyed at you for daring to intrude on their practice space. And it’s also partly because once when I was brand-new to freestyle sessions and not quite used to the flow of movement, a coach pulled me aside to warn me to pay better attention to the people around me, which I found mortifying and unnerving (because I was horrified at the idea that I was that clueless adult). (Also, where are those coaches now, when the high-level show-offs are whizzing dangerously close to everybody and expecting everyone else to clear their path? Hmph.) But because this is what I do, I took one bit of critique and went extreme overcorrection on it: So now, I scan the ice way more than I practice on it, I step aside readily when a more aggressive skater is around, and I abort moves at the drop of a hat. It’s not a productive habit. I should probably work on getting more assertive on the ice.

My coach sent me back for another lap, instructing me to skate with more purpose and confidence. “When you skate, it looks very pretty,” he said, with a twist on the “pretty” that made it clear it wasn’t necessarily a good thing, “but it looks like you’re just going through the motions. You’re very meticulous, but it’s like you’re thinking through all the positions.”

Another spot-on critique, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m too busy concentrating on proper form and technique that as a consequence I generally have zero power, and no thought to presence or flourish. So I went back into the crowd, trying to do as he instructed: Chin up, shoulders down, arms raised, looking like I had every right to be on that ice — taking up space, rather than feeling apologetic about my presence on it.

Relearning how to skate

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basic skills, injuries

Okay, maybe the title is a little dramatic, since it’s not like I was away forever or that I had to start completely from scratch… I’ve been back to skating for two months now, although only once or twice a week and still taking it easy. I haven’t resumed lessons yet, although I plan to in the near future; I’d wanted to be back at lessons by now, but my coach was busy through the holidays and so was I.

In the meantime, I’ve been getting my feet back under me, and getting more comfortable being back on the ice. I was surprised at how quickly some skills came back, and how some just… didn’t. I started out tentatively with stroking and basic skills, then gradually added freestyle elements as I felt comfortable. After several sessions of feeling awkward and wobbly, I started feeling stronger with basic edges and stroking, which was a relief. I practiced from the pre-bronze moves in the field and then worked my way up through bronze and silver. Right now I feel like I’d be able to pass the bronze moves test again, but I’d fail the silver.

I held off on jumping for a while but resumed working on spins, and they were just awful — it was like I was back in Learn to Skate, trying to hang on to more than a revolution or two before wobbling out. I was surprised that the backspin was easier to get back than the forward scratch spin (which is still AWOL), although I suppose my backspins had been more reliable before the injury. Even at my best, I struggled with the forward entry, and now that I have no power or speed, it’s even more evident that the basic technique is lacking. For some reason I find the backspin entry much simpler and I trust that edge more going into the hook. I suppose the silver lining is that now I really do have to find the right technique and not just muscle through the forward spins.

I returned to jumping very very cautiously, which was a double-edged sword, since jumping with no speed or power is so hard. I’m sad to see that my loops are the worst off, because my right (landing) hip is the weak one and I’m afraid of twisting it or putting too much pressure on it, so I’ve started bailing on a lot of attempts. I want to figure out how to continue to practice them without getting into that pattern and learning bad muscle memory! Flips and lutzes… are a work in progress. For whatever reason they feel safer to attempt (for my bad hip) than loops, so I am practicing them, but they’re just not there yet.

Lots to work on.