Back to basics

Day 2 of private lessons with coach J. I must say that I'm a little down right now, but the problem is mine and I still love having private lessons.

I started officially learning figure skating with joining the adult novice/intermediate group lessons, without doing the beginners class, because I already could skate forwards, backwards, swizzles, two foot turns, sort-of spiral, sort-of crossover by myself already. The upside of this decision was that I went straight into learning fun things like waltz jumps, whereas the first lesson of the beginners class they were still trying to do forward stroking. The downside though, is that my basics aren't solid. And I'm paying for that now...

I've decided to take USFSA tests, so we started working on my pre-bronze MIF. That's when I discovered how woefully lacking in those basic skills I am. My edges aren't the best, but after last week's lesson, I can now do consecutive forward outside and inside edges pretty well (I think). However, the backward ones are dismal. Good thing coach J thought to ask, but it turns out part of the problem is that I don't know how to correctly do backward stroking! Wow, for someone who's onto learning Lutz jumps, I can't backward stroke??!! I guess my backwards skating has been a home-made combination of wiggles and half swizzles, not the correct way where you do half swizzles, completing the half circle pushing all the way, and lift that leg up forward. This is now on my homework list before we can try the consecutive back edges again.

The one-foot upright spin has improved the teensiest bit. Coach J was nice enough to say that they look much better than last week. One-foot spins are still homework, and will remain there for quite a while I predict.

We spent the entire half-hour lesson today going over these basic elements. I'm not complaining about coach J. I definitely understand that I need to do this, I need to get my basics solid and she's really helping tons. But oh I feel so useless and immensely stupid. I hope coach J isn't disappointed, coach C apparently said some good stuff about me to her. And I was really itching to jump. Good thing I had another half hour on the session after my lesson, so I did do a few waltz jumps, toe loops, Salchows and loops. I tried filming myself with my iPhone too, but am having a bit of technical difficulty (as in half of the screen consisted of the edge of the board the phone was sitting on...). Jumps are infinitely more fun than MIFs and spins (sigh).

So now I'm back to the basics, trying to keep myself grounded and patient. I guess it's a good thing that I have the MIF test to work towards, otherwise it'll be hard to motivate myself to work on basic steps, even though they're very important. Working hard.