Sunday 3 February 2013

Aha moment

Oh those wonderful times when something just suddenly makes so much sense and all of a sudden, that elusive element just suddenly works. I had two of those AHA! moments this week. Not without good advice from my great coaches of course.

Waltz-loop combo jump
I've practiced and practiced but it just doesn't feel right. I have to put so much strength into trying to jump up into the loop jump after the waltz, and even so, the tempo isn't right and I spend too much time on the ground losing my momentum. I've tried it slow, I've tried it fast, it's just not there. Then coach J told me something which group coach A has actually told me before, but now it finally clicks. I need to curve my waltz jump more! I tend to step out my waltz jump on a very shallow curve, for fear of over-rotating the waltz, but then I have no rotational momentum to get into the loop jump. So I tried it on a deeper curve, and voila! As I land the waltz jump, my foot naturally made the fishhook curve and I instantly went into a loop jump. Compared to my old feeling of being heavy and unjumpable, now I felt as light as a feather. It's such a good feeling!

Sit spin
Something else that I've practiced again and again. My biggest problem seem to be that I would go up on my toepick (not just at the entrance, but continually) and so I would fall out of spinning. To counteract this, I tried to not lean my body forward (ie. lean back a little). During my group class, coach C told me that I should be bending my knee and ankle more instead. I certainly do bend my knee, but I realized that the problem was bending (or lack thereof) my ankle! I consciously told myself to bend my ankle and it works! I started spinning round and round in my sit spin.

Both of these were good, along with all my other jumps (toe-loop, salchow, flip) on Thursday and Friday, so hopefully, it's something that I've finally learnt and not just a mere fluke! I felt like a bouncing bean jumping here and there and everywhere, and was so happy : ) Can't wait till my next skate!

2 comments:

  1. I love skating ah-ha moments! I had one at my lesson two weeks ago, when my coach told me to really squeeze my behind in order to successfully do a backwards double inside 3-turn. I had been having trouble with this move until I finally squeezed - and it worked!

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    1. That's a funny tip! I have to remember this for when I start learning double 3's lol. May we all have more aha moments!

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