Saturday 2 March 2013

Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye

No actually, don't. I am supposed to look at the audience. I just couldn't resist throwing that line in from Les Mis.

So anyway, this came about from Coach J reminding me to look up. This was a bit of surprise to me, as I've never had the bad habit of looking down at the ice. What I didn't realize was, I wasn't quite looking up either. I was probably gazing at a 15 degree angle down from eye level, when I should be looking at the audience. This gets particularly obvious when I'm about to enter some element that's difficult for me, then I also get this glazed over look on my face because I'm thinking.

Another thing I do when I'm thinking is that I drop all effort on keeping up a good posture. In the middle of my program, I land a jump, then turn around, take a few push-off steps then go into a shallow LFO spiral (shallow only because I can't really do edge spirals yet). This spiral is unfortunately one of my difficult elements (spirals used to be my good element, what happened?) So after the jump landing with nice checking arms, I promptly drop my arms and go into thinking mode. Coach now wants me to have default thinking mode with arms up. My brain can't handle so many things at once!

It's now the one week countdown to my recital! I've been doing full run-throughs and I think they're ok. At least I can get through it, though I'm not sure how well I actually look. I haven't had a chance to ask someone to video me doing the whole program, I really should do that this week. Sit spins aren't 100 % okay yet, but it's in the program now. I'd rather risk putting my foot down in a sit spin than to be doing a two-foot spin in my program. Oooooh only one week left!

6 comments:

  1. One week! I'm sure you'll do great - if you're doing run-throughs and they feel good, you're totally going to be fine. And the posture thing should improve with every performance. It'll only get better!

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    1. Lol it "feels good" only in the sense that I manage to run through the whole thing accomplishing everything without falling, ie. a clean program. I don't know if it actually looks good.

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  2. You'll do great! Remember, if you feel confident, then your body will follow suit. =)

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  3. Got to respond to a person who can quote Les Miserables!

    If you've ever had a nose bleed, pretend you have one when you're skating. You'd never hold your head down when your nose is bleeding, so hold your head up as though it was.

    You'll be fine. Have a great time, smile, and enjoy yourself.

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    1. Lol I'm quite a musical fan too, but far from you. I don't know most of the lines you quote.

      That's an excellent and amusing tip haha. I'll remember :)

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