Awesome coach

My coach is awesome! (my private coach, not the group coach, though she's awesome too)

So the story is that I'm working on my five-step mohawk for the bronze MITF, and I realize I'm doing the third step of the sequence for my left and right side differently! On one side I push onto the BO edge and keep the free leg forward, on the other side I extend the free leg to the back. I asked coach what that step is supposed to be and she said free leg is not specified, so either is fine. However, most people either do one or the other, and not a combination (ie. I'm odd). Coach said she wanted to guess on which side I do what. After thinking about it for a minute, she came up with the right answer! True, it is only a fifty-fifty decision, but she had actual reasoning behind the guess. She had based it off of the little things I always do and how one side of my body tends to do what.

I was quite impressed at hearing all this, I never realized that she pays so much attention to all the details of my skating, and remembers them all. I feel like she knows my skating much better than I do myself. I don't think I would have been able to come up with that answer.

I feel so lucky to have her as my coach. She knows what things should be stressed at what point in my skating skills progression. Some things that she didn't pick on before doesn't mean she's not doing her job and correcting me, it's just that at the level I was at before, there are far more important things to focus on. As I progress further, she'll start pointing out things that she now thinks I should be doing. Like right now, she keeps fussing about my check-out position, something that didn't matter as much back when my jumps were slow and small. She never used to say anything on my (lack of) toe point and extension and such, but now it's something she continuously brings up. I love how she totally knows what she's doing.

We have the same way of thinking about skating too, both very analytic and needing everything to be explained. My group coach has complained (for lack of a better word) many times about how I always want to over-think things when I should just let my body do it and feel it. But that's why she recommended my current coach when I asked her for recommendations, she knew we were alike lol.

I'm a lucky skater : )