Adult Advance, Week 1

So I finally got to take a group lesson!!! There are 4 people in the class, but only three showed up. We are all pretty much at the same level, so I was really relieved. I was afraid I'd be the worst by far!

We first did a review of adult 4, mostly 3 turns. We worked on FO 3-turns on a circle. Irealized I was REALLY overrotating my 3-turns for pretty much the last 3 months ( doing 3turns on deep curving edges). Boy I felt dumb. But I am able to do them on the line and now RFO3s are easier than ever. It all takes practice. We learned how to "check" the 3-turn, and I just look like I'm doing stiff cheerleading moves. It needs to flow a lot better.

Then we worked on crossovers, emphasizing on the underpush. First done on the wall without gliding, and then on the circle. FXOs are feeling much more secure now. The key is to bend the knee (how often do we all hear that??!) and keep the feet closer together when crossing them. Voila! Nice smooth crossovers that don't look so steppy.

Finally 2 minutes on spins. Hooray! I nailed my first spin from a pivot and it was CENTERED! I wish I could have gotten advice on my spin from BXO's, but that will have to wait for another lesson.

The instructor is awesome. She has taught other adult "bridge" programs and really knows how to explain things step by step rather than just show something to us and have us mimic it. And she we was quite impressed on our level of skating, based on how long we've been skating (all less than a year).

We will be working on content from the Basic 6-8 classes that were not covered in any of the Adult classes. this means.....the dreadful bunny hop, the Mazurka (???), Waltz jump, and then getting into Freestyle 1 stuff. I'm very excited about it. I just want to move through it quickly I need to be challenged.

I stayed to practice at the public session, but actually got bored after 45 minutes. I can only do FO3s and FXOs for so long. *sigh* I did some very nice one foot spins on the clean ice, and spins got crappier as the ice turned to snow. I get to practice tomorrow and find out how much I retained from my lesson.