I can't believe that I haven't written for over a month but then again I didn't have much to write about until last week. I have been trying to learn new things so that I can pass my bronze freestyle test. This includes several stunts that I still can't do such as back three turns, a backspin, a good toe loop and a good Salchow. While I had a breakthrough last month with the Salchow while in Lake Placid, until last week I just kept practicing and not progressing very much with any of my new maneuvers. I seem to just keep making the same mistakes over and over and not getting anywhere. This is really frustrating with the back threes since I know I could do them when I was a kid but my body has retained absolutely no memory of them. The backspin is another story. I never learned these as a kid so it is all new to me. I just keep reminding myself how long it took me to get a good front spin and figure that the backspin will take just as long if not longer since I never did them before. Therefore, I am a bit more patient with that one.
The only things that have marginally improved is my sit spin which is finally becoming somewhat consistent (meaning I can usually pull a decent one off during most practice session unless I'm having an unusually bad day) and I'm doing better at actually jumping during the Salchow. Not to be confused with a good jump; jumping for me is that I actually manage to get air time between the take off and landing rather then stepping through the jump. This frustrates my coach to no end. As soon as she tries to "fix" my jump by giving me instructions it rapidly deteriorates back to the no air time variety. I was petrified of jumping when I was a kid and that was when I weighed about 1/3 of what I do now and was much closer to the ice so the falls weren't as much of a disaster as they are now. Falls seem to be infinitely more painful now that I am an adult. Even though I have more padding this also means I have more mass and further to fall. Being an engineer I also understand that this means that there is much more force to dissipate through my body when I actually do hit the ice. I have enough aches and pains as it is without adding nasty falls to the list of injuries. My fear of falling has intensified now that I am an adult. It often makes me question my sanity of taking up figure skating as a sport. I guess we can't always choose what we fall in love with. This sheer utter terror of falling has been detrimental to my jump practice. I have gone slow. Really slow. For a long time I would only jump when I was on weekend ice so if I broke something my friends and my coach would be there to help me. Now at least I can jump Salchows and Waltz jumps where ever and when ever I want. They just aren't pretty but at least I am practicing them each time I get on the ice. I guess this should be considered a major accomplishment on my part.
So a month goes by, my backspins still grind to a halt after the entrance three turn, I double foot my back three turns and I still can't do a "good" Salchow. I haven't even gotten to the toe loop yet. So what changed? Why am I writing? I had a good lesson last week. I had two small triumphs. My coach had me do a long, LONG, three turn practice. First she fixed my forward threes since I tend to pitch forward on push off. That was a simple weight transfer problem. I had my weight even between both feet before launch but it turns out that my weight needs to be all on my push off foot and then quickly transferred to my skating foot. This keeps my upper body still. Woohoo. Forward three fixed. Now I just have to practice a lot so I get some body memory for them. Then we started on the back threes. This was much harder. My free leg was all over the place. I can't seem to lock my knees together to keep the free leg still during the turn. The big reveal happened when I accidentally saw my reflection in the glass of the hockey barrier and noticed that I stuck my hip out horribly coming out of the apex of the turn. I had no idea I was doing this. Once I paid attention to keeping my upper body position then the turn was infinitely easier. I still two footed it after the turn but it was much closer to happening than my klutzy prior attempts. As soon as we switched to the other side I managed a good one on the first try! Huzzah!!
A half hour had gone by already. We moved on to spins. I did two scratch spins with no problem. They weren't centered as much as I like but she was happy with them. I tried a couple of camels which didn't go as well. It was a bad camel day for me and these spins are not even close to being consistent yet. She had a minor correction for me but that didn't fix the spin I still fell off my inside edge since I wasn't balanced over my blade. I did a sit spin for her which was great. She said it looked good and she had no corrections other than working on getting lower on the supporting leg. This is a high compliment from her. Then she had me try something new. A camel sit combination. I had never ever done one of these before even as a kid. She had to teach me how to transition from the camel position with my leg sticking out behind me to the sit position with the leg in front while keeping my balance and keeping the rotations going. The key is going slowly. I went into a marginal camel spin which I knew I couldn't hold for long so after two revolutions I started the transition to the sit. It went flawlessly! I was so excited that I only managed two revolutions in the sit before I bounced up, stuck my toe pick in the ice to stop the spin and wave my arms wildly in the air. She was amused. I skated over to the boards all excited and she just looked at me and said that I need three revolutions in each position. "I know but I DID IT!!!" The Zamboni chased us off the ice. I was so excited that all day at random I would turn to my husband and say "I did a camel sit today!" Now I just need to get some more practice in so I can perfect things.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Excitment and Frustration
While I was in Lake Placid for Skate America, I also got in some ice time of my own. I managed to squeeze in a little over three hours of practice but the real bonus was the half hour lesson. I love the coach I see up there. We are so on the same wavelength. We actually trained together as kids growing up on Cape Cod. We even had the same coach at one point but she went on to skate at the national level while I ended up quitting the sport. Anyway, within a half hour she had me jumping the Salchow and Toe Loop; she fixed my change edge spiral and we worked on the change edge patch figure.
Skating up there was magical as always. It is so exciting to be on Olympic ice. To be skating in the same rinks as Sonja Henie, Scott Hamilton and Evan Lysacek. Way cool. The first day on the ice was so so. I was out of practice and my muscles couldn't do anything but Brian Orser greeted my mom and I as we got on the ice, "Good Morning Ladies!" Cool! He is a cutie! The second day was my lesson and I had plenty of sleep the night before so I was raring to go. The lesson went great. I was skating well and fast and coordinated. I showed my mom the start to my program which she liked. I almost crashed into an elite dance team after they did a violent lane change and headed straight for me (they split apart at the last minute and went around me but it was a close one). I skated for over an hour and a half and loved every minute of it. The third day I only lasted a half hour. I was pooped from the day before but I wanted to go over the stuff from my lesson so it would stick in my head and muscles. Tired but happy I left the ice to the younger more elite competitors.
Now the reason I bring this up weeks later is that today I had my first private lesson since I got back from LP. I have been practicing my Salchow every time I get on the ice. I have been practicing it in my head before I go to sleep at night. The main thing Robin taught me was the timing of the Salchow: outside edge, inside edge, hook, jump. A nice steady 1, 2, 3, 4 pace. So before I fall asleep at night I am reciting "outside, inside, hook, jump". After two weeks of physical and mental practice I got to do them for my coach today. Once I got over my abject fear of jumping by doing a few along the boards I landed several out on the ice surface. She slowed me down a bit more but didn't have any other corrections. She was quite happy with it which shocked the hell out of me. She always has corrections. I am amazed. We moved on to the Toe Loop jump which didn't go as well but I haven't been practicing that as diligently. She corrected several items but then was fairly happy with it. I did a Camel spin for her which have been driving me batty but I hit this one fine and spun for several rotations before doing a nice scratch spin out of it. She told me again that she had nothing to correct. Another shock. This spin isn't consistent for me yet. I miss it more often than hitting it but I seem to be able to pull off at least a couple each time I'm on the ice if I am skating okay. She had more corrections for the sit spin which I had been doing really well yesterday. I did pull off a couple that she was happy with.
I wasn't so lucky with the back spin. This one is going to take some time. If I use the inside three turn as the entrance I just seem to grind to a halt rather than spin. I have better luck doing a change foot attitude spin and can eek out several backward rotations before putting my foot down. I actually managed the requisite three full rotations on one occasion which I have not been able to repeat since. When I start getting annoyed with myself I just remind myself how long it took me and how much diligent practice it took me to get a good forward spin. It will take as much time to do the back one. I have to get used to balancing on the ball of my foot just letting the toe rake scrape the ice while maintaining a back outside edge; all while the arms, torso and free leg work in perfect coordination and timing. This is going to take some serious ice time. It is a combination of learning the balancing, acquiring the fine muscle control in the foot and also getting the timing right of everything else which is just a long process. She told me that when I master it I will probably enjoy spinning backwards more than forwards. Apparently this a preference of most athletes. One extra obstacle I am trying to overcome is that I never ever learned this as a kid so it is totally new to me unlike the forward spin which I was actually quite proficient at and even had a nice layback when I was a kid. Patience. This is going to take a while.
The same with my three turns. I swing them. It is supposed to be a slight twitch of the shoulders and I use my whole body for the turns. The back threes are frustrating me to no end. I managed to do some in LP during summer camp but I haven't been able to do them for months no matter how much I practice them. I know I have been doing something horribly wrong but without a coach watching me and fixing me they have deteriorated rather than improved. We spent a lot of time on back threes today. She got so frustrated with me. "It is a simple movement," she kept telling me. Just the shoulder twitch. "Nothing else moves. Hold everything else still." Then I try it again, I swing something and end up pitching forward at the waist and putting my foot down after the turn. I just don't do them well. I am trying to overcome 30+ years of bad habits here. If I don't practice even the forward threes they quickly deteriorate into swinging uncontrolled messy turns. I have to make these a regular part of my practice to make them improve rather than deteriorate.
As my friend was saying today "skating is hard". I totally agree with her but that is why it is so exciting when you can finally do something well. When something is mastered it gives you real pleasure to perform it. I try to make my practices a mixture of things I can do well, things in process and things I can't do yet at all. This balances out the frustration with some excitement and flat out fun.
Skating up there was magical as always. It is so exciting to be on Olympic ice. To be skating in the same rinks as Sonja Henie, Scott Hamilton and Evan Lysacek. Way cool. The first day on the ice was so so. I was out of practice and my muscles couldn't do anything but Brian Orser greeted my mom and I as we got on the ice, "Good Morning Ladies!" Cool! He is a cutie! The second day was my lesson and I had plenty of sleep the night before so I was raring to go. The lesson went great. I was skating well and fast and coordinated. I showed my mom the start to my program which she liked. I almost crashed into an elite dance team after they did a violent lane change and headed straight for me (they split apart at the last minute and went around me but it was a close one). I skated for over an hour and a half and loved every minute of it. The third day I only lasted a half hour. I was pooped from the day before but I wanted to go over the stuff from my lesson so it would stick in my head and muscles. Tired but happy I left the ice to the younger more elite competitors.
Now the reason I bring this up weeks later is that today I had my first private lesson since I got back from LP. I have been practicing my Salchow every time I get on the ice. I have been practicing it in my head before I go to sleep at night. The main thing Robin taught me was the timing of the Salchow: outside edge, inside edge, hook, jump. A nice steady 1, 2, 3, 4 pace. So before I fall asleep at night I am reciting "outside, inside, hook, jump". After two weeks of physical and mental practice I got to do them for my coach today. Once I got over my abject fear of jumping by doing a few along the boards I landed several out on the ice surface. She slowed me down a bit more but didn't have any other corrections. She was quite happy with it which shocked the hell out of me. She always has corrections. I am amazed. We moved on to the Toe Loop jump which didn't go as well but I haven't been practicing that as diligently. She corrected several items but then was fairly happy with it. I did a Camel spin for her which have been driving me batty but I hit this one fine and spun for several rotations before doing a nice scratch spin out of it. She told me again that she had nothing to correct. Another shock. This spin isn't consistent for me yet. I miss it more often than hitting it but I seem to be able to pull off at least a couple each time I'm on the ice if I am skating okay. She had more corrections for the sit spin which I had been doing really well yesterday. I did pull off a couple that she was happy with.
I wasn't so lucky with the back spin. This one is going to take some time. If I use the inside three turn as the entrance I just seem to grind to a halt rather than spin. I have better luck doing a change foot attitude spin and can eek out several backward rotations before putting my foot down. I actually managed the requisite three full rotations on one occasion which I have not been able to repeat since. When I start getting annoyed with myself I just remind myself how long it took me and how much diligent practice it took me to get a good forward spin. It will take as much time to do the back one. I have to get used to balancing on the ball of my foot just letting the toe rake scrape the ice while maintaining a back outside edge; all while the arms, torso and free leg work in perfect coordination and timing. This is going to take some serious ice time. It is a combination of learning the balancing, acquiring the fine muscle control in the foot and also getting the timing right of everything else which is just a long process. She told me that when I master it I will probably enjoy spinning backwards more than forwards. Apparently this a preference of most athletes. One extra obstacle I am trying to overcome is that I never ever learned this as a kid so it is totally new to me unlike the forward spin which I was actually quite proficient at and even had a nice layback when I was a kid. Patience. This is going to take a while.
The same with my three turns. I swing them. It is supposed to be a slight twitch of the shoulders and I use my whole body for the turns. The back threes are frustrating me to no end. I managed to do some in LP during summer camp but I haven't been able to do them for months no matter how much I practice them. I know I have been doing something horribly wrong but without a coach watching me and fixing me they have deteriorated rather than improved. We spent a lot of time on back threes today. She got so frustrated with me. "It is a simple movement," she kept telling me. Just the shoulder twitch. "Nothing else moves. Hold everything else still." Then I try it again, I swing something and end up pitching forward at the waist and putting my foot down after the turn. I just don't do them well. I am trying to overcome 30+ years of bad habits here. If I don't practice even the forward threes they quickly deteriorate into swinging uncontrolled messy turns. I have to make these a regular part of my practice to make them improve rather than deteriorate.
As my friend was saying today "skating is hard". I totally agree with her but that is why it is so exciting when you can finally do something well. When something is mastered it gives you real pleasure to perform it. I try to make my practices a mixture of things I can do well, things in process and things I can't do yet at all. This balances out the frustration with some excitement and flat out fun.
Friday, November 27, 2009
The Skating Gods
Anyone that skates understands that the figure skating gods are a fickle bunch at best. One day you can do a perfect camel the next day you can barely center a scratch spin and this happens for no apparent reason. You just have bad skating days. Somehow you inadvertently offended one of the skating gods. Of course where I skate the lesser gods inhabit our rink. They sometimes bestow a perfectly centered spin on you or an amazing wipe out while doing a simple three turn but mostly they ignore us. The Olympic skating gods however are much worse. Two international level top skaters will do the same jump, one lands it perfectly and the second cleans the ice with their butt. They can both do the jump or they wouldn't be in the competition in the first place. It is just that one is in favor with the gods that day and the other is not.
I was at Lake Placid for the Skate America competition. This is the first high level competition that I have gone to. I was very excited and got to see the Olympic skating gods in action. Brandon Mroz was one of their toys over the weekend. He landed everything in practice. He did okay during his short program but his long program was a complete and utter disaster. I don't think he landed a single jump in his program. I felt so bad for him. The gods had it out for him for sure. It isn't like he can't skate. During his practice he did a wonderful job. The Olympic gods just decided to mess with him that day. Rachael Flatt and Evan Lysacek however were in their favor this weekend. They both skated wonderfully. Rachel skated a perfect long program and Evan a perfect short program and a near perfect long program. Rachael even beat out Yu-Na Kim in the long. But the gods had favored Yu-Na the day before with a perfect short program so she got the gold medal.
But the gods decided to chase one of the Russian competitors down and take him out. Again the kid skated well in practice but dumped his jumps during the competition. If he didn't finish last he was dam close to the bottom. Once he was done he went out drinking. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then went out and found a car with the keys still in it (this is Lake Placid after all and people still leave their keys in their cars) and went for a drive. After the police caught up with him, he landed in jail for car theft and drunk driving. The Russian team left without him while he sat in jail waiting for a court hearing. He may get the charges dropped but the gods were not done with him yet. The Russian Skating Federation has banned him from competition for one year so he is going to miss the Olympics. The Olympic skating gods can be a mean lot when you piss them off.
I have felt their touch when I skate in LP. I seem to skate better and faster when I am up there. I am more daring but also fall more often. Their touch is feather light but always present. I truly hope I never anger them but I still have no idea how to appease them.
I was at Lake Placid for the Skate America competition. This is the first high level competition that I have gone to. I was very excited and got to see the Olympic skating gods in action. Brandon Mroz was one of their toys over the weekend. He landed everything in practice. He did okay during his short program but his long program was a complete and utter disaster. I don't think he landed a single jump in his program. I felt so bad for him. The gods had it out for him for sure. It isn't like he can't skate. During his practice he did a wonderful job. The Olympic gods just decided to mess with him that day. Rachael Flatt and Evan Lysacek however were in their favor this weekend. They both skated wonderfully. Rachel skated a perfect long program and Evan a perfect short program and a near perfect long program. Rachael even beat out Yu-Na Kim in the long. But the gods had favored Yu-Na the day before with a perfect short program so she got the gold medal.
But the gods decided to chase one of the Russian competitors down and take him out. Again the kid skated well in practice but dumped his jumps during the competition. If he didn't finish last he was dam close to the bottom. Once he was done he went out drinking. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then went out and found a car with the keys still in it (this is Lake Placid after all and people still leave their keys in their cars) and went for a drive. After the police caught up with him, he landed in jail for car theft and drunk driving. The Russian team left without him while he sat in jail waiting for a court hearing. He may get the charges dropped but the gods were not done with him yet. The Russian Skating Federation has banned him from competition for one year so he is going to miss the Olympics. The Olympic skating gods can be a mean lot when you piss them off.
I have felt their touch when I skate in LP. I seem to skate better and faster when I am up there. I am more daring but also fall more often. Their touch is feather light but always present. I truly hope I never anger them but I still have no idea how to appease them.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
What is up with Wednesdays?
I performed boot surgery last Saturday afternoon. Sunday I went skating to try them out. Normally I don't skate two days in a row never mind three. My muscles typically don't have the stamina and my performance degrades each day that I'm on the ice. However, with the new arch supports in the boots and the tongues fitting much better I skated wonderfully. My figure eights were better, my three turns were easier and I managed my first perfect camel spin as an adult. I must admit it surprised me. I didn't think I did anything different but here I was spinning fast and easily, arms and free leg parallel to the ice. I wasn't slowing down either. I lost count of my revolutions after four. I was totally blown away by how easy the spin felt. I finally came out of it and ended the spin with a perfect scratch spin. I looked down and all the loops of the tracing were contained in a space of a dinner plate. You couldn't tell how many revolutions since it was centered so well. Wow! That is what it feels like! Amazing! Please let me be able to do that again some time soon!
As is my wont, I did my lower body weight lifting workout on Monday instead of skating. It kills me to loose a day of ice training but I know the weight lifting is doing me good. My legs are stronger, my knees are doing better and tolerating the abuse of ice skating much better than they used to, and my core is getting stronger so I can hold myself erect more easily. As an added bonus I seem to be dropping inches off my waist if not pounds off my scale weight. In general, lifting weights has improved my skating. However, it seems to have wrecked havoc on my Wednesday skate. After being able to skate wonderfully this past Sunday I get on the ice on Wednesday and can't even center a simple scratch spin. I have to go back to basic figures to get my edge control back. Then I slowly work up the difficulty scale and work on spinning from a standstill, simple spirals and spread eagles before moving on to spinning from speed. I am a wreck. I can't center anything even from a standstill. If I manage something resembling a centered spin and I try it from speed it has a three foot long trail instead of neatly turning on top of itself. OMG, why is it so hard to skate on Wednesdays? This isn't an isolated incident. It happens every week. The only thing I can attribute it to is the weight lifting.
Now I know that, in weight lifting, in order for the muscle to get the idea that it needs to grow, and hence get stronger, you need to damage the poor unsuspecting sod. So you go into the weight room and literally rip up your muscles until they can't lift any more. Then you take a day or two off, eat lots of food that is good for you, get lots of rest and voila new muscle mass is born. Turns out that I must need to teach the new muscles how to skate on Wednesdays. The old muscles haven't shown them a thing. They must be tired from being beaten up on Monday and don't feel like talking with the new kids on the block (leg, arm, torso..). By the weekend everyone seems to be getting along again and skating progress can be made.
But now, instead of loosing one day of training due to weight lifting I really am loosing two days since Wednesday is remedial day. I can't quit weight lifting. It really is doing me a lot of good. I am particularly impressed with how well my knees are doing with the new routine. I just have to accept the fact that the weight training is slowing down my skate training. Since I am older I need to make sure I am doing as much as I can to make myself strong and resilient instead of beating the crap out of myself as if I was 16. I have watched parents at the rink beg their kids to either get off the ice or not jump since the kid is injured and under doctor's orders not to skate hard. What does the kid do? Land an Axel, do double toe loops. The kid's competition is coming up and they don't want to loose training time. It is more important to me to be able to climb stairs pain free than land an Axel but that is 47 year old me talking. When I was 13 I thought casts were cool rather the pain in the butt and months of rehab my older body knows. I guess Wednesdays are going to have to be figure skating 101 days for a while.
As is my wont, I did my lower body weight lifting workout on Monday instead of skating. It kills me to loose a day of ice training but I know the weight lifting is doing me good. My legs are stronger, my knees are doing better and tolerating the abuse of ice skating much better than they used to, and my core is getting stronger so I can hold myself erect more easily. As an added bonus I seem to be dropping inches off my waist if not pounds off my scale weight. In general, lifting weights has improved my skating. However, it seems to have wrecked havoc on my Wednesday skate. After being able to skate wonderfully this past Sunday I get on the ice on Wednesday and can't even center a simple scratch spin. I have to go back to basic figures to get my edge control back. Then I slowly work up the difficulty scale and work on spinning from a standstill, simple spirals and spread eagles before moving on to spinning from speed. I am a wreck. I can't center anything even from a standstill. If I manage something resembling a centered spin and I try it from speed it has a three foot long trail instead of neatly turning on top of itself. OMG, why is it so hard to skate on Wednesdays? This isn't an isolated incident. It happens every week. The only thing I can attribute it to is the weight lifting.
Now I know that, in weight lifting, in order for the muscle to get the idea that it needs to grow, and hence get stronger, you need to damage the poor unsuspecting sod. So you go into the weight room and literally rip up your muscles until they can't lift any more. Then you take a day or two off, eat lots of food that is good for you, get lots of rest and voila new muscle mass is born. Turns out that I must need to teach the new muscles how to skate on Wednesdays. The old muscles haven't shown them a thing. They must be tired from being beaten up on Monday and don't feel like talking with the new kids on the block (leg, arm, torso..). By the weekend everyone seems to be getting along again and skating progress can be made.
But now, instead of loosing one day of training due to weight lifting I really am loosing two days since Wednesday is remedial day. I can't quit weight lifting. It really is doing me a lot of good. I am particularly impressed with how well my knees are doing with the new routine. I just have to accept the fact that the weight training is slowing down my skate training. Since I am older I need to make sure I am doing as much as I can to make myself strong and resilient instead of beating the crap out of myself as if I was 16. I have watched parents at the rink beg their kids to either get off the ice or not jump since the kid is injured and under doctor's orders not to skate hard. What does the kid do? Land an Axel, do double toe loops. The kid's competition is coming up and they don't want to loose training time. It is more important to me to be able to climb stairs pain free than land an Axel but that is 47 year old me talking. When I was 13 I thought casts were cool rather the pain in the butt and months of rehab my older body knows. I guess Wednesdays are going to have to be figure skating 101 days for a while.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Boot Surgery
A few months ago I ordered custom Jackson boots hoping that this would be the end to my boot fitting nightmares. My Reidels seem to be made for a kids foot. Even though they were wide in the front and tight in the heel they still had to put me in a longer boot to the right fit for my foot. The nose of the "correct" size boot dived too soon and hit the top of my toe even though the end of my toe was clear of the boot. The tongue also regularly slipped over and unlaced my boots for me which was particularly hazardous since it was my landing leg. I went down at least one time after skating over my laces and was constantly having to relace my boots after doing MIF. So I splurged and ordered my very first pair of custom ice skates. I was so looking forward to something that fit perfectly. Instead when I got my boots they seemed too big. The tongue wouldn't tuck in very well and got caught on the padding on the inside of the boot. The guy that fit me kept telling me that they were fine so I figured I would give them a chance and see if things changed as I broke them in. After two months you could see the edges of the tongue curling up where they were running into the boot padding. My heel regularly slips in these boots and the front of my foot can wiggle around a lot. Now mind you these boots are very stiff and you just can't pull them tight with the laces at least not until recently. Of course I blame all of these problems squarely on the guy who took my foot measurements and ordered the boots. The only thing about Jackson boots themselves that I don't like is the fact that there is no arch support in them what so ever. Horrible. I was used to my Reidels that had intimate contact with the arch of my foot. Before I laid out another $600+ on yet another pair of custom boots I decided to go to my chiropractor and get fitted for some custom orthotic inserts. He had me step on a scanner that took a very nice color coded picture of the bottom of each foot. He called the company and told them the inserts were for ice skates and they immediately recommended one of their styles. This sounded very encouraging. They knew what figure skaters were after. I needed to be able to feel the ice under my feet and be able to control the boot with the small muscles of my foot. They recommended one of their thin sole models that was skinnier than a their regular insert and had much less padding than the one my doctor recommended. All sounds good. $200 later I got to put them in my boots today. While I was fitting the inserts I decided to do a little surgery to the tongues. I took my kitchen scissors (heavy duty) and tapered the padding on the tongue so their would be a gentle transition between the tongue and boot. I also cut off the sections that were obviously catching on the boot padding. I also made a slit that pointed toward the ankle which would aid the tongue in flexing so I could cinch the laces tighter in the ankle area. I matched the toe pattern on my old inserts to the toe ridge in the new ones and trimmed the new ones to the outline of the old. I bent the new ones up a bit and in they went. I then stuffed my bare feet into my boots so I could feel the boots really well and laced them up, cinching them tightly. When I stood up I couldn't believe the difference! My custom boots now fit like a glove. I have very little heel movement and I can feel the sides of the skate with my feet. I also have a nice hard arch support under my foot. I can hardly wait to try them out tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if I will need my blades moving again. The arch supports will probably make me stand differently in the boots. I'll report back and let you know what happens, but right now I think the surgery was a great success.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Weights and Measures
About a month ago I started weight lifting with a personal trainer. Turns out that my quadriceps are very weak and my hamstrings are very strong resulting in a weird muscle imbalance. It wouldn't surprise me if this is a big part of my knee cap problem (I have to tape my knees before skating to keep the caps tracking in the right place). Everything else seems fairly well matched. Since I am no longer 20 something I have divided the lifting work out between two days. I do the lower body and torso on Monday so that I have two days to recover before I skate and then I do the upper body and torso on Thursday in between skating days. When I was younger the regimen of lifting every other day to tax every muscle group with one day in between to recover worked wonders. When I went back to weight lifting prior to the car accidents I was in my early to mid forties and I had to have at least two days in between preferably three to recover or my muscles would just get weaker and weaker. I have never seen this discussed in any weight lifting literature. Apparently my muscles take much longer to recover now that I am older. According to weight lifting lore I shouldn't be gaining much muscle mass only lifting what equates to one day a week. However, I am finding that I am steadily increasing my weights each week. I am decidedly stronger than when I started out a month ago and even my heart is beating slower (I wear a heart monitor for giggles) and my cardio workout has to be harder for me to get the same level of workout. So much for what is written in stone. Listen to my body. This is working.
An added benefit that I wasn't expecting was weight loss. I am quite chubby. Always have been. Probably always will be. I never was a dieter and instead try to eat well balanced organic whole foods in smallish portions. I find I feel better if I break my meals up into small snacks instead of sitting down and sating myself into a stupor. I try to eat at least two fruits and three or more vegetables a day. Since I have a wheat allergy the normal junk foods are pretty much off the table (pun intended). Yet I remain chubby. My husband was musing on this the other day. Wondering why I weigh so much when I eat so well. He was giggling when he asked if I consumed boxes of donuts at work when he wasn't looking (the answer is no since I would be horribly ill). It is just the weird metabolism that God gave me and I am stuck with. What I had forgotten is how well my body responds to weight lifting. The other night when we were walking around a mall killing time while waiting for a table at a restaurant, my underwear started working its way down. Thankfully I was wearing pants so it didn't have far to go before getting stuck. Then it struck me that I was hitching my pants up constantly as well. I had lost weight!! Since I generally don't go near scales as a rule I had no idea what the weight lifting was doing. Plus muscle weighs more than fat so even if my scale weight has gone up I might have lost fat since I know for a fact my muscles are getting bigger. The next day I had the joy of going pant shopping and got to pick up both trousers and underwear in the next size down. Monday when I got to the gym I stepped on the scale and saw a weight I hadn't seen since prior to the car accidents. I must have dropped at least four pounds and probably more since starting the new regimen. How exciting! For me regular exercise just doesn't cut it for weight loss. When I started skating I dropped ten pounds and then got stuck. I always lose a few pounds at skate camp but I am on the ice three hours a day which I can't possibly do while holding down a full time job. Weight lifting is the only thing that does the trick for me. It changes my metabolism and burns more calories even when I am sitting around. Now I am skinnier and my sit spins are getting pretty good as well.
An added benefit that I wasn't expecting was weight loss. I am quite chubby. Always have been. Probably always will be. I never was a dieter and instead try to eat well balanced organic whole foods in smallish portions. I find I feel better if I break my meals up into small snacks instead of sitting down and sating myself into a stupor. I try to eat at least two fruits and three or more vegetables a day. Since I have a wheat allergy the normal junk foods are pretty much off the table (pun intended). Yet I remain chubby. My husband was musing on this the other day. Wondering why I weigh so much when I eat so well. He was giggling when he asked if I consumed boxes of donuts at work when he wasn't looking (the answer is no since I would be horribly ill). It is just the weird metabolism that God gave me and I am stuck with. What I had forgotten is how well my body responds to weight lifting. The other night when we were walking around a mall killing time while waiting for a table at a restaurant, my underwear started working its way down. Thankfully I was wearing pants so it didn't have far to go before getting stuck. Then it struck me that I was hitching my pants up constantly as well. I had lost weight!! Since I generally don't go near scales as a rule I had no idea what the weight lifting was doing. Plus muscle weighs more than fat so even if my scale weight has gone up I might have lost fat since I know for a fact my muscles are getting bigger. The next day I had the joy of going pant shopping and got to pick up both trousers and underwear in the next size down. Monday when I got to the gym I stepped on the scale and saw a weight I hadn't seen since prior to the car accidents. I must have dropped at least four pounds and probably more since starting the new regimen. How exciting! For me regular exercise just doesn't cut it for weight loss. When I started skating I dropped ten pounds and then got stuck. I always lose a few pounds at skate camp but I am on the ice three hours a day which I can't possibly do while holding down a full time job. Weight lifting is the only thing that does the trick for me. It changes my metabolism and burns more calories even when I am sitting around. Now I am skinnier and my sit spins are getting pretty good as well.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Axel Dreams
Sometimes I feel like figure skating just courses through my veins. I am consumed by it. For days it will be the only thing I think about. My body is tense and ready to launch into a spin or jump even though I am running around on dry land. I am possessed. When I am like this for several days I dream about figure skating. Last month I dreamed that I landed a perfect axel. I am not even attempting them yet. I am hoping that it is a premonition of things to come; that I will, some day, land an axel.
Last night my skating dreams were neither as elegant or even relevant to the real world. I skated yesterday for about an hour practicing spins and the beginnings of my program. Last night I couldn't sleep because I was so excited about my lessons today. No wonder I dreamed about skating. But I didn't dream about my program or doing figure eights like other nights, instead I was in a strange rink where they had laid down fake ice mats on top of the real ice. I tried to skate on the stuff but my fancy blades got stuck in it like I was skating on couch cushions. The mats would move rather than my blades. Suddenly I was up in the stands naked (don't you love those naked dreams?) and they started taking the mats up revealing the lovely ice underneath. By the time I got dressed and got my boots on the Zamboni came on to resurface the ice and I didn't get to skate at all. I was very disappointed. (I am hoping that this dream is NOT a premonition of things to come.) Then as suddenly as all dreams go I was in Lake Placid with my family eating beef wellington in a cafe after being in the 1980 rink at the Olympic center, which is completely odd since I neither eat cows nor wheat although I did like beef wellington when I was a kid. In my dream it was quite tasty and I finished it all up without any of the normal digestive consequences which is what makes dreams so wonderful.
Today I am very glad my skating did not go like it did in my dream. I did a double session today. Two hours solid of skating. I am beginning to find that one hour is just too short a time to practice everything that I would like to do. The two hours allowed for some serious figure time. I did FO, FI regular and serpentine 8s, then some FO 3 turn eights. I didn't get to back 8s since I got distracted with loops. I have rather large drunken loops. They lay on their side. From the tracing it looks like I am going into them too late and exiting too early giving both lobes an odd tilt. This is when my coach came over for my turn in the "group" lesson. Turns out I was skating the entire figure too large. When I shortened it up to closer to the correct size they became easier to do. She also told me that the figure is actually traced with the free leg rather than the skating leg and the turn is initiated by pushing into the ice rather than bending the knee (I still don't really get that bit). I kept doing loops and they magically straightened up. She told me that I have a much better sense of them than the kids trying to learn them for MIF. I am actually doing the edge work rather than just swinging my leg around forcing the turn. since she doesn't give out complements lightly this made me very happy.
The second hour was my private lesson which was mostly consumed with breaking down the Salchow jump and the back spin. First just doing the entrance three turn over and over again until I got all the body bits in the right place. Then she would add the next body movement which I would repeat over and over and then the next. This was all done in slow motion until my skating leg ached. I never actually completed the spin and I only jumped one correct but minuscule Salchow but I feel like I have made a lot of progress. I have a lot to practice and I am over the idea of it has to be perfect and fast the first time. Now I have given myself permission to do things in pieces, go as slow as I want and two foot any part of it. She said I am very close to having the spin in the backspin and I will eventually be able to jump. I trust her absolutely so I know these will come eventually.
Just when I thought my right glute was going to cramp into a pretzel we started on my program. I showed her the stunt I learned from watching old John Curry videos, a spiral into an attitude, which is much harder than it looks since you have to have tons of control to execute the slow lift from the spiral to the attitude. She loved it and immediately put it at the beginning of the program. Now I am doing the spiral from a dead stop into the attitude. This helps tremendously since I just do some forward stroking and crossovers to get myself some speed for the spread eagles. This is much smoother and easier for me than last week's pivot into back crossovers and then the spread eagle. I could never hit the forward edge quite right to smoothly get into the spread eagle. Now it was easy. Next comes the three turns down center ice with the ina bauer and sit spin at the other end of the rink. Man, I hit that sit spin dead on. It was such a good one I stayed with it and made myself totally dizzy. It was awesome! She then added on two edges, one three turn into a waltz jump. When I caught my breath I did the whole thing again from the top. I was tired this time so it was much more sloppy and I had to stop dead after the sit spin since I missed the entrance and was off balance but I made it through without forgetting any of the steps. Boy does it need work. She then had me try back cross steps which are from the silver MIF which I haven't even started practicing for yet. Since I could do them reasonably well she added a pivot and the steps which will eventually lead into the salchow. I had skated the entire hour. It was over. I was pooped, sore, out of breath, and very very happy. Next week she is going to teach me how to do a change edge spiral. I have good spirals both forwards and backwards now I need to get fancy with them.
Until next week I hope I have more axel dreams.
Last night my skating dreams were neither as elegant or even relevant to the real world. I skated yesterday for about an hour practicing spins and the beginnings of my program. Last night I couldn't sleep because I was so excited about my lessons today. No wonder I dreamed about skating. But I didn't dream about my program or doing figure eights like other nights, instead I was in a strange rink where they had laid down fake ice mats on top of the real ice. I tried to skate on the stuff but my fancy blades got stuck in it like I was skating on couch cushions. The mats would move rather than my blades. Suddenly I was up in the stands naked (don't you love those naked dreams?) and they started taking the mats up revealing the lovely ice underneath. By the time I got dressed and got my boots on the Zamboni came on to resurface the ice and I didn't get to skate at all. I was very disappointed. (I am hoping that this dream is NOT a premonition of things to come.) Then as suddenly as all dreams go I was in Lake Placid with my family eating beef wellington in a cafe after being in the 1980 rink at the Olympic center, which is completely odd since I neither eat cows nor wheat although I did like beef wellington when I was a kid. In my dream it was quite tasty and I finished it all up without any of the normal digestive consequences which is what makes dreams so wonderful.
Today I am very glad my skating did not go like it did in my dream. I did a double session today. Two hours solid of skating. I am beginning to find that one hour is just too short a time to practice everything that I would like to do. The two hours allowed for some serious figure time. I did FO, FI regular and serpentine 8s, then some FO 3 turn eights. I didn't get to back 8s since I got distracted with loops. I have rather large drunken loops. They lay on their side. From the tracing it looks like I am going into them too late and exiting too early giving both lobes an odd tilt. This is when my coach came over for my turn in the "group" lesson. Turns out I was skating the entire figure too large. When I shortened it up to closer to the correct size they became easier to do. She also told me that the figure is actually traced with the free leg rather than the skating leg and the turn is initiated by pushing into the ice rather than bending the knee (I still don't really get that bit). I kept doing loops and they magically straightened up. She told me that I have a much better sense of them than the kids trying to learn them for MIF. I am actually doing the edge work rather than just swinging my leg around forcing the turn. since she doesn't give out complements lightly this made me very happy.
The second hour was my private lesson which was mostly consumed with breaking down the Salchow jump and the back spin. First just doing the entrance three turn over and over again until I got all the body bits in the right place. Then she would add the next body movement which I would repeat over and over and then the next. This was all done in slow motion until my skating leg ached. I never actually completed the spin and I only jumped one correct but minuscule Salchow but I feel like I have made a lot of progress. I have a lot to practice and I am over the idea of it has to be perfect and fast the first time. Now I have given myself permission to do things in pieces, go as slow as I want and two foot any part of it. She said I am very close to having the spin in the backspin and I will eventually be able to jump. I trust her absolutely so I know these will come eventually.
Just when I thought my right glute was going to cramp into a pretzel we started on my program. I showed her the stunt I learned from watching old John Curry videos, a spiral into an attitude, which is much harder than it looks since you have to have tons of control to execute the slow lift from the spiral to the attitude. She loved it and immediately put it at the beginning of the program. Now I am doing the spiral from a dead stop into the attitude. This helps tremendously since I just do some forward stroking and crossovers to get myself some speed for the spread eagles. This is much smoother and easier for me than last week's pivot into back crossovers and then the spread eagle. I could never hit the forward edge quite right to smoothly get into the spread eagle. Now it was easy. Next comes the three turns down center ice with the ina bauer and sit spin at the other end of the rink. Man, I hit that sit spin dead on. It was such a good one I stayed with it and made myself totally dizzy. It was awesome! She then added on two edges, one three turn into a waltz jump. When I caught my breath I did the whole thing again from the top. I was tired this time so it was much more sloppy and I had to stop dead after the sit spin since I missed the entrance and was off balance but I made it through without forgetting any of the steps. Boy does it need work. She then had me try back cross steps which are from the silver MIF which I haven't even started practicing for yet. Since I could do them reasonably well she added a pivot and the steps which will eventually lead into the salchow. I had skated the entire hour. It was over. I was pooped, sore, out of breath, and very very happy. Next week she is going to teach me how to do a change edge spiral. I have good spirals both forwards and backwards now I need to get fancy with them.
Until next week I hope I have more axel dreams.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)