Ice is HARD...

No I really mean it - ICE IS HARD. I got to the rink this morning (WOO HOO OBAMA!) and resolved to put my crappy practice session on Monday behind me and focus. After about 10 minutes of laps around the rink (in what felt like good form), I settled in to the far side where there is a hockey goal line on the ice to practice edge control. For over half an hour, I did a half circle one way on my right, then across the line and the other way on my right - over and over and over and.. well, you get it. Actually I felt like after 30 minutes it was finally starting to sink in. There are some body placement differences between dance and skating that I'm really struggling to over come. For instance, in dance you always have your pelvis square to the floor - you never raise a hip because you've raised a leg... but in skating you HAVE to do that or you are off balance and won't go where you want to.... stuff like that.

Of course, about 6:30am, my coach and his dance partner showed up, and he immediately started harping on my strokng not being with a deep enough knee bend. Damn. He said to just keep the knees bent all the time for now to get used to the prosition, and don't try to do the graceful "swooping" motion that I worked so hard on this morning.

Think for a moment - if you have been practicing this so that your legs are straight when you change feet, and you now keep your knees bent the entire time, that means you need to bend your knee when you bring the free leg in to switch, right? Well, I didn't, was going way too fast, and caught not one but BOTH toe picks on the ice (those things were invented by the devil). This time, I was treated to a full-forward face plant, turned at the last minute and took it on my hipbone.... bone to skin to ice. Ouch. Ice is hard.

The good news is that I feel like I am getting control of the edge exercises. I'll be working on them more tomorrow, and will hopefully get to working on the forward crossover exercise Will gave me last Friday as well. That will undoubtedly lead to more face plants - I can just see them coming.

Remember that comment from the first lesson about "curling up into a fetal position when you start to fall". Yes, it is because of how much it's going to hurt....