Back after being snowed in!

Wow - I ended up taking two weeks off from skating because of the snow and then the rink's holiday closure. Ick - double-ick... I have a lesson in two days, and not only has it been two weeks, but the rink will be closed tomorrow as well. I hope Will is patient with me.....

I can already tell that I should NEVER do that again. It was a nightmare. The good thing was I had the ice pretty much to myself, so I didn't have to worry about looking like a complete fool while I tried to remember what in the heck I was doing.

Worked a lot on progressives. My left side is so much better than my right, and I've realized it might be because one leg is actually stronger than the other. I've been meaning to ask Will if he knows a trainer who conditions skaters, and this is another reason I should remember to do it next time. After years of working out to gain muscle mass, all of the sudden I need to drop the muscle in my upper body, lose probably 20 pounds, and get my leg and butt strength back - in other words, return to my dancer body. I think having someone realign my workout program will help me get on track for those goals.

Good thing I think of the body as a malleable thing. First I needed a dancer body, then I wanted to be a hulking muscle guy, now I need to go back to the dancer. No biggie, but it will be tough. My body naturally wants to be bigger (it's the Scottish, I think) and I always had to fight it down to dancer weight. My goal is to get down to within striking distance of 200lbs by April. My dancing weight was 185-190, and I know that's never going to be possible at my age, so I think that's a reasonable goal for me to achieve.

Oddly Ironic

So we are having record cold and snow here in Seattle, and it's all but shut the city down since Thursday. Having gone to college in the mountains, I'm no stranger to driving in snow, but just as Seattlites (for some strange reason) don't know how to drive in the rain, neither do they understand how to drive safely in the snow.

So - here I am, unable to go ice skate because of snow and freezing temperatures. Weird, huh?

Weird, and terribly frustrating. With the existing holiday closure schedule at the rink, I'm going to be hard-pressed to get in a decent amount of practice time over the next two weeks, in spite of the vacation time I'm going to take...

I'll do what I can, deal with the frustration, try not to gain too much weight, and just wait it out. :)

Just me and the "Hello Kitty" brigade...

Interesting - normally the rink is pretty crowded in the mornings, but I guess the holiday season is having it's impact - today it was just me and two little girls with their matching pink skating bags with wheels that light up when they spin... How terminally cute... Makes me think of "Hello Kitty" horking up a hairball.

Haven't been able to get to the rink since my lesson on Friday, damnit. Work is kicking my butt right now, and my SAD is hitting me harder and earlier than normal this year so I'm really struggling with energy issues. Did get in today, though - worked on the swing rolls most of the time, after my normal warmup. I've got to get the rhythm of those suckers into my body - dancer-brain gets it, but skater-body is pretty clueless. For some reason, I'm really struggling with my right side moves. The left side is fine, the right side is from some OTHER body that doesn't know anything... I finally decided to JUST work on the right side and managed a reasonably spectacular wipeout at one point.

I think it's about my right side not being as strong physically for some reason. I had that problem as a dancer, as I recall. I'm going to have to really concentrate on it for a while to get it up to par.

Not a bad workout - was tired of course, but worked through it.

Who's idea was it to move to friggin' SEATTLE where the sun comes up at 10am and goes down at 4pm having not really accomplished much ALL WINTER! What was I thinking? :)

Got beaten up again, in a good way

Damn - ok, so I hadn't made as much progress and I thought. True, Will could tell I was trusting my edges more, but my body alignment had gone to hell (have I mentioned yet that I miss the mirrors?). Once he got that straightened out, he bumped my progressives up a notch and has me refining the footwork. It's complicated to explain, but when you bring in the outside leg, it actually touches the ice on the OUTSIDE first and then you bring it around to cross in front of the inside leg while it's still touching the ice - then your body weight naturally transitions, so the whole thing is a lot smoother. I get it, and can even do it once in a while - that's going to take some time. And I still can't do it for shit on my right side.

Let me explain. Most dancers have one "smart" leg and one "dumb" leg. In other words, you can turn better on one side, you jump better from one leg than the other, and for most dancers the smart leg is the right one. I've always been backwards from that (no snide comments) - my left leg is the smart one, and I really struggle with the stupid righty. So progressives to the left are AOK, and to the right I'm back doing my drunken duck imitation. I'm just going to have to start getting really disciplined during my workouts and spend at least twice as much time on my off side as my good one.

Will also gave me an exercise to do to help strengthen my forward stroking - and I can already tell I'm going to hate it - my ass hurt after just one time, and it's STILL freakin' sore. I better have the tightest, cutest ass on the planet when this is all done or I'm going to be seriously pissed.

The good news is that Will threw a step at me today - a REAL step! It's called a "swing roll", and it's one of the building blocks of the first couple of dances. It's actually a lot of fun - it's a bear to figure out how the weight changes happen though. This one is going to haunt me for a while. This is one of those things that my "dancer brain" completely and totally understands, and my body is just too stupid to follow instructions. But now that I have swing rolls, I have progressives, chasse's, and swing rolls, which are evidently all the building blocks I will need to learn my actual first dance! Woo Hoo! I gotta get control of these buggers first, though, so I have lots of incentive now!

At the end of my lesson, I showed off my T-stops (which he showed me at my lesson two weeks ago). I have them down pat and can toss them off without thinking now.

So all in all, this was an ego-positive lesson, and DAMN do I have a lot to work on now. I have to get disciplined about getting to the gym EVERY SINGLE MORNING because it's the only way I'm going to get control of this stuff so I can start learning a real dance.

Back after a week off

Four pounds lighter and four wisdom teeth missing - back to the rink today for the first time in a week.

Last time I had a layoff, I came back and not much had gotten better. This time is was WAY different. For some reason, I'm suddenly starting to trust my edges, and the progressives were much improved. I'm also able to glide backwards on one foot without too many drunken duck imitations. I spent quite a bit of time on the changes Will gave me for the forward stroking. There's something still wrong, and I can't seem to find my balance. DAMN I wish I had mirrors!

All told, it was a good workout, and the layoff time must have given my brain a chance to do some serious assimilation. Will is threatening to start teaching me some actual steps on Friday. I guess I'm not done being a drunken duck after all. Sigh - good thing I'm well acquainted with public humiliation (remember the skate guards incident?)

I don't, however, recommend tooth extraction as a diet plan. When it's chicken broth or nothing, sometimes nothing is just better...

Patience, jackass...

No skating practice since I had my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday afternoon, but I have had a wonderful email exchange with another adult ice dancer and former ballet dancer I met on the Adult Ice Dancers' Yahoo group. Jim's insight into what the transition from barre to ice was like has been a huge help to calm my frustrations about how "slow" this seems to be going for me. It's great to have someone with a very similar background (who's been skating for 15 years!) to help level-set my expectations, and help me process some of the problems I have with my dancer-brain.

Bottom line, yes - it's going to take a while to learn this; yes - you have to unlearn some stuff from dancing; and yes - the impulse is to want to start doing real dance right away! Turns out, when he made the transition, his own dancer-brain also thought "hey, this is going to be easy for me" just as mine did. I'm not alone in discovering that it's not that simple, and it's somehow comforting to know that my experience isn't unique in this respect. :)

Jim is schooling me to regain the infinite patience of the professional dancer - hours at the barre doing the same fundamentals over and over again really pay off when you try to do something worth watching - and it's exactly the same for ice. Exactly. If I don't invest in the work now, odds are anything I try to do later will be uncontrolled and sloppy. I knew that, I know that - I just forget it when I come up against the gap between what I can do right now and what I WANT to be able to do right now.

So the moral of the story is to suck it up, be willing to look bad in front of other people, forget they are there, and concentrate on your own skating. He did encourage me to start doing something to music though - and I think that's what I'm missing. I even lift weights to music, and it's a huge motivator. Will seems to be ready to start teaching me some steps, and maybe I'll start taking my ipod to the rink with me. I've told Will to not be shy about beating the crap out of me during my lessons. No point doing this if I don't go at it full-steam-ahead.

And if that means more time skating circles on one leg and dodging the kiddies, so be it.

Thanks for the great advice and encouragement, Jim!

Small gain, big frustration

Well, today wasn't as bad as the last practice session - and that's about all I can say about it. I'm really struggling with being frustrated over my seeming lack of progress. It might be that my expectations are way out of line, but my dancer-brain is going crazy because it's been two months and I'm still doing fundamentals. It's tremendously aggravating to be on the ice with 20 other people (most more than half my age), skating beautifully, working to music (albeit it's pretty cheesy sometimes) and there's me still trying to get control of the damn blades and feeling like I'm getting in everyone's way. In my head, I'm already dancing, damnit.

Sigh. This is WAY harder than I expected it was going to be.

The small bright spot today is that I think I've figured out how to glide backward on one foot and not lose my balance. That's one of the things that Will threw at me during my last lesson. Turns out, you have to commit to sort of just "sitting" on the blade and fight against wanting to come up on your toes to get your balance. That's dancer-brain again. I think I've realized that the solution to losing your balance is to actually sink deeper into the standing leg - Will says that the back part of the skate is less curved than the front, so if you go flat-foot on the ice or sit back a bit, you actually have more blade on contact with the ice and will be more stable. So in other words, my reflex to rock forward to gain balance is working against me in a big way. More differences from dance to skating.

I worked on progressives today as well - I think I'm getting the hang of how the footwork has to go, and it feels a lot more stable than it's been. Also worked on the new positioning for forward stroking - without mirrors I can't tell if I'm still in drunk duck mode or starting to look right. I wonder if more frequent coaching would help - maybe I need to go to two lessons a week for a while.

I'm going to have to talk to Will next time about my progress. He tells me that I'm learning way faster than a normal adult student, and I can't help but worry that he's just blowing smoke to build up my confidence... What I do know is that I've got to get past these blasted fundamentals pretty darn soon or I'm going to have serious attitude issues.

Oh, hold it - already there and bought the t-shirt :)

Klutz, on ice...

It was one of those practices today - after a pretty good week and a bruising, but encouraging lesson on Friday, I got to the rink today and it was like I'd never been on skates before. Total klutzville.... That is so friggin' frustrating. No balance, windmilling arms to catch my balance, and even the simplest things just didn't work. My brain is a swan, but my body was an ostrich.

I hate days like this - of course, Will (my coach) was there and he saw the whole thing. Peachy. I would be a lot happier with this whole "skating" gig if I didn't have to learn IN FRIGGIN' PUBLIC. I don't mind not knowing what I'm doing, but does everyone have to watch me? Jeez.

I remember having days like this when I was a dancer. Some times, and for some reason, the "magic" just isn't there and no matter what you do, it just doesn't seem to work. Those are the days that you fall out of your turns into a sloppy fourth position, can't remember combinations, and hate everything you see in the mirror. I guess I'm fortunate that the rink doesn't have mirrors, but I will say that I miss them, generally. After learning how to look critically at yourself and identify problems on sight, it's hard to not know what you look like when you are learning new skills. I know I probably shouldn't be so concerned with how things look just yet, but being able to see what I'm doing would be a huge help to not only improvement, but also in confidence-building. As much as I've always hated looking at video of myself (I run for the hills when someone gets out a camera) perhaps it would be helpful since I don't have mirrors.

Sigh - days like this are why more adults aren't willing to learn new things.... As a kid, you don't have the awareness to worry about feeling like you are a fool - but as adults, we get very sensitive to that - possibly because we get out of the habit of being beginners. Right now, my goal of competing at the Gay Games in a year and a half seems like a real stretch, and that's what upsets me the most.

I wonder how much it would cost to get COMPLETELY PRIVATE ice time :) Everybody OUT, lock the doors, put on music that I like for a change, and look like an idiot with only the Zamboni to see or care.