So after a couple of skating sessions last week, I was very disheartened. I just wasn't getting forwards crossovers at all, and I don't want to be falling behind after just two classes. I really wasn't looking forward to class today.
Then I got in the right mindset by the afternoon. You know who is awesome? The guy who keeps showing up and working hard even when he's not as good as he wants to be. I can be that guy.
I'm always a little worried that it was the wrong choice to stay in the power skating class on that first day when the instructor suggested I move to the adult novice skating class because I had never actually skated (the course catalog did not list any prerequisites for this class, but it did for others, so I assumed this would be ok).
But objectively, I think I'm keeping up as well as my classmates. There are maybe a dozen people each week. One is clearly the best skater, and can already do most of what we are learning. I suspect he is here mostly to have the instructor refine his technique. There's four or five of us including me who are at least improving to some degree each week and make a game effort of doing the stuff we are learning. Then there's about half the class that can barely stand up on skates and isn't doing anything at all. So I'm definitely not the worst or even close.
The nicest thing I got out of the instructor this week was that he strongly suggested that we get hockey gloves, which I already have and wear every week because it feels a lot nicer when you fall than bare hands. "Only one guy has hockey gloves? Don't you all want to play hockey?"
OK. We started with crossover starts and one-foot stops, both of which I can do adequately. I'm starting to get the hang of distributing my weight and digging into the ice enough to stop a little quicker. I can see a full two-footed hockey stop in my future pretty easily.
Then those evil forwards crossovers, where we do an S down the ice doing crossovers in each direction. After only a couple of people had any luck at all, the instructor called us all over and explained it again. This time he really took a few minutes to talk about weight distribution and ankle bend. He talks a lot about most people being visual learners, but I do better with this sort of instruction. Yes, I need to see how the feet move in the maneuver, but I also want to hear a technical explanation of "keep your weight here on this part of your foot," which seems to be the key to every skating maneuver: where you put your weight.
And he really explained and showed what "being on your edge" means. Holy balls. I thought it meant "slightly rocking your foot to that side." Nope, it means bending your ankle down to a 45-degree angle or maybe further. What I was doing wasn't even *close* to being on a true edge. He emphasized that we should be doing ankle stretches for flexibility side-to-side as much as possible.
Then he showed us how the weight should be on the heel of your inside foot (and your landing foot once it takes over the weight).
Between the two, this is what allows your weight to stay balanced as you come over the top. What I was doing was only slightly leaning my inside foot so that it was basically upright, and it was skidding all over the place as I basically had to throw my outside foot and hope that I could somehow catch my balance when it landed. The blade really gets in there at an angle and digs into the ice, giving you stability.
Suddenly, I was able to do some sort of crossover every time. Not always a good one, but none of the flailing and praying I was doing before.
Then he introduced backwards crossovers. It is similar to a forwards one, but it starts with a backwards push. I did maybe two right, but for the most part I could not for the life of me get a consistent backwards push. Most of the time, I'd either go nowhere or only a couple of inches before losing all momentum. I'm assuming this is yet again a problem with weight distribution. Actually, I'm sure it is. I bet I'm pushing with my toe too much and not my heel.
That was it for the class. Speaking of weight distribution, I keep saying this, but I just have to lose 20 pounds. I think it would help with the foot pain considerably, along with everything else.
I skated for about 15 minutes after class, not really to work on anything (night public sessions are crowded and the ice is shot by the time we get done with class), but just for the pure fun of it. I'm at the point where I can glide pretty good for fun without having to think about it too much.
Oh, almost forgot! I got an exciting e-mail yesterday: I got off the waiting list and into the next session of the Anaheim Ducks adult Learn To Play program. It's basically three free one-hour sessions in a large group setting. Not exactly game-changing, but three free hours of clinics and ice time is nothing to sneeze at! It runs once a week for three weeks, starting Jan. 18.
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