I was hoping to go Monday, but I had a minor family thing that interfered. So today was probably my only practice before class on Wednesday night.
I'd probably have to describe this session as disheartening. It didn't feel like a lot of progress, and I'm definitely not going back to class tomorrow night feeling a lot of confidence.
It was back down to less than 10 people on the ice, which was nice. These weekday afternoon sessions really spoil me.
I really wanted to focus on staying low in my hockey stance today. I think that contributed to my feet just absolutely killing me, more than they have in recent sessions, because I was unlearning some bad habits. I could generally make it about two times around the ice before I needed a break to ease the throbbing.
Crossovers are still a major problem. I'm just not comfortable enough on my edges to balance properly, and at best I'm falling toward my turning side and catching myself. I did maybe a couple right over about an hour of practicing.
Focusing on hockey stance was mixed. It's really hard not to straighten up. I tried to keep my base a bit wider, which helped with balance, and I could feel the way my stride felt different when I did it right.
I got about 15 minutes of backwards swizzle in, and a couple of times I got some decent backwards momentum. I just had to accept that I'm not going to be able to do those huge circular swizzles the coach wants because of my hips, and focused on smaller ones that still got some nice momentum going.
I really felt like I was having problems getting my skates to dig into the ice. It was a small problem during turns and a big problem when trying to backwards swizzle. I think maybe they need sharpened? I'm going to take them by Hockey Giant tomorrow before class. I think I'm also going to try a 1/2 cut instead of 5/8. The difference is small, but it might help me dig into the ice a bit better.
I'm not really looking forward to class tomorrow. It's only the third class out of 8, and already I'm showing up not able to do the stuff we learned last week. That's pretty frustrating and I *really* don't want to fall behind too far. But on the other hand, there's maybe a dozen people in class and no more than 3 or 4 of them are better than me right now. Most of them seemed to be having trouble last week doing the stuff we learned in the first week, so it's not like I'll be without company.
Worst comes to worst, I'll retake the class and give myself an extra 8 weeks to learn it. I think at least one person is retaking the class this time around. I can't expect perfection from myself, and good lord I've only been skating for three weeks. Well, it'll be three weeks tomorrow since the first time I stepped on the ice. Typing that out made me feel a little better. Maybe I'm just asking too much of myself.
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