It's all about the push

Apologies - I have been a little remiss in updating over the last week. I didn't skate again last week as on the Wednesday I felt absolutely dreadful - ached all over and very headachey. So I stayed home, relaxed and finished off Stacey's tiara for her wedding instead! I thought it was a 24 hour virus, but my coach thinks it is a mixture of a restricted diet (but I have lost over 2 and a half stone now since November!) and overtraining, so I was told to get some effervescent Vitamin C and Zinc to keep my immune system strong. Feeling much better now! I went to Lee Valley on Sunday and Ally Pally yesterday, but nothing amazing to report.

Lesson today though, so a different matter!
Forward Stroking: I had to do this really, really slowly today (nice to do something slow for a change!) and really work on the push off the inside edge by dropping my ankle right down. Started getting the feel for it but difficult putting it into my dances at the moment!
Forward Edges: Trying to do these with a correctly executed push as above, so actually lost a bit of power on these today. But I guess that once my push becomes more powerful, it will actually improve these more. Otherwise, she was very pleased with my curves.
Forward & Backward Crossovers Fig 8: The ice was horrendous today, so didn't knock anything off my speed today. Although she says that my technique is getting much better, and the BXO's are smoother.
Changes of Edge: Outside to inside not to bad, but finding inside to outside much harder.
A new 3-turn exercise!! I wondered when these would pop their head over the parapet . . . and it was today. Yep - backward inside 3-turns. Gulp . . . Yay - another few months of torment trying to work these out. I did get somewhere on the barrier with these - well, the turn bit, but then I just carry on turning! The whole exercise is like forward edges, but doing a 3-turn at the apex of each curve. So one side is a FO3, and the other side is a BI3.
Rhythm Blues: Had D bellowing at me all the way round saying "I want to see the push!!!". I need to work on my forward progressives on these, so I place the foot ahead of the skating foot, and also try and get the underpush which eludes me at the moment. However, I did the RB for the first time to music today, and it wasn't too bad - mostly in time, but I need to transfer my weight over more quickly for the first swingroll as that was the little bit where I slightly came off time.

Afterwards, I played around with things like spreadeagles and Ina Bauers (getting better, not curving around quite so much now), lots of the FI mohawk exercise we did last week (dare I think that my mohawks are getting a tad faster?!), and a Canasta Tango, Dutch Waltz and another Rhythm Blues when the music was on.