Splatty splat!

Had a looooooong session with my coach today - in fact, she spent the entire hour and a half patch with me. Apart from five minutes when I just HAD to rest my increasingly deforming right food. I warn you - I might post a picture one day, and it ain't pretty!

I have been rather sluggish this week overall - having a busy time at work and things on my mind, but it wasn't too bad.

Started with some exercises:
Forward Crossovers: Worked on getting the "sweep" through smoother.
Backward Crossovers: Looked at technique on these - and she has given me an exercise to work on the pushing. I was worried I wasn't stepping into the circle enough, but she said that was fine. Apparently my boots need to be a bit bendier at the back though!
A nice flowy edge exercise :) Steep outside edge, crossing over onto a steep inside edge, followed by another steep inside edge. Bit like Russian stroking but not. Felt nice.
Changes of edge - outside to inside: Need to push the outside edge up the rink more as was getting a bit diagonal.
Backward Russian stroking: Was all about speed on this today. I do this a lot in practice in circuits of the rink, but not as fast as we did it today, lol.
Mohawks: I wanted her to check out my mohawks to check that all this practice I have been doing on them is heading in the right direction. Okay, they need speeding up now - but she said they were lovely!!!! I've really, seriously struggled with mohawks for some reason, so absolutely delighted with this :) Funnily enough, the opening bit of my new free program has a mohawk that I have to actually cheat to make it go in a straight line! But it looks nice :)
Twizzles: No doubles even though she tried to get me to do doubles. Apparently if she asks me to do a double, I tend to go into it slightly crooked which I don't do on a single. Aren't brains strange things :)

Onto dances:
Dutch Waltz: I can feel edges getting better on this all the time, but need to check my shoulders particularly after the second swing, so I can get the run round the corner with less effort. Other things I have to watch out for is keeping my rear extended leg slightly more out to the side and lilt my run more. Unfortunately I lost my balance on the swing on the short axis and did a kersplat on the ice. Slid onto my back quite elegantly with my legs above my head, almost in box splits. One of the coaches said "Gosh, you're flexible!!". I am now . . . .
Canasta Tango: Didn't do this one to music due to current sluggishness, but she was actually happy with my runthrough. Working on not keeping my bum stuck out after the slip has helped!

Finally we worked on my new free dance. We now have 1.10 of the 1.30 minutes down which is great. She does throw the odd evil thing in though, like a blues choctaw! Probably the thing I was most happy about is that the 30 seconds I learnt last week, and was absolutely terrified of, I can now do not too badly considering. Okay - it needs to be bigger, faster etc. but I can actually do it! The new bit is still at the terrifying me stage (inside 3's at speed, blues choctaws, twizzles and barrel rolls) but I am a little more confident than I was last week that it could possibly work!!