Transitions

Second skate of the new year. I apologize a lot; more than the average person. It's an annoying habit I need to break. I apologize to Amy when my lesson isn't going as well as I think it should. What I really need to do is turn my brain off. Having decided to compete in a February competition means having to practice my program and accept the fact that people will be watching me. That's not easy, and it should be. I come from a theatrical family a was in the business called show for several years. But I left show business, for various reasons, and now have a hard time dealing with people watching me. However,I am happy to say it is only with skating. If I had that problem with sign language, I could never become an interpreter. Going on... Because the competition is an artistic event, jumps are not as necessary. Good. Not that my jumps are horrible, they just aren't as strong as I prefer. So, there's a lot of footwork in this program, and graceful movements. I excel at graceful movements. What I am really struggling with are transitions. You know: mohawks, brackets, three turns. I can do them UNTIL you put them in a program, then my feet become all thumbs an my legs get all tangled up. When you have a 32 inch inseam, it makes for a very amusing picture. Thus explains why my last two lesson have been all about transitions from one move to another. Doing them over and over and over again until I get it right. Early in my skating career, I learned to do a left forward inside mohawk. I did not learn a right forward inside mohawk until much later. As a result, the right forward inside mohawk is very, very weak. If I think about it too much, I am almost paralyzed and unable to do it at all. That explains the difficulty I have experienced with the forward outside mohawks on the Silver Moves test. The left outside mohawk is almost ready to test while the right looks a mess. Will just have to keep working on them. What I can't understand is the inconsistency of my 3 turns. I came along during the last days of figures, so I did do 3 turns in figures. The 2nd figure test is all of the 3 turns, and I could do them. Now, as with so many other things, if I think about my RFI3 or my LBI3 or my LFO3, my legs get tangled up in one another, my shoulders are up to my ears, my arms are flopping around like a freshly caught salmon and my mouth is wide open. Ugggghhhhh!!!!!! And please, don't get me started on brackets. The last time I did a bracket I took down a skater and I didn't even know her. Sorry kid. I'll keep right on practicing, trying, falling and getting up. To me, skating is like breathing. It's necessary, but sometimes it really hurts and sometimes something just doesn't smell right. I leave you with a quote from the musical 1776 (if you get the chance to see it on TCM, please do. It's a history lesson to music.) "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?"