Mohawk Turn Resurrection

Despite all the things I've done to get 'lesson ready' again, I've lost the ability to do my counter clockwise mohawks. During my lesson, Miss Bianca takes me to her mohawk teaching set up left from her previous lesson with Amy the 8 year old. She's drawn a mohawk on the ice:

"This is your mohawk," Miss Bianca says.

Miss Bianca then points at a smiley face 10 feet away.

Miss Bianca says, "This is Amy's Friend."

"As you do the turn, you're going to get your foot in the correct position, then wave at Amy's Friend," she says, "So you'll stop waving your right arm around." (I have arm waving disease.)

Let's call Amy's Friend....Craig.  Here's my mohawk.

Well, at least my arms are in the right position now.

The Curate's Egg in Saturday's Lesson

As you all know I'm in the process of  re-learning to skate (for the THIRD time--every time I get competent something happens). So today, when Madam Mim was coaching me, she said, "I hate 3 turns, but I love mohawks. Let's review your mohawks."

"I love mohawks," Madam Mim says.

I've done these a few times since I returned to the ice. I have them to the left but not to the right, so I'm behind where I was when the knee went Kablooey (TM applied for) last November.

I rip off one to the left: fast, noisy and scary for anyone watching (although I'm solid as a rock they're not pretty).  When I come out of it, Madam Mim smiles.

"That was actually not awful," she said.

I give a fist pump, "YEEAH!"

Yes, I'm at the stage of skating where 'actually not awful' is a GOAL!

This is the Curate's Egg of skating. I'm taking the positive attitude from my critiques. Some parts of my mohawk are 'quite excellent'!

Madam Mim has decided I'm going to learn Moves--not test-- just learn. So today I learned using the mohawk as a transition between the forward and backwards crossovers in the crossover eight in Pre-Bronze. Homework, I have homework!

The Turn Forward--The 'Back Mohawk'?

I skated for years and was unable to do the turn forward from a back outside edge.  You all know what this is. You skate backwards on an outside edge, then facing out of the circle step forward onto an outside edge.

If that doesn't meet the definition of a back mohawk, I don't know what does.  No one calls it a mohawk though. Maybe because forward mohawks can be so intimidating (to adults anyway), it's easier to call it a 'step forward' or 'turn forward'. There doesn't that sound nice? And if you don't think it's a mohawk, maybe it will be easier to learn.

We do a lot of this in our culture; we call things by 'nice' names to make them seem less bad. We use the term 'charge it' rather than  'take out a short term high interest loan'. We use the term 'economy' on an airplane rather than 'third class'. American politics and advertising are full of these 'reframing' techniques. Reframe the name and you reframe the perception.

Not a perfect example, but you get the idea

So when I was learning the 'step forward', I immediately turned to my then coach and said, "Isn't this a back mohawk?" She looked a little sheepish, "Well, yes but we don't call it that."

Once I had that in my head, combined with the fact I was lousy at skating backwards, lousy at forward mohawsk and had other bad skating issues (hunching, looking down, you name it), I couldn't do a back outside step forward unless I got lucky. And at my age, you don't get lucky that often.

So in Coach Cruella's edge class,  I finally learned the back outside mohawk. She taught me in 5 minutes and I've been able to do it ever sense.

First off, I can now get a strong back outside edge, and I don't hunch/look at the ice/ etc. My posture isn't perfect (Cruella wants me to skate as if my back is to a wall) but it's good enough.

So, I take a back outside edge, then Cruella has me put the toe of my free foot to the heel of my skating foot, facing out of the circle.

Then 'open the knee' (that is, move the knee of the free leg as if I'm opening a door, with my toe still at the heel), step forward.  Zip, zap thunderclap, Back outside mohawk.

I didn't get it for the first few tries, but after 5 minutes of so I had it down perfect. I can now do them either direction without thinking about them.

So what's going on there? I think even after getting better backwards skills, still the 'toe of the free leg to the heel of the skating leg' may have been the critical technique for me. It kept me from sticking my free leg behind me and put my center of gravity more solidly over the skating foot throughout the entire movement. If my free leg was off to the side or behind me, then when I tried to 'step forward' I wasn't balanced and kind of 'tipped forward'. Or 'fell forward' on my bad days.

Back inside mohawk? Easy peasy. I don't think anyone has a problem with them.

My only problem is that when I step forwards I tend to start on a back outside edge, and after the transfer, end up on a forward inside edge and headed away from my original circle, onto a different lobe.

Wait.

Wait.

That's not a flaw,
That's a choctaw! Oh, happy day! PARTY TIME!

Oh. . .

Mohawks---At Speed

Mohawks at speed. I has 'em.

And, yet Coach Cruella feels they are not perfect.

And I'm not toepick dragging or anything.

When, oh Lord, do I finally make a coach happy?

Anyone else have the problem with fast mohawks where you put the free foot down toepick first and just ever so slightly drag the toepick before the switch between skating foot and free foot? You'll recognize it if you have it. When you look down at your tracings you'll have a little flag at the beginning of the back edge.

Anyway, I don't do that anymore. I do something wierder.

I ever so gently put the free foot down so it just grazes the ice. Now when I do a mohawk there's a big smoosh of a flag....but hey it's a mohawk at speed! And with a good exit, extension, and upper body.

I wasn't even conscious of this, the touch of the blade was so light. 

So now I have to break another bad mohawk habit.

Fortunately, a few minutes work and it's pretty much gone until the next time I do mohawks. Then I'm sure I'll do something else wrong...

Turns while going fast vs Turns while going sloowww

The Amazing Coach is full of these skating tidbits. Actually, this is one of those 'small pieces of information' that have 'big impact'. Like LIBOR.

Here's the tidbit: initiating a turn while you're going slow is started with the body; initiating the turn while going fast is started with the edge of the skating foot.

Wow! That just blew me away when she told me that. Then she drilled me in starting the turn with the edge by making me scamper up and down the ice as fast as my stubby little legs could take me and turning in tighter and tighter turns.

It was initially hard to get the edge in the turn first, before using the body. I'm used to using my body first in turns because I'm a naturally slow skater. But after 15 minutes of drill in ever decreasing arcs of turns I was doing it consistently.

Here are some mnemonic images.

Slow speed-initiate turn with body

Fast speed-initiate turn with edge

 So where does this fast=edge first, vs slow=body first mean the most to me so far?

Mohawks.

When I'm doing mohawks now with more speed that I used to feel comfortable with, I'm now able to do the switch between the free foot and the skating foot a lot easier by just remembering to deepen the edge on the bit at the end, and bingo the feet switch. Maybe I'm wrong to do this, and everyone reading this will recoil in horror, but this is part of my Learn It Yourself philosophy. I'm experimenting and seeing what works for me. So far it's made my mohawks (always an issue for adults) a lot less intimidating at speed.

Ooooh, and I almost have a hockey stop too!

Mohawk Mambo and Three Turn Tango

Mohawk Mambo and Three Turn Tango--those sound like great dances, don't they?  But what they are is the feeling I had after my lesson with Coach Cruella.

I felt like dancin'.

How I feel about my mohawks

 The last little bit of the Mohawk has slipped into place, and I'm comfortable with them now. My problem was that when I was practicing, I was checking at the wrong point. Without Cruella there when I practiced, I wasn't catching my error. Once she fixed that she made me chant my way through a mohawk just to prove I had conscious knowledge (as opposed to mere physical sense) of what I was supposed to do through the mohawk. I think this verbal step through is a good check on a student's knowledge. I had to do it for the instructor when I was learning to jump out of planes. It really cements the steps in your head, and reassures the coach that you are conscious of all the steps, as opposed to just getting lucky during lesson.

Then we switched to FI3. I hate these. I've had so many close calls that my practices were next to the boards. And eventually, after having the short chunky ones, I got out of the habit of practicing them so they disappeared. Cruella  had me doing big, sweepy ones inside 15 minutes. Okay, she had to steady my back hand but it was a light touch and I barely need it. But there was no wobble, no forward bend....no panic.

After 5 or 6 good solid, sweepy ones, I covered my face with my hands, shaking my head in disbelief. "Do you know how many hundreds of dollars I've spent on these?" I said, dropping my hands.

Cruella gave a sympathetic smile, "When [a former student] told me of your 3 turn problems years ago, I told him to have you contact me."

I looked up, "And I did! But that love god of a husband of yours kept getting you pregnant!"

We both got a laugh out of that.

I don't feel like I have them solid yet. I have them where I'll start practicing them again, and work on them independent of a coach. Still, looking good! But what ties my mohawks and FI3 together? It's that inside edge.  I never had strong ones until I learned good edge control from Cruella. I'm not perfect by any means, but I'm much, much stronger than I was before.

 Anyway, here's where I feel I am on the Three turn as expressed as a tango. An old tango. Not an exciting one, but still it's a Tango!

I'm just starting out again on FI3 (c. 1915)

The Sweet Spot (Edited)

(Edit) I had a lesson with Coach Cruella a week after I wrote this post. I found I'd misunderstood her in a lesson, so now I'm correcting this entry.  Yeah, it's a little confusing that I'm editing an old post, but I didn't want to leave a bad process floating around on the net.
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So I'm still working on smooth, swoopy mohawks with Coach Cruella. I can occasionally get these on my own, but they're not to the level of Russian Freestyle perfection that Coach Cruella wants. This week, I'm a little bit closer.

So, I've written before about Coach Cruella's pedagogical method for teaching mohawks to adults.
1. Start from a T position, with the weight on the back foot
(edit) 2. Check the forward shoulder by moving the forward arm in front of your chest (I think of putting it over the boob)
3. Bend the knees so a metaphorical basketball (!) can be held between them
4. Push off with the back foot (the strike) onto an inside edge and onto the 'sweet spot' of the forward skate.
5. Skating forward (the checked shoulder will do this for you), bring the free foot to the arch of the skating foot while going deeper in the knee (edit) and check the forward shoulder.(end edit)
6. (This next part I DO NOT HAVE consistently yet) turn the skating foot (Edit) As a result of the check, the skating foot will turn inside the circle. Step down with the free foot, and sort of push the skating foot away while  placing the free foot on the ice, while going down in the knee some more (!). (edit--after I started doing step 5 correctly, I now have the step down for the mohawk solid)
7. Raise the arm that was formerly in the checked position. Smile for the audience.

I've left out all the stuff about leg position that we worked a whole lesson on.  This is not something you can learn from reading a blog post.

Anyway, this week I finally figured out about the 'sweet spot' she was talking about. I figured it out, because I was leaning to far forward in step four, the strike. Cruella fussed at me and made me do the strike over and over. If I was leaning forward she told me I was skating on the ball of the foot, which left me no place to roll forwards.

So, the 'sweet spot' in this case is towards the back of the foot, but not at the heel. For me I feel it's just under the back of the arch of my foot. My body is nicely balanced with good posture (don't look down). I can hold my free leg with nice extension going into the mohawk (exiting the mohawk--still have issues), and I can get a nice 'x' on the ice where the exchange of feet takes place.

Then we started improving the exchange of feet, by turning the first skating foot inside the circle before I drop the exchange foot in.

I got nuzzink for that unless I just get lucky.

I've seen people learn mohawks in a single lesson. I've been working on these for weeks. Mucho frustrado. (Edit from a week later--not frustrado anymore!)

Does this never end?

The Mohawk--Again

I really want to get my mohawks smooth and....well, I can't say 'sexy' because with my short legs I look like a frog when doing a mohawk...so I want smooth and not awful. How about that? Good enough goal?

So Coach Cruella eyes my mohawks. All I can say is after my 'bad fall' I've got mohawk PTSD. She's been working on it for a couple of weeks. I don't panic, and I'm more comfortable, but not smooth, not safe.

For my case, Cruella's approach is start in a strong T-position, assume the depth of kneebend to hold the 'basketball' between the legs. Make sure the hips are pointing forward, not turned to the side of the back foot. (Open hips or closed hips? I never can get that straight) Put my weight onto the back foot. Stroke onto an inside edge, hold it, bring the free foot forward to the inside of the arch of the skating foot while going deeper in the knee, then go even deeper in the knee while looking in the direction you're skating towards. Switch feet and simultaneously bring the back arm slightly up, go deep in the new skating knee and keep the chest up.  * And make sure the new free foot is in the 7 o'clock position.

Oh, and there's the not falling part going on too.

Yeah. That last fraction of a Mohawk. Like this

*There may be one too many 'deeper in the knee' in there someplace.

The Sixth Sense

Everyone knows about the five senses: Sight, taste, hearing, touch, smell. We use these everyday. But we have a sixth sense, and not the one that pops up in horror movies. It's the sense of where the various parts of your body are. It's called 'proprioception'. Broadly, it's the ability to know even with your eyes closed, where the relative position of your body parts are to each other. For example, close your eyes and ask someone to move your hand. Do you know where it is? Of course you do. That's proprioception.

When I used to ride horses, I wore spurs. I had a trainer who told me to wear them because  "You always know where your heels are." That's praise in riding circles. I never jabbed the horse with them, I just used them for subtle cues when doing equitation. It's an art to ride with spurs.

You'd think with skillz like that, knowing where my feet are when I skate would be easy. It turns out, that  I have no clue.

More than once I've had a coach say, "Your free foot is in the wrong place." I cheerfully confess that especially in mohawks, I know that the free foot is pointing inside the circle.  Where it is relative to my skating foot--no idea. Ahead at the toe, back at the heel, where? Where?

So Coach Cruella has me doing exercises where I get on a strong inside edge, then move my free foot to mohawk position (while simultaneously going deeper in the knee) then hold it.

And hold it. And then hold it some more. But not do the turn. This is a position exercise, not a turn exercise.

She does the same for my free leg with the three turn exercises. I stroke, hold the leg in the extended position, then go down in the knee, again, again (for the outside 3), but again, and again (for the inside 3).  My job is to hold that edge, hold that posture, hold that extension.

This is pretty effective, especially with someone there the first few times  to point out where the free foot is going wrong.

After about 10 minutes of this work on threes and mohawks, I have a much more refined sense of my foot position. It's hardly a miracle cure, I'll need to practice this many times for it to become second nature, but it shows that focused practice can have immediate effects on my basic skating skills.

Whoa! Too far back on the heel! Bend the knee!

Fix It or Rebuild It?

I cheerfully admit to being a beginner skater. Oh, right, I've passed Basic 8 and got stuffed into Freestyle 1, but I always felt my basic skills were weak and....sloppy. I can do them, but they're nothing to be proud of. 

You can be both cute and sloppy. But only when you're young

So, initially I tried to get my coaches to 'fix' my weak skills. That didn't work.  Then last summer at Lake Placid, I went to Coach Amazing and said, "Rebuild my crossovers."

She got a big smile on her face. Finally, a student without ego!

I had strong crossovers, but they weren't smooth or with an underpush and attempts by other coaches to tweak them hadn't worked. So in a half hour Coach Amazing rebuilt them into what they are today. I'm still working on the consistency of my Twinkle Toes Maneuver, but they're smooth and powerful. (During my last lesson Dance Coach kept me going around and around the center circle doing crossovers while he stood silently by. Finally I stopped, "What's wrong with them?" He frowned, "Nothing, I was enjoying watching them." Well, yes, that made my day.)

This has become my mantra for my weak skills: Rebuild, don't fix. For my weak skills on my goal card, I plan to rebuild them from scratch as if I had never learned them before. This is my way of breaking bad habits, and constructing skills with the skating knowledge I didn't have when I first learned them.

Now, I'm working on rebuilding my Mohawks with Coach Cruella. She started with the inside edge with bent knee, then bring the free foot to the instep and go even deeper in the knee.

A light went on in my head!

Oh, THAT's what I'm supposed to do?

 For years I'd been unconsciously treating the mohawk like you do a 3 turn--down, up, down--and Coach Cruella said it was down, then down deeper.  No wonder my mohawks are hoppy! There's still some ways to go; my mohawks aren't as strong as my crossovers, but progress is being made. I suspect other coaches have taught me the same thing, but until I was recommitted to rebuilding the skill--as if I had never learned it before--was I able to break a bad, unconscious habit.

Mohawk Muscle

When I started mohawks I had the usual problem with the checking and the foot placement.  But what I really had trouble with was the leg position and the actual strength in my legs.  I had had a broken ankle, and spent a year not exercising, so my leg muscles were pretty weak. Fixing this turned out to be easy.

Having a house with a stairway turned out to be beneficial. I simply walked up the stairs in mohawk position every time I took the stairs.  This meant placing my first foot down on the step at an angle away from centerline, and then stepping up only using the first leg, and putting the heel of the second foot at the center of the first foot.  I'd then repeat the sequence up the stairs, alternating feet all the way up.

When I started out I had to use the rails to help myself up. After a couple of weeks, I was able to do the exercise without using the rails at all. I also did this at work when I went up and down the stairwells when they were empty. When someone saw me I told them truthfully that I was exercising to recover from the ankle injury.

Coach Amazing showed me a variant of this. By going down the stairs backwards, you can get the feel for closed mohawks. Step down with the first foot, then bring the arch of the second foot to the heel of the first foot.

Both of these are simple exercises really helped me out when I was recovering from the aftereffects of the broken ankle.  I found not only did they help me with building up strength in my weakened legs, but it worked on my upper body position and balance. I think you could make it harder by doing two steps at a time, but I've shrunk so much, that I just do one step. (That's my story and I'm sticking with it.)

It will make you look silly if you do it, but it really helped me out, so I was willing to make the effort.