Chatty Cathy

As a child I craved a Chatty Cathy doll. If you haven't heard of one of these, they were early talking dolls. Pull a ring on her back and it would repeat one of 11 recorded phrases.

Unfortunately, some of the adults who talk to me at the rink are just like her--but they won't shut up.

I'm there to practice, and I'm willing to stroke around a couple of times to catch up, but last week a woman I barely know verbally clung to me for a quarter of an hour talking about her party plans. I actually had to leave the ice and go home to get rid of her

Yes, please tell me more about the cake for a party I'm not invited to

I even had an 8 year old stalker once. She trailed me around the rink for a half hour saying, "See my spin!", "See my spiral!"  "See my other spin! Is that a back spin?"

See my yawn.

Kids are easy to get rid of. Keep moving and don't make eye contact, or say "Your mom is here for you."

Adults are a little trickier. I usually use, "Well, I won't keep you from practice." and skate away.

But there's a lesson here. I never talk to a person more than two trips around the rink, then I use my 'I'll let you practice' line.

Some people are there to socialize, some to skate. Make sure you know which one you're talking too.

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.

My Goal Card

I was deeply affected by a group lesson given by a coach at Lake Placid when she started her mohawks class with a motivational speech. "Basics are critical." She said, "I'll get a student in who comes and says 'I'm having trouble with my flip.' Then she'll do this..." The coach stepped into an awkward forward crossover. "And I have to say to her, ' Whoooa! Maybe we should step back from that flip and work on your crossovers."

I don't want to be that student, so absorbed in some advanced element, that I don't realize that I don't have control of my basic elements.  I suspect that coaches casually eying a skater look at those skating skills with a critical eye, and rate that student accordingly.

My GOAL for now is nailing my skating skills solid. No excuses. No spinning in the corner. No self absorbed pursuit of 'fun' in skating. I want to be a skilled skater. A REAL skater.

Coach Cruella and I started private lessons this week. I want to improve my skills, but as I'll post tomorrow, sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to fix bad habits and relearn stuff. So I took 10 minutes and created a 3x5 card with my skills on them divided into sections. I think this is a worthwhile exercise for anyone in any sport or long time endeavor. I gave it to Coach Cruella for her reference.

I divide my skating world into four divisions: Weak Skills, No Skills, Goal Skills, Improvement Skills.

Weak Skills
Mohawks -- I have the hoppy ones :-(
Back Edges--lack of power
FI3--can only do them from a stop
Back Cross CCW
FO3 at speed

Improvement Skills
Power
Crossovers--The Twinkle Toes Maneuver isn't consistent
Back Chasse'--Short, no power
Swingrolls -- Extension needs to be higher
Checking
 
No Skills
BO3
Choctaw

Goal Skills
Rocker
Counter
Bracket

I plan to lay out a chart to track all my skills from the most basic to the most complex so I can treat them like a process chart. Unfortunately, my experience with figure skating is most books are worthless, and the DVDs are jargon filled and require you to already know what they're talking about. Maybe if I can break each skill down into a chart, I can get a better mental grip on them. This Goal Card is just a start.