the mighty psoas
I’m pretty sure my injured hip is my psoas. I’ve been researching it and need to come up with a rehab plan. If you’ve injured and rehabbed this muscle, please let me know the exercises you did and what helped.
Wednesday I had an early morning skate and lesson scheduled with Coach L. Turns out that skating at 7AM when it s 22 degree is not nearly as much fun as skating in the afternoon! I skated for about an hour and a half and didn’t start to feel like my joints weren’t screeching for DW40 until the very end. Coach L wanted to run through a complete set of Silver Moves. Given that on test day I‘m never warmed up and I’m usually cold and cranky, I figured what the hell, it’s probably a good simulation of what how I’d do in an actual test situation. I hadn’t warmed up any of the Silver moves, not FO Mohawk, back 3s, etc. So they all pretty much sucked. BUT I did them. 8Step still needs work, especially I need to skate it and not step it, but honestly it is better than I though it might be a year ago, so that is hopeful. Powerpulls are pretty horrific right now due to my hip, as are back 3s (3s in the Field in general are pretty bad). Cross strokes are pretty close going forwards, but going backwards need a lot of work, mainly because I don’t practice them enough during the crowded public sessions. We didn’t do the spiral sequence but she’d seen me doing it recently and is satisfied with it.
On Friday I skated about 1.5 hours and had a lesson with David Bowie. He again started me off with evil Mohawk drills. I need to start doing these off ice, like every damn day. After that we did Fiesta Tango, first together then he had me do it solo. He says I’m FINALLY making improvement on the cross front cross back part (as in it’s an actual though barely cross back now, instead of a cross front step beside), and then told me that the change edge part is supposed to be SHARP, not elegant. So I redid it for him and he “YES!” so that was nice to hear. The Mohawk works sometimes and sometimes I fall into the damn circle. But at least it works sometimes, which is progress.
He had seen me practicing Willow Waltz (for the first time pretty much since being back on the ice) so he had me run through that solo. It’s not too too horrible bad except for the RFO 3 into a back run. He says I’m not switching lobes properly which puts me on a flat, which makes me skid the 3 and not get all the way around. I had thought the main problem was that I can’t do the back run quickly enough (which is still true), so that was useful feedback. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in hold, but asked him instead if we could do some waltz 3s together. These were HORRIBLE. On the L ones I was clunking down onto the injured R hip, so he had me work them solo and they did improve together. On the R ones, I kept getting the skating foot too far into the circle, which meant I couldn’t really get around him for the turn. Plus my upper body was a mess, I actually went down over backwards and between his legs! It was scary, but is was a slow, soft fall, since he sort of eased me down, and luckily I didn’t get knicked by any flashing blades.
I really need to start doing off-ice stuff (not just ballroom). Mainly I need to do core work with a focus on the psoas, stamina work, and targeted ice work like Mohawks. I don’t know why I don’t just do this crap, it wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes a day (leaving out the stamina stuff). MUST DO IT.
Wednesday I had an early morning skate and lesson scheduled with Coach L. Turns out that skating at 7AM when it s 22 degree is not nearly as much fun as skating in the afternoon! I skated for about an hour and a half and didn’t start to feel like my joints weren’t screeching for DW40 until the very end. Coach L wanted to run through a complete set of Silver Moves. Given that on test day I‘m never warmed up and I’m usually cold and cranky, I figured what the hell, it’s probably a good simulation of what how I’d do in an actual test situation. I hadn’t warmed up any of the Silver moves, not FO Mohawk, back 3s, etc. So they all pretty much sucked. BUT I did them. 8Step still needs work, especially I need to skate it and not step it, but honestly it is better than I though it might be a year ago, so that is hopeful. Powerpulls are pretty horrific right now due to my hip, as are back 3s (3s in the Field in general are pretty bad). Cross strokes are pretty close going forwards, but going backwards need a lot of work, mainly because I don’t practice them enough during the crowded public sessions. We didn’t do the spiral sequence but she’d seen me doing it recently and is satisfied with it.
On Friday I skated about 1.5 hours and had a lesson with David Bowie. He again started me off with evil Mohawk drills. I need to start doing these off ice, like every damn day. After that we did Fiesta Tango, first together then he had me do it solo. He says I’m FINALLY making improvement on the cross front cross back part (as in it’s an actual though barely cross back now, instead of a cross front step beside), and then told me that the change edge part is supposed to be SHARP, not elegant. So I redid it for him and he “YES!” so that was nice to hear. The Mohawk works sometimes and sometimes I fall into the damn circle. But at least it works sometimes, which is progress.
He had seen me practicing Willow Waltz (for the first time pretty much since being back on the ice) so he had me run through that solo. It’s not too too horrible bad except for the RFO 3 into a back run. He says I’m not switching lobes properly which puts me on a flat, which makes me skid the 3 and not get all the way around. I had thought the main problem was that I can’t do the back run quickly enough (which is still true), so that was useful feedback. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in hold, but asked him instead if we could do some waltz 3s together. These were HORRIBLE. On the L ones I was clunking down onto the injured R hip, so he had me work them solo and they did improve together. On the R ones, I kept getting the skating foot too far into the circle, which meant I couldn’t really get around him for the turn. Plus my upper body was a mess, I actually went down over backwards and between his legs! It was scary, but is was a slow, soft fall, since he sort of eased me down, and luckily I didn’t get knicked by any flashing blades.
I really need to start doing off-ice stuff (not just ballroom). Mainly I need to do core work with a focus on the psoas, stamina work, and targeted ice work like Mohawks. I don’t know why I don’t just do this crap, it wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes a day (leaving out the stamina stuff). MUST DO IT.