Hello there, Lutz jump! :)
Yesterday's skating (training) session was earlier than usual, at 16:30, which means that I missed part of it due to traffic - I had to go directly from work, in the rush-hour. But despite that, it was quite a good one. There were fewer people, me and Anja, another girl from my “advanced adults” group, got to skate with the whiny teenage girls who have their own group and look down onto everyone else - luckily not with their coach, but with ours.
Their coach is such a bitch, she shows up halfway into the session with her kid, comes to bitch us out and the teenagers get all nervous. When some of us stopped to talk to our coach, they’re like “please do something, anything, just so it looks like you’re doing something” so that the bitchy coach doesn’t give them shit. Anja comments that she’s not going to let this ruin her day, to which one of the teenage drama queens goes “well, she (the coach) has ruined plenty of mine so far”… and I’m like dude, is she paying you or are you paying her?! I’m all for a rigorous training regimen, but I can definitely do without drama - I am an adult, after all, and am doing this because I enjoy it. It’s not like the teenagers are Olympic hopefuls, either. (They’re basically high-schoolers who started skating in their mid-teens, so no chance of serious competition for them.) Some of these girls are so beyond unfriendly and such typical “I’m-better-than-thou” teens. I’m so glad I decided not to join their group, even though they get more structure, more space on the ice and probably more ice time, too. I guess I am too old to take anyone’s shit for no reason.
Anyway, the really cool thing is that I had our coach explain the lutz to me. At first, I found it very baffling, because you basically skate in one direction and then jump in a direction that’s counter-intuitive. Then Anja showed me a certain entrance to the jump - she calls it the “Killian step”, but I’m not sure what it’s called in English officially. Anyway, it makes the lutz more intuitive, because the step pattern gets you into the position you need to be in for the jump. And voila, I landed the lutz several times - it’s actually quite easy once you get the hang of it. (When I say “easy”, I don’t mean as in “anyone can do it”, of course.) They were maybe a tiny little bit under-rotated, my lutzes, but supposedly not enough to get them downgraded. There’s obviously still a lot of work ahead, though. But now the axel is the only remaining jump I can’t jump and that’s exciting! :D We also worked on some combination jumps, such as 1flip+1loop(+1loop). Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the stamina for three-jump combos, especially if they involve loops. I find the loop difficult as a second jump in a combination in general, possibly because you need even more balance than for, say, a toeloop, and you have to rely solely on the muscles in one leg (the thigh in particular… and your arms, ok, if you do it properly), since there is no additional toe-picking action to help you propel yourself into the air. We also don’t jump combinations very often in my group, because there’s simply not enough space…
But yay - the lutz! :D
I’m leaving on a week-long family vacation in Egypt tonight (in the middle of the night! Honestly couldn’t have gotten a worse flight time!). My mom, brother and aunt are coming from the Czech Republic and we’ll meet in Egypt. Should be fun - sadly, the wife couldn’t come along. :( Also, she only gets to come home from her rehabilitation today, so I’m picking her up in the afternoon… and in the night I already have to leave. We haven’t seen much of one another the last two weeks.
Their coach is such a bitch, she shows up halfway into the session with her kid, comes to bitch us out and the teenagers get all nervous. When some of us stopped to talk to our coach, they’re like “please do something, anything, just so it looks like you’re doing something” so that the bitchy coach doesn’t give them shit. Anja comments that she’s not going to let this ruin her day, to which one of the teenage drama queens goes “well, she (the coach) has ruined plenty of mine so far”… and I’m like dude, is she paying you or are you paying her?! I’m all for a rigorous training regimen, but I can definitely do without drama - I am an adult, after all, and am doing this because I enjoy it. It’s not like the teenagers are Olympic hopefuls, either. (They’re basically high-schoolers who started skating in their mid-teens, so no chance of serious competition for them.) Some of these girls are so beyond unfriendly and such typical “I’m-better-than-thou” teens. I’m so glad I decided not to join their group, even though they get more structure, more space on the ice and probably more ice time, too. I guess I am too old to take anyone’s shit for no reason.
Anyway, the really cool thing is that I had our coach explain the lutz to me. At first, I found it very baffling, because you basically skate in one direction and then jump in a direction that’s counter-intuitive. Then Anja showed me a certain entrance to the jump - she calls it the “Killian step”, but I’m not sure what it’s called in English officially. Anyway, it makes the lutz more intuitive, because the step pattern gets you into the position you need to be in for the jump. And voila, I landed the lutz several times - it’s actually quite easy once you get the hang of it. (When I say “easy”, I don’t mean as in “anyone can do it”, of course.) They were maybe a tiny little bit under-rotated, my lutzes, but supposedly not enough to get them downgraded. There’s obviously still a lot of work ahead, though. But now the axel is the only remaining jump I can’t jump and that’s exciting! :D We also worked on some combination jumps, such as 1flip+1loop(+1loop). Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the stamina for three-jump combos, especially if they involve loops. I find the loop difficult as a second jump in a combination in general, possibly because you need even more balance than for, say, a toeloop, and you have to rely solely on the muscles in one leg (the thigh in particular… and your arms, ok, if you do it properly), since there is no additional toe-picking action to help you propel yourself into the air. We also don’t jump combinations very often in my group, because there’s simply not enough space…
But yay - the lutz! :D
I’m leaving on a week-long family vacation in Egypt tonight (in the middle of the night! Honestly couldn’t have gotten a worse flight time!). My mom, brother and aunt are coming from the Czech Republic and we’ll meet in Egypt. Should be fun - sadly, the wife couldn’t come along. :( Also, she only gets to come home from her rehabilitation today, so I’m picking her up in the afternoon… and in the night I already have to leave. We haven’t seen much of one another the last two weeks.