Gold Moves Test Morning

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waiting for my gold moves test

Just trying to relax and stretch a bit before getting ready for my test. My practices the last couple of days have been pretty rough. Monday’s was terrible. Coach Ty gave me a lot of instruction on my brackets. First one I tried after the instruction, a forward outside bracket, I fell on. I followed that up immediately with a fall on my usually reliable back inside bracket.

On Tuesday morning my first forward outside bracket also failed (though without a fall). My coach helped me out again (we are spending extra time together before my test). And this time I think we got to the root of the problem. I had been leaning back too far into the circle before the turn, then leaning outside the circle during and after the turn.

Oh, skating. I had gotten an instruction- to lean into the circle in this case- and taken it to an extreme as I often do. In skating the corrections can be subtle. I’ve now switched to a less exaggerated lean that I can maintain throughout the turn, and also am holding my arms a little more in front.

I also need to relax and not force the bracket turn. Sometimes after falls I start trying too hard to make the element happen but that never works in skating. I just have to let the turn happen at the right time without excess motion or fuss. I don’t usually post my training notes on here because as you can see, they are a bit arcane and picky. But that’s skating!

Yesterday after my lesson I went to the rink where the test will be held and practiced for an hour on that ice. Rinks vary in size and in ice quality so it’s good to get used to the surface where I will skate. I started with a run-through of my test, did adequate but not great. My brackets went OK but I had a random fall on another usually reliable element and came really close to the boards and had to stop on that same element.

If that were the only major fault on the test, the judges might have given me a re-skate of that element, so it wasn’t a deal-killer. But still. I am glad I had a chance to practice there and I hope work out the kinks. I certainly got used to the ice and was feeling pretty confident by the end of my practice. Test is this afternoon, wish me luck!

Update: I got a re-try on my test. Re-try is the newer, more encouraging replacement for ‘fail.’ I’m OK with the re-try because I had a good skate that represented my ability, with some things better than they could have been and some worse. I had no major errors like falls or touching down of the free foot. There were some wobbles on the brackets and double three turns that got minus points, along with a brownie point here and there for my figure eight and crossover ‘power circles.’ Video and more info when I get a chance.