#wfdta

There was a definite moment last week when all of the things I've been working on individually with my skating, just seemed to come together for me. I went skating one day, and everything was so much easier all of a sudden. I felt way more comfortable on my skates. I also found I could do a lot of things I wasn't able to do before. Someone told me last night that they could see a big improvement in my skating, and that I seemed to have simultaneously improved on both speed and skill at the same time.

I think this jump in skills had to do with a number of things. I've been working on my leg strength since the beginning, and I guess all those squats have started to kick in because my endurance, speed, and skater stance have improved. I had been working on my footwork, and at the same time I figured out how to loosen my trucks. All of these things made maneuvering around the track much easier. 

I had been working on anything and everything I didn't know how to do properly during practice warm-ups. I made a list in my mind and basically started checking things off. I even started learning how to do things on my skates that I wouldn't even begin to know how to use yet--like skating backwards or skating sideways, for example. I can skate backwards pretty okay now, and I can skate sideways for around 10 seconds I would say. I haven't figured out how to "steer" properly in that position yet, though.

I also learned how to do toe stops fast, and then I learned how to do them quickly and unexpectedly while going fast, by having a friend I was skating with yell "stop now!" at me, while I was going around the track. This was pretty fun. Then I learned how to do a turn around toe stops and immediately start off again with a hard and fast toe stop run. I loved practicing that and got pretty good at it, rather quickly, by just doing it over and over again. Turn around toe stop, toe stop run. Turn around toe stop, toe stop run.

The other big things that I think helped was figuring out how to run and jump on my skates. Learning how to do these things helped me figure out that I could regain my stride even if I was skating on one foot, or jumping or feeling off balance. This in turn rolled over into helping to improve my speed, because I learned how to keep my feet moving.