When Moves Disappear

My scratch spin has gone on vacation. I have not authorized this. I have no idea how long it'll be gone. *sad face*

I remember for the longest time, I would spend such a large portion of my practice time just on edges. My main goal with skating is to take even the simplest of moves and make it look flawless. For like a year, I would spend 10 full minutes on each set of edges, 40 minutes total. Until my forward edges felt solid, then I would only spend 5 minutes on each forward edge. Then the back outside edges felt solid. May not sound like a lot, but when you're doing nothing else but that move, you can cover a lot of ice and lobes in 5 minutes. And get mighty sweaty. Or at least I do.

Now my thing seems to be alternating 3's. I probably spend at least 10 mins on each set. After warming up. So by the time that's all done, almost a half hour has passed, roughly half the session. I still struggle a bit controlling the back inside edge on my left leg, which makes that choctaw step to a forward outside edge tricky. So I worked on waltz 3's on the hockey circle. Over and over and over. I need to be able to sustain the edge along that circle.

And back outside 3's are fun now. I can pretty much do the back power 3's on my right leg (the strong leg). Along the hockey circle. I'm trying to get this on my left leg. After about the second turn, I start drifting toward the center of the hockey circle, like a spiral pattern. But I'll get it. Hell, a week ago, I couldn't even turn clockwise on two feet, let alone one. Just keep skating.

My back spin is decent. Slow but decent. Much better than when I first began working on it. Now if only my regular scratch spin would come back from vacation. I think most skaters have this problem. You'll nail something only to have it leave you for a while. And you never know how long it's going to stay away.