Private Lessons

I think I need a break from private lessons. I feel like I'm spending all this money, but not getting a whole lot out of it. I can't really move on because everything I'm working on still needs so much work. And what's wrong is still wrong; it's not getting any better. And coach says the same thing to me, week after week, and I can't do what she's telling me to do.

I wonder if I would feel the same if this were my original coach. My former coach got herself a day job. And she's religious so Sundays are out. Her only available times are afternoon freestyle and early morning Saturdays. Neither of these times are convenient for me. First, I HATE the afternoon freestyles. They're crowded because all the kids are out of school, and that's when they skate. And I don't do early mornings, especially on weekends. I'm talking 6am. I refuse to leave the house before 8am, and it takes me a half hour to drive to the rink.

For a long time, I didn't have a coach. In May, I took an adult LTS class to ease back into skating after being off ice with roller derby so long. I enjoyed the class, but I was too advanced for it. My rink only offered through Adult 4.

But it was fun, a nice way to work on basics, and I was by far the best skater there, so it stroked my ego. I liked the coach, so I asked to take private lessons with her. She's older, which was nice. Being coached by someone who's not younger is nice. And she's a great coach, even though we don't quite mesh as well as I felt with my former coach.

But last week and today, I'm getting increasingly frustrated with lessons. I'm just tired of hearing the same corrections that I can't quite do yet. I'm not giving up skating. I'll still skate on my own 3x a week for an hour+. But I need to get to a point where what I'm working on feels solid before I pay a coach to teach me new moves.

It's the money, but it's not the money. Yes, we can easily afford weekly private lessons. But my inner cheapskate keeps yelling that I'm kind of wasting my money because I'm not getting any new insights out of these lessons. Maybe in a month, I'll re-evaluate.