We just recently finished one round of classes. There’s no class this week. I’ve signed up for the next eight week session. Actually, with holiday breaks it will take me to mid-December which will likely mean that’s it until the beginning of next year.
At the last session we more or less “tested” for progress. My backward skating is coming along. I’ve probably got backward one foot glides good enough for Basic 3 level. Ditto my backward snowplow stop. That leaves just two techniques I need to finish Basic 3.
One of them is a two-foot turn front to back, moving on a circle. However, before I can do that, I need to learn a Basic 2 technique that I missed: The Two-foot turn in place:
Looks simple enough, but when I tried it, I ended flat on my back. (Why, yes, as a matter of fact the “how to fall” I’d learned in Judo is in fact coming back to me.)
However, once I get that, I’ll need to now make it moving. That ramps up the difficulty level:
Finally, there’s one called a “bonus skill”, a forward pivot. It looks simple when the girl in the video does it but from where I am I can see some points of difficulty. This is something I haven’t tried yet.
Since the classes tend to jump around in techniques, I’ve actually already started some of the Basic 4 stuff: Forward outside and inside edges, and forward crossovers and, Basic 4 continues working on backward one foot glides. I didn’t say I could do them well, but I have at least started. Once I finish the Basic 3 techniques I’ll be well into Basic 4.
My immediate goals remain to finish out Basic 3 and particularly improve my backward one foot glides since that’s going to be vitally important going into Basic 5 where we start doing backward edges and backward crossovers.
So, by the end of the year, let’s say I want to have Basic 3 completed and to at least have made some effort on all the techniques of Basic 4.
The Writer in Black 