This past Saturday was my two year anniversary of tearing my ACL. It's not exactly one of those occasions you celebrate, but it was a day of reflection for me. While I never want to tear my ACL again or go through surgery, I wouldn't want to give up all I've learned or how much I've grown as a person these past two years.
To commemorate the day, my friend Marissa (a former internally competitive pairs skater who hadn't skated in 2 years and 28 days) and I decided to go skate at a public session. It was wonderful to see my very talented friend on skates again. While she was reacquainting herself with her blades, I frequently skated over to the spot were IT happened. IT was caused by a stupid hole in the ice that snagged my toe pick. Who knew that particular frozen piece of water would have had such an impact on my life?
Sometimes, when I let myself think about it, I'll get nervous if I jump or spin on that spot of ice. Usually, I just avoid the area.
Today was the first day since I tore my ACL that I started landing double loops on one foot. Getting this jump back again has been difficult because the take off is off the right foot (the injured knee) and the landing is one the right foot.
It's not the prettiest landing, but it's there:
I kept trying and trying to land a clean double loop with a solid landing. And when I actually do it, coach isn't filming. LOL. Even though I fall on this one, I love my coach's reaction.
Mucho thanks to my awesome coach and friend, Danny, for helping me learn to do this all over again! I love you!!
Showing posts with label ice skating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ice skating. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
First Double Toe Loop Since ACL Reconstruction
Doing these jumps again is like finding treasures I thought I lost forever...
Took me a little over 21 months to find this one.
Took me a little over 21 months to find this one.
Friday, December 23, 2011
First Double Salchow Since Total ACL Reconstruction Surgery!!!
Today I got the best Christmas present EVER. After tearing my ACL back in March 2010 I landed my first double salchow today!
Silly orthopedic surgeons totally under estimate the difficulty of skating, spinning, and jumping on narrow metal blades with sharp teeth on the end. They told me I'd be back to skating six months after surgery. Boy, were they smoking crack. At six months I still couldn't walk like a normal person.
TWENTY ONE months after surgery I attempted my first double jump. Kind of a big difference.
Regardless, I'm happy despite how long it took because there were points I doubted I could ever do any of this again. It's been a slow process of healing that has required a ton of hard work. My first back-to-ice-happy-moment was when I got to perform in the Pelham Skate School's production of Musical Legends and Divas on Ice and then came today.
Below, via my awesome coach, Danny's iPhone comes my first double salchow since surgery:
Funny thing is that I didn't wake up this morning thinking I wanted to try a double salchow today. But, Danny remembered a comment I made last week where I said I thought I could probably re-learn how to do a double salchow before a single flip. Flips put considerable pressure and torque on my right knee.
So this morning Danny said, "How about double salchow?"
I'm sure I gave him a look that clearly said, Are you crazy?
The first few attempts I popped and did singles because I was sooo nervous and scared. I was worried about how much the landing would hurt or I was worried about how unhappy my knee would be if I fell and twisted it. All sorts of negative horrific scenarios were playing through my head.
I pushed the negative thoughts aside and let the nineteen or twenty years of muscle memory kick in.
And it worked.
Granted, it's not the prettiest double salchow, but I have plenty of time to perfect it again now that I know that I can actually do it.
Just want to thank my coach Danny and my trainers Dedrick and Jorge at PURmotion for helping make this possible.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Silly orthopedic surgeons totally under estimate the difficulty of skating, spinning, and jumping on narrow metal blades with sharp teeth on the end. They told me I'd be back to skating six months after surgery. Boy, were they smoking crack. At six months I still couldn't walk like a normal person.
TWENTY ONE months after surgery I attempted my first double jump. Kind of a big difference.
Regardless, I'm happy despite how long it took because there were points I doubted I could ever do any of this again. It's been a slow process of healing that has required a ton of hard work. My first back-to-ice-happy-moment was when I got to perform in the Pelham Skate School's production of Musical Legends and Divas on Ice and then came today.
Below, via my awesome coach, Danny's iPhone comes my first double salchow since surgery:
Funny thing is that I didn't wake up this morning thinking I wanted to try a double salchow today. But, Danny remembered a comment I made last week where I said I thought I could probably re-learn how to do a double salchow before a single flip. Flips put considerable pressure and torque on my right knee.
So this morning Danny said, "How about double salchow?"
I'm sure I gave him a look that clearly said, Are you crazy?
The first few attempts I popped and did singles because I was sooo nervous and scared. I was worried about how much the landing would hurt or I was worried about how unhappy my knee would be if I fell and twisted it. All sorts of negative horrific scenarios were playing through my head.
I pushed the negative thoughts aside and let the nineteen or twenty years of muscle memory kick in.
And it worked.
Granted, it's not the prettiest double salchow, but I have plenty of time to perfect it again now that I know that I can actually do it.
Just want to thank my coach Danny and my trainers Dedrick and Jorge at PURmotion for helping make this possible.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Practice Makes Perfect
I know I've heard this many times as an ice skater. Practice makes perfect. A coach once gave me a handout that basically broke down how many times a jump had to be repeated before a skater could achieve a high landing consistency rate.
It can take almost a several hundred attempts of a jump to achieve even a moderate consistency rate.
If a skater trains one hour a day and they are trying to learn an axel jump. The skater may attempt this jump twenty to thirty times in an hour. A lot of it depends on what other skills the skater must train during that time period and how bad they are falling. If they train five days a week, one hour per day, the skater is probably attempting around 125 axels per week.
It may take a couple to several weeks before the skater lands even one, and then another couple hundred attempts to start landing them fifty percent of the time. And just because you land the jump doesn't mean it's necessarily the best axel out on the market. It can always be higher, rotate faster, travel a farther distance across the ice, have a stronger landing. There is always room for improvement.
This type of work ethic is ingrained in me from twenty years of skating, and yet I don't always apply the patience I have for ice skating training to my writing. Even though I've seen significant improvement in my own and my critique partner's writing with every draft we write. It sometimes doesn't sink in just how much we need to write and read to improve. Natalie Whipple wrote a great post about hope and talks about how she wrote ten novels before she even signed with an agent.
Hope is a fickle thing. Some days I seem to have more than others. But, I've come to this conclusion, because I've seen it on my life-long ice skating journey, if you put in the hard work, eventually, you'll achieve the results you seek.
It can take almost a several hundred attempts of a jump to achieve even a moderate consistency rate.
If a skater trains one hour a day and they are trying to learn an axel jump. The skater may attempt this jump twenty to thirty times in an hour. A lot of it depends on what other skills the skater must train during that time period and how bad they are falling. If they train five days a week, one hour per day, the skater is probably attempting around 125 axels per week.
It may take a couple to several weeks before the skater lands even one, and then another couple hundred attempts to start landing them fifty percent of the time. And just because you land the jump doesn't mean it's necessarily the best axel out on the market. It can always be higher, rotate faster, travel a farther distance across the ice, have a stronger landing. There is always room for improvement.
This type of work ethic is ingrained in me from twenty years of skating, and yet I don't always apply the patience I have for ice skating training to my writing. Even though I've seen significant improvement in my own and my critique partner's writing with every draft we write. It sometimes doesn't sink in just how much we need to write and read to improve. Natalie Whipple wrote a great post about hope and talks about how she wrote ten novels before she even signed with an agent.
Hope is a fickle thing. Some days I seem to have more than others. But, I've come to this conclusion, because I've seen it on my life-long ice skating journey, if you put in the hard work, eventually, you'll achieve the results you seek.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Skating Update
Skating Update Since ACL Reconstruction: It's a work in progress. LOL. Kind of like writing. I've progressed from skating in a circle around the rink to actually doing some turns and spins. Yay!
I even signed up to skate in this year's ice show at our rink: Musical Legends and Divas on Ice. It's on December 3rd and 4th which means I have a lot of figuring out to do by then. Sunday was our first group practice and it went a little something like this:
Choreographer: Who here can do a double toe loop?
Me: (I don't raise my hand. But when choreographer starts eyeballing me, I succumb and raise it half way). Well, I can't do one right now, but I'm hoping I can again in two months.
Choreographer: Who here can do an illusion?
Me: Well, I used to be able to do one, so give me a few weeks to figure that one out.
Choreographer demonstrates a knee slide across the ice.
Me: That is so not happening.
You get the picture.
Despite my shortcomings, it was so nice to be on the ice practicing for a performance and being out there with old skating buddies. I just hope I can get it all back by December. I have a LOT of work to do.
I even signed up to skate in this year's ice show at our rink: Musical Legends and Divas on Ice. It's on December 3rd and 4th which means I have a lot of figuring out to do by then. Sunday was our first group practice and it went a little something like this:
Choreographer: Who here can do a double toe loop?
Me: (I don't raise my hand. But when choreographer starts eyeballing me, I succumb and raise it half way). Well, I can't do one right now, but I'm hoping I can again in two months.
Choreographer: Who here can do an illusion?
Me: Well, I used to be able to do one, so give me a few weeks to figure that one out.
Choreographer demonstrates a knee slide across the ice.
Me: That is so not happening.
You get the picture.
Despite my shortcomings, it was so nice to be on the ice practicing for a performance and being out there with old skating buddies. I just hope I can get it all back by December. I have a LOT of work to do.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Learning a Lesson Through A Forgotten Video
I'm still not back on the ice even though it's been about fourteen months since I had ACL reconstruction in my knee, but it's ok, I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like that. It's just what it is. It's like I'm climbing this very high mountain called Mt. Recovery, and I've only scaled about fifty percent.
Last Tuesday I had a hole in my tire. You're probably wondering why I'm telling you about a hole in my tire because this blog is about writing, skating, and laughter, not automotive repair. But, let me tell you, that hole was significant. Because when I called Sears Auto Center I found out I had purchased that tire April 23, 2010, almost exactly one month after ACL surgery. And do you know how many miles I had driven on that tire in thirteen months?
40,000 miles.
Yes, FOURTY THOUSAND MILES.
My poor knee never had a chance to recover properly. Driving, especially in the first 6-9 months was the most uncomfortable thing for me to do, it irritated my knee, and it always stayed swollen, but I did it for my job.
As of a few weeks ago I left said job and now have time to do all sorts of things, such as clean out the hard drive of my computer. As I was doing some digital cleaning this afternoon, I came across this video from 2007:
Watching this video of course brought tears to my eyes, but it also made me think about a couple of things:
Fighting Back
This video I've posted was from a performance on Saturday December 1, 2007. There is actually a second video from the first performance on Friday November 30, 2007 that I did not post. The Friday performance was horrible. I fell on two jumps, flipped my program around, and almost skated into the chair where the flag and uniform rested. And in general, the performance was lacking. I didn't finish off the choreography and the spins were lackluster at best. But, then I came back on Saturday and landed all the jumps (albeit shakily) and only fell once. I felt the spins were better and it's always good when one doesn't skate into a chair. But, rather that being defeated by Friday's performance, I came back stronger on Saturday's performance, and I'm proud of that.
Perspective
To be honest, I was never really proud of either performance. I remember how back then, in 2008, I was so focused on all the negative aspects of it that if someone complimented me I was convinced it was only because they were trying to be polite. But, now as I watch it three and a half years later, I appreciate what I could do so much more. Sure, I fell down and and some jumps were shaky, but I was skating. You never realize how precious something is until it is taken away from you (aka your toe pick gets stuck in a hole and you tear your ACL). I just look at it now (and please don't think I'm being egotistical when I say this) and I think it's beautiful, not because I was some fabulous skater-- I wasn't. But, because I was skating and gliding and expressing myself through music.
Last Tuesday I had a hole in my tire. You're probably wondering why I'm telling you about a hole in my tire because this blog is about writing, skating, and laughter, not automotive repair. But, let me tell you, that hole was significant. Because when I called Sears Auto Center I found out I had purchased that tire April 23, 2010, almost exactly one month after ACL surgery. And do you know how many miles I had driven on that tire in thirteen months?
40,000 miles.
Yes, FOURTY THOUSAND MILES.
My poor knee never had a chance to recover properly. Driving, especially in the first 6-9 months was the most uncomfortable thing for me to do, it irritated my knee, and it always stayed swollen, but I did it for my job.
As of a few weeks ago I left said job and now have time to do all sorts of things, such as clean out the hard drive of my computer. As I was doing some digital cleaning this afternoon, I came across this video from 2007:
Watching this video of course brought tears to my eyes, but it also made me think about a couple of things:
Fighting Back
This video I've posted was from a performance on Saturday December 1, 2007. There is actually a second video from the first performance on Friday November 30, 2007 that I did not post. The Friday performance was horrible. I fell on two jumps, flipped my program around, and almost skated into the chair where the flag and uniform rested. And in general, the performance was lacking. I didn't finish off the choreography and the spins were lackluster at best. But, then I came back on Saturday and landed all the jumps (albeit shakily) and only fell once. I felt the spins were better and it's always good when one doesn't skate into a chair. But, rather that being defeated by Friday's performance, I came back stronger on Saturday's performance, and I'm proud of that.
Perspective
To be honest, I was never really proud of either performance. I remember how back then, in 2008, I was so focused on all the negative aspects of it that if someone complimented me I was convinced it was only because they were trying to be polite. But, now as I watch it three and a half years later, I appreciate what I could do so much more. Sure, I fell down and and some jumps were shaky, but I was skating. You never realize how precious something is until it is taken away from you (aka your toe pick gets stuck in a hole and you tear your ACL). I just look at it now (and please don't think I'm being egotistical when I say this) and I think it's beautiful, not because I was some fabulous skater-- I wasn't. But, because I was skating and gliding and expressing myself through music.
Hands Circling Over the Head
So yeah, there are apparently some types of choreography that I just don't do well, and that would be the two instances where I circled my hands over my head. What was I doing? Spinning invisible pizza dough in the air? I remember feeling awkward when I did it and and watching it now makes me cringe. They always say if you're not comfortable with something you should let your choreographer know. But, silly ole' non-confrontational me didn't say anything. Note to self: In future, if you get to skate in a show again, ex-nay on the hands circling over the head and any other type of choreography that makes me look clumsy or uncomfortable.
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