Free Dance

Our Balance Lift



Tim returned yesterday from his trip to Hong Kong and I returned from Fairbanks. It turns out that there was a skating rink in the lobby of the building where he was working in Hong Kong and he had quite a bit of free time, but hadn't taken his skates. Bummer!!

We worked on compulsories yesterday. Today we worked on free dance which for me is more fun. We did both of our lifts (we hadn't done them in quite some time). Tim finally explained what he wanted me to do to get into the balance lift and I finally understood what he meant, so the lift was much better from his perspective. Same thing on the spread eagle lift; Tim finally made me understand what he wanted me to do. Maybe after two years we are finally learning how to communicate.

Lifts are much harder for him because he has to lift 115 lbs. of dead weight while skating. I just have to hang there and try to look good. So I try to accommodate whatever he wants me to do to make the lifting process easier on him. Since my past experience with lifts is limited it's not always intuitive to me what works best. Today was a breakthrough in that he finally felt comfortable with where I was and how we got into the lifts. We've done the balance lift for two years and I'm just understanding it now. I guess I'm a little slow.

We tried a variation on last year's spin and we like it better. We worked on the footwork our coach gave us and actually saw improvement. All of this was really fun too. What more can I say?