I love the layout full, and enjoy working on it, even in lines. But the last two or three weeks the real possibility of me taking this trick out of lines has come up, and I'm soooo close - and yet, just as close as I was 3 weeks ago. Although the corrections I need to make are minor, there's just not enough happening. My legs are still a little bent, my break is still a little weak, and I still loosen up a little off the bar. Now, the first couple of tricks at the beginning of class are pretty decent, but I can't sustain the stamina to make them all consistent.
Hopefully off-season build and strength work will help with that. I've committed to doing Routine 1 and Routine 2 each week on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, while watching TV. It's a nice time to do a bit of strength and stretch, though last week I fell asleep in the middle of the stretch portion.
Then the next thing that has come up is in my head. I took a less than ideal return bar a few weeks back, and found myself in the back apron, completely unscathed. But since then, I've had real issues returning to the bar, and to the board. Not pushing enough off the catcher, not turning, rejecting bar after bar. It's one of those areas that I'm baby-stepping, and have successfully done a round trip once since. Last practice, however, it was everything but that - the first return, I grabbed the bar, then released it like a hot potato, and successfully turned to my back, and the second, I got the return, but was low - so when up on the board, after releasing my hand and realizing that I wasn't going to make it all the way up, regrabbed the bar, without any damage. Well, it's good to know that I've f*@#ed up the return in all ways possible, and have had the presence of mind to keep myself safe regardless.
In the next little bit of time (say the next month or so), I'd like to see those fulls out of lines. I'd also like to be over my return issues. It's wonderful that the powers that be have responded to our requests for more catching, and that now, most days, we get three rounds instead of two. And as scary as it is for me to throw my tricks to Jesse, it's good for me as well. Pushing myself to the brink of terror and surviving. Ha ha.
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Last night brought a nice upswing (ha ha) in my performance following a rough few weeks training-wise. Maybe it was that I put in writing some of the issues that I've been having, and was thus able to break them down and work on them piece-meal. Or maybe running on fly days has had positive effects on my stamina.
In the past few months, my fulls early in class were the best of the bunch, as I quickly fatigued. Last night I was able to implement positive changes throughout the full two hours, even though I had arrived and started early, and had gotten more turns than usual. I focussed on 2 things- legs straight and big break.
Jesse was up in the catch trap again last night, but instead of dreading that, I welcomed the opportunity to work on the issues with my returns. So it was splits across and working hard on the return. We caught and returned all 3! Really great progress for me, with the returns even smoother than those before the wipe out into the apron.
Kat was kind enough to film the last two:
Apropos to all this talk about fear was a quote from Chrissie Wellington on twitter today: "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Do the thing you think you can't do."
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