Lessons from An(other) Olympian
Last week, I shared that I visited my 46th rink in California and got to practice at Great Park Ice in Irvine. I skated for an hour, then had a ten minute break before my next adventure begun… I was going to have a lesson with Olympian pairs skater, Nate Bartholomay! (cue girly shrieking here)
Nate is a 2014 Winter Olympian (with partner Felicia Zhang) and also former partners with current World Champion, Deanna Stellato-Dudek. Pretty awesome, right? I was lucky enough to secure a private lesson with Nate while I was in town, so I was definitely counting my lucky stars.
I asked Nate to help me with a few things: 1) pairs death spiral, 2) throw axel, and 3) throw double salchow. We never got to talking about the throw double salchow, but we did work on the death spiral and throw axel.
He and I did a warm up exercise, and I thought I was going to die. We did some partnered backwards crossovers, and we were going so fast that I thought I’d catch an edge, fall, and take him down with me. Thankfully, that did not happen!
Nate had some helpful tips for the death spiral and showed me the correct way to descend into the forward inside edge. As you can see from the photo above, my right butt is still too low – I need to lift it higher so that it can help me get my head at my knee level. Also, you will spy Raf in the hockey box!
The tips that Nate gave me for the throw axel were extremely helpful as well. I had been very scared of the possibility of jumping into my partner and having bad timing. But, Nate was able to ease my mind and gave me some useful exercises in doing this both on my own and with my partner before we try for the real thing.
I’m excited to get to work and make these elements finally happen!