mini clinic notes

I am having trouble processing everything that happened in the clinic today. Part of that is undoubtedly due to the <4 hours of sleep that I got last night, due to staying up talking with friends, sleeping poorly because I was paranoid about sleeping through the alarm and missing the flight, and having to get up at 4:45 to get to the airport.

I'll get the sour note out of the way first. I'm annoyed because the pose website said there would be a maximum of 8 students, and there were 13 or 14, with another 3 who sat in on the course but didn't get video-taped. I am not exactly dissatisfied with the experience, but I would have preferred to have more time to talk about my video. Plus it just doesn't seem right...if you say you're going to limit it, limit it already.

It was interesting to see how different the Pose coach's take on the Pose method and related issues was from the message board brain trust. Cases in point: he doesn't reccommend something as minimal as the H-street, he talks a lot about having the right arm motion, he never told anyone that they have a late pull, (on the message board, virtually every beginner seems to have a late pull,) he talked about how your cadence can be too fast, his beginning drills were completely different from what's on the video and from what Jack would recommend to a beginner...there were a couple more points that I'm not remembering right now.

All in all, I feel a little more confused about the whole thing. The coach felt that my "before" video was pretty good, but that I wasn't getting my knees up enough. I wasn't totally sure what to make of that, but I increased my knee lift. Maybe I was flipping my heel up towards my butt instead of lifting it. The "after" video definitely looked less strained, and it felt better too. He also thought that my cadence was too high. I'm trying to pull as fast as I can, so that increases my cadence. To be honest, I'm a little unsure of that criticism, especially on the "after" video. He was watching me do a 5k race pace run in slo-mo so my cadence:speed ratio was pretty hard to figure.

I wonder if he's right about the knee thing, and that my tendency to flip the feet up in the back makes it look like I'm pulling somewhat later than I actually am, with too much of my stride in the back. The "after" video looked better in that respect, although I still had a straight trailing leg briefly.

I think the stretch cordz will be my next move. I also think I'm going to start training again, with significant training time spent on drills. I'll be thinking about all this, and will post a new program soon.