I'm thinking about entering an upcoming Basic Skills competition in the spring. I did an ISI Alpha competition last year and really enjoyed it, and saw how much it pushed me to improve my skating. Here, I'd be entering at Adult 3, since I can do all of those skills reasonably comfortably. OK, except backward one foot glides, but thankfully they aren't included in this year's subset of required elements. But if I do that, I'll be spending some of my lesson time on developing a program and working on skills I already know how to do (though of course they could use improvement), rather than working on skills that I'm still developing that desperately need help. I'm sure this is a common issue, though I don't think I've seen it discussed here. How do I strike a balance between improving existing skills, developing a program using those skills, and learning new skills?
(In case it affects responses, I'm currently doing one lesson a week and one or two practice sessions. I might be able to ramp that up next semester.)