Training: Week One

Out on the interwebs, the theme among most roller derby skaters is simple this time of year: TRAIN, TRAIN, TRAIN.

If there really is such a thing as a derby off-season, January probably is the closest thing you'll find. Admittedly, this skater took to the couch for most of the holiday season, and for various reasons, only just returned back for week one training. (Slacker! Yes, I know...)

In any case, one of the big things I've read many teams (including DDG) are doing is to document your personal short-term and long-term goals.

I've got one main goal this year... skate with a vengence.

I started last year not being able to skate at all. I got beat up one side and down the other. I learned. I paid attention. I hustled. I skated every chance I got. I was overlooked often. I flew under the radar. And by the end of the year, I felt like I had fought the hard fight to have my skates underneath me finally.

But 2010 is the year where I will NOT go unnoticed.

My short-term goals:

1. Really improve agility. Step, step, step, step! I want my skates to be as natural as shoes underneath me. I want to be able to move in every imaginable direction quickly and gracefully. I picked up some fancy-pants footwork drills on one of my many guest-skating practices, and its really been helpful to me. I can practice during open skates even. Just quickly switching all different directions from left-right, backwards-forwards.
   
2. Get LOW. I always thought I was skating in derby stance, until I see photos of me from bouts. Then I realize I look like a Redwood Tree.... standing TALL and UPRIGHT. Bad deal! So, my immediate goal is to get down, get low, and STAY there. That's going to require some core strengthening, as my lower back is already feeling my lower stance attempts. (Photo Caption: TIMBER! How to skate like a tree 2009 edition NO MORE.)


3. Bootay blocking perfection. I realized midway through last season that I wasn't effective as a blocker the way that I was taught. I am not built the same way, and cannot deliver near the blow that many of my DDG teammates can with a shoulder block. So, I honed in on the swooping-bootay block. A quick cut across the track and a snap of the bootay, and away they go. I've managed it in practice a few times, but need to get better at applying it on different surfaces. Seems slicker tracks and faster, more jumbled packs are very difficult for me to setup naturally. I need to practice quicker cuts and setting up in more congested packs.

And the long-term goals:

1. Speed/Endurance. I'm off to a decent start here, but not nearly All-Star jammer worthy. The goal for All-Star jamming is 18 laps in 2 minutes. I'd also like to do 5 laps in under 40 seconds. Right now, I feel my physical endurance is okay, but my back aches pretty badly around minute 3 of the 5 minute drill and I can't stop hacking a lung afterwards. Translation: Core, Core, Core and some breathing exercises to help with the cold air and exertion.


2. Mental Game. I spent the entire Regional tournament studying the mental game of derby. If there is one thing that I learned in 2009, it was the SMARTER team would prevail. I am really studying tactings and blocking strategy as well as game mechanics to increase my game attentiveness. Our jammer in the box? Speed up. Their jammer in the box? Slow down. I want the game to be second nature... something I don't even have to think about, more reflex and reaction than thought out strategy.


3. Score, Score, Score. Translate all of the above into a hard fought second whistle performance, and what my end result hopes will make me the go-to jammer for points scoring. I want to be the one who can get through the pack repeatedly, cleanly, and reliably. I want to be known for being fast and durable. I want to be the one my team can count on in a tight scoring, buzzer beater of a bout.

I'm only into week one of preseason training, but I plan on trying to document my personal goals and progress on a weekly basis. The only update I can give as of right now is that my slacker self left my skates in the trunk of my car during the holidays, which means that the cold/hot weather caused the leather to shrink and I am fighting a break-in period All. Over. Again. So not cool.

What about you? What are your training goals for 2010?

Broken Hearted Skate-a-Thon

Can you spare a little change?

Its time for our Annual Broken Hearted Skate-a-thon, where we skate our very festively-dressed bootays off to raise money for the American Heart Association.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

You can come skate laps for Broken Hearts with us on February 10th at Roller Time Skate Rink (707 Arcadia Cir. Huntsville, AL) for a $10 donation (+$3 for skate rental).

OR

you can make a one-time donation online! I've made it super easy... just click below to donate via paypal.

Donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE!

How I discovered Derby...

....Though the real question is how DIDN'T I discover it before!?

It had been over 15 years since I had really been on roller skates (save for some inline skating about 10 years ago), but some of my favorite childhood memories were from putting on my aunt's old roller skates in our garage and pretending to be the next Nancy Kerrigan on roller skates.

Then when I hit my tween years, I managed to earn a few extra bucks cutting the lawn to head up to the local skating rink with some of my peers at school. I wasn't allowed to do it very often, and I couldn't really stay late on Friday nights or the All-Night skates like my friends, but I LOVED going to the rink and watching all the kids who got to spend countless nights there on the floor shuffle skating, speed skating, and even a little couple skating... (which at 12 is a really big deal folks!) I wanted so much to join the speed team (when they were actually still on QUADS and not inlines... boy, I'm old!) but the parents really weren't very accepting of that idea.

High school came and quickly thereafter adult life... and though I missed skating, there aren't too many opportunities for going skating as an adult that doesn't include a child of some sort. I think we may have tried once in my early 20's to go back to a rink and skate for nostalgia sake, and felt ENTIRELY old bag loserish. That pretty much ended any ideas of me skating again until maybe I ended up with a kiddo of my own one day.

Then in late 2008, I read a few updates from a local Huntsville Twitterer about skating. Intrigued, I asked what she meant and where was she skating that was adult-no kids friendly. She told me about the Dixie Derby Girls... the local women's flat track roller derby league. Color Me INTERESTED.... a place where adult women can not only skate, but play a badass sport like roller derby?!? Really? In HUNTSVILLE, AL?!?

It took me all of a week to show up at my first practice. I was mucho worried about the fact that I hadn't been on skates in over 15 years, but its supposed to be like riding a bicycle, right? On with the rental skates and some borrowed league pads and I was wobbly rolling around on my first night (Photo is actual first night evidence of craptastic rentals). I wasn't wall-hugging bad, but I wasn't exactly the picture of poise and grace. Good thing that derby is wonderful about teaching the basics and making you relearn the right way how to skate.

So about 3 months of Freshmeat training ensued... learning how to stride, how to stop 3 different ways, how to fall correctly 4 different ways, crossovers, stepping, stance... you name it, we learned it. And a brief vomit-inducing assessment later, and I was scrimmage eligible.

And that's where the hand holding ended. It was straight into scrimmage with some fiercely intimidating chicks who showed NO quarter for a newbie. I became VERY acquainted with the floor. In fact, the floor just might've been my best friend for much of the first half of the season.

I know every team has their powerhouses, but I can objectively say after skating an entire season that I truly believe that Dixie has an entire TEAM of powerhouses. The hardest hits I've ever taken have been from my own players in scrimmage... at first it was brutal. But, in the end, it made me so steady on my feet that hits from other teams were weak in comparison and while it still slows me down, at least I've managed to NOT stay crawling on the floor any longer. I may have even learned to put a few on the floor as well along the way.

Now, a full season later, I'm wondering how I didn't know about the sport before. I've met incredible people, had extraordinary opportunities to skate with some great competitors, and have learned a whole new sport and adopted a whole new lifestyle. I've even managed to recruit a few freshies of my own... my cousin in Ohio just became scrimmage eligible and I'm still working on my baby sister getting out there to skate too.

The 2010 Recruitment cycle is about to begin, and its really come full circle for me... now, I get to happily watch as I move out of the rookie shoes into the seasoned vet group and another group enters into the discovery and wonderment of roller derby. They have no idea what's in store for them, and how greatly the sport will impact every aspect of their lives.