Roller Derby Boot Camp
Day Three
AKA- Man are my arms sore!
Alright, this practice started just a little different than the others. The 1’s and 2’s arrived at 12 and did their 25 laps in 5 minutes test. I think most of them passed, but I really have no idea. You could just see the fatigue setting in after a few minutes….Those of us in Group 3 or 4 arrived at 12:30 so we could meet up with everyone else after their lap test. We warmed up on the side while they skated.
Once the lap test was done, we did an endurance skating drill.
- First we started skating left.
- Skull (ie-sticky skate)
- Skate again
- T-stop and switch directions
- Skull right
- Skate
- Two knee fall
- Push-ups (I think this was for a minute, but I lost track of time. I counted how many I did and got about 10 in. Now, push-ups aren’t exactly easy, but add in skates and all that padding and it’s incredibly hard!)
- Skull left
- Skate
- Two knee fall
- Plank (Yes, as in yoga style plank. Again, I think this was for a minute. She said the record was 5 minutes. I would like to know who can hold that pose for 5 minutes, because holy wah was that tough!)
- Skull right
- Skate
- Two knee fall
- Bicycles (As in lay on your back, knees bent with skates in the air and pretend you’re riding a bike. All of these things are not *that tough* without skates, but add in those weights to the end of your feet and it’s quite the workout.)
- Skull left
- Skate
- T-stop
- Water break
Somewhere in there she also had us coast on one leg during the straight-aways. I can’t remember the exact order of things, but you get the general idea.
After that little endurance drill, we worked on two more falls: the four point fall and the baseball slide. The four point fall is basically just that- using your knees and your arms. Easy peasy. The baseball slide is a whole other beast that I hate. I was able to do it, but in the process I landed on my hip and gave myself a nice bruise. I know bruises will happen, but it just sucks when you do them to yourself vs. someone else doing it to you, you know?
After that we had some time to just “free skate” and work on things we needed to work on. So, I joined the group that wanted to work on stopping, because I need to nail the plow stop and t-stop down. After getting pointers from about 4 different people, it finally just clicked with me. I can now do the plow stop and the t-stop! Doing it within the 10 feet is another story though. I don’t know how much distance it took me stop, but I did it at least a few times. :)
And today, my upper body is quite sore. Normally push-ups and yoga poses don’t cause soreness, but I think I hold myself differently with the padding on, because otherwise it gets in the way. And next practice is tomorrow (Tuesday), so I have a day to recuperate.
