Roller Derby Boot Camp
Day One
I had my first roller derby boot camp practice yesterday. I was nervous going into it, but didn’t really need to be. The people are very nice and non-judgemental. There are people of all sorts of skill levels trying out and it was a bit intimidating skating next to someone who made the team last year. (She had to quit due to time issues between her job, school, and life. She missed getting a bye back onto the team by 1 point (skills test). We both agreed that sucks, but she’s looking at boot camp as a way to get back into shape and relearn everything so she’ll be stronger when our tryouts come around again. It’s nice that she’s not letting that 1 point get to her.)
So, here’s what we did on day one:
- Warm up going derby left (skating the regular way- counter clockwise) for a few minutes
- Warm up going right (clockwise- doing crossover’s in this direction is incredibly hard!)
- Stretching while skating left (and trying not to fall while bending over to reach my toes)
- They then broke us into two groups. Group 1 stayed on the floor while Group 2 went to another area off of main floor.
- I was in Group 2 and we did walking- sideways left and right, and back and forth on our toe-stops. Unknown to me, but my toe stops came loose and made this harder than it should have been.
- Then we switched with Group 1 and did what they were doing while we were walking- a time test to see how fast we can skate 5 laps. They want to time us so they can group us into similarly fast people. My wheels felt slick and I was sliding around the bends and after lap 3, I started to hear a jingling. My toe stops were loose. Thank god they didn’t fall off! As for the wheels- it’s possible they are just dirty from picking up a bunch of dust. Hopefully cleaning them will help and I won’t slide around tonight.
- After that, we worked on t-stops. They set up cones 10 feet apart (to pass this part of the skills test, you must be able to stop in 10ft) and had us line up in rows and work on stopping. The coaches were standing in that 10 foot zone and made me nervous and I just couldn’t do it! But I was able to stop at the end where the coaches weren’t. They noticed this and had a good laugh. A few of the other girls were the same way. :)
- After the t-stopping drill, we did one-knee falls. Having practiced this a lot at the open skates, it was quite easy for me, but others were having a hard time of getting over their fear of purposefully falling. We would skate a bit, go down on one knee briefly, get back up and then go down on the other knee briefly. Easy peasy.
- And then we were done. More team stretching (which at this point, felt really good, especially the groin area) and then home.
I had fun, even if my back and abs were a bit sore after the 2 hours of skating. I’m trying to figure out what to eat beforehand, as the spaghetti I had last night for dinner did not hold me over the whole 2 hours. I was so hungry! It’s much like running though- figuring out what you need and how much and when to get you through your race.
We practice again tonight and I can’t wait!
