Skills Test 101

Skater must have good skating posture - check
Must be able to bend at knees and hips with shoulders back - check
Must be able to swing arms fluidly - check
Have steady, confident strides and use both feet to push forward on the straightways - check.

Have a kick-ass attitude, CHECK!!!!!!

We are being skills tested at the moment. The coaches have had enough of skating round and round in circles practising T-Stops, snow ploughs etc. Not that its not important, believe me it is, but we want to scrimmage, we want to get in there and shoulder check, practise at playing Jammer, Pivot and Blocker and generally kick some derby ass!

Before we do, we need to prove that we are safe and confident on our skates and able to dodge/jump our way out of trouble or over our teammates if they fall. Safety should NEVER be under-estimated (or is that over-estimated?), look at what happened to Tequila Mockingbird.

So, skills test...... Everyone in our league is doing quite well in that area, we are pretty much all safe and able to tick the necessary boxes, just little niggly things to iron out. For example, I cant skate on one foot along the length of the straight way. I can pick up my foot if I need to avoid objects/heads etc and I can pick my foot up and skate on the other for part of the straight way, but I'm buggered if I can do it all the way! I put that down to my crappy skates and so do my coaches, so I'm not that concerned as yet. I can shoulder block, ass block and lean people out of bounds. I can fall small - a skill found out when a team mate blind sided me and knocked me clean off my skates!!! I also have a habit of catching people on the back of their arms when I'm coming in for a shoulder check from behind, but some extra work with my coach has sorted that one out. Although we are not WFTDA, we still base our skills, rules and regulations off them and its good to have a list of standards to work off. To see a list of all the rules/regulations and skills, check out http://rules.wftda.com/official-rules/
Its so good to see us all progressing so well, its giving us all hope that we will be doing this all in competition soon. Light at the end of the tunnel, as its hard setting up a new league from scratch. We don't have girls to watch bout and compete, we just have DVD's and the hope that when we do crash onto the scene, this city that we are in, wont know what hit it.............

Out of Action

Bloody hell its been a long time. Its horrible being out of contact and off the grid. I have felt like a complete billy-no-mates since I moved into my new crib. At last though, I'm back on the grid and have been re-united with all my bestest peeps and avid blog followers and now you can sigh a big sigh of relief - I am back!!!
Now I have got that off my chest, back to the important stuff. A lot has been going on since I last checked in with you all. We have graduated from fresh meat to fully fledged league members. Training has become more intense, we seem to be doing more pack style drill which are fab! Its hard though, I've gone from focusing on my on performance and how I skate around the track to focusing on my team mates and how close they are to me! Its hard also to block legally - cant help those chicken wings!! Our coach has come up with a great drill though to keep us flappers in check. She makes us skate with paper plates under our arms, with our names on and if we block illegally, she knows because the only paper plates on the ground are of the flappers. Doing penalty lunges suck big time!!!
We have split into our respective teams which are awesome, it has given us a new identity and code to live up to. We still train as a league as we don't have enough girls in the teams to form a functioning, bouting team.
Talking about enough girls, we have another intake of freshies!! Yay!!! Cant wait to meet them all and see how they are all gonna fit in. They aren't gonna be as awesome as us though!!!!
Do y'all remember when I was agonizing over my fitness levels, wondering if it was me just being unfit, if it was the food I was eating before my practise of if it was just my plain old crappy skates? Well, a girl in the league gave me a go of her skates and I had my answer. OH MY GOD, I was flying on them! I was going so fast, I was actually scaring myself! My eyes were watering, my hair was flying out behind me, I was superwoman on skates!!!!! I could keep up with the girls without huffing and puffing, it wasn't so much of an effort skating around for a prolonged amount of time. I wasn't sliding out coming out of the corners, but my left leg was aching so much it was actually shaking after practise! I didn't know how much work your left leg in particular does. When the coaches were saying that we need to skate clockwise to prevent your legs and hips becoming uneven, I couldn't work out why as it didn't feel that way to me.......until now. I can definitely say that I am fit enough and its the crappy skates.
Well folks, I'm gonna leave this blog at that, but don't worry, I'm gonna be writing to you all soon enough. Got training in the next few days and I will be back with more blogtastic news then.
God, its good to be back........

New Gear!!!

I got my new pads, I got my new pads! Da-da-da-da-daaaa! They are so great, its like falling onto little pillows of air! I can slide forever on them because they are not shitty plastic ones and they make a great "thocking" noise when i double knee slide on them. I know your sliding wrong if you hear a "thock", but that will come as I improve, but I dont care, 'cause I love my new pads!!!

187's rock! The padding is so thick, I dont feel the floor as I go down. I wish I had bought them sooner, but I have them now and that is all that matters. I am now allowed to try double knee slides and I am trying to slide without the "thocking" down, but im not that delicate on my skates yet. Any tips/hints from anyone? Should I persevere in making contact with the floor on both knees at once, or should i momentarily go down on one knee first, then the other?

Back to boot-camp tho - the exercise drills are getting harder. We are doing bum slides - my ass is hurting so much! I am trying to alternate the ass cheeks I land on, but I find that sometimes I land square on my ass and I really don't want to be doing that. The thought of attending ER with a broken tailbone puts the fear of God into me! I don't want any doc putting his finger where the sun don't shine!

We were also practising one legged push offs in the low skate position - man, your thighs really burn at that one! The up side though, my jeans are looser around my thighs and that's always a good thing!!! Again, cross-overs from one side of the hall to the other and lunges - the lunges are getting easier but I've discovered that cross-overs aren't so easy with my 187's. Better than knee surgery though. Still need to get my mouth guard and my helmet and that is me all done until I get my new skates.

Cant wait for those!

The Kit

I am here, I want to get out. I want the fishnets on show. I want to perform all these cool sliding/falling drills, T-Stops and 4 point falls. I want to shove girls aside as I blaze by them in a blur of skates and wrath. One problem - I cant skate!

I have less than adequate pads for my knees and elbows. I have ok wrist pads. I dont have a helmet or mouth guard and I have second-hand outdoor skates. I have plenty of fishnets, but they are hold-ups. I need proper gear, I need proper skates.

Last time I was on roller-skates, it was the eighties. Glitter balls were abound and roller discos were on every street corner. Duran Duran were my idols. My best friend and I would go to the roller disco every saturday, skate round and around, drink cherry cola slushies and try to look cool. Im not gonna tell you how long ago that was, but it would be safe to say that I stopped skating when most of the girls in my league were being born!

When I bought my skates, I was so excited I wore them straight away. I put them on, stepped out of the car and fell promptly on my arse!!! This cant be right, i thought. I know how to skate, I was shit-hot at skating. Why then am I sitting on my ass, in front of loads of people, feeling really stupid?