Saturday 5 February 2011

OMG! there's a pocket in my pocket!!!

Up at 7am, on the bus into Cardiff. You guessed it, SKATE PRACTICE!!

Neither MrsBaxter or Abadabadoo are able to attend today so the whole session we left to me, eeepppp! Then en route into Cardiff the wife gets a message from Jinx saying she was unable to attend training too, so I have to take subs too, not that its a drama, as long as everyone brings the right money, I had no float or change.

I had planned the session on Friday night, I basically cribbed a 2 hour session from a drill book I found via Frankie Facebreaker's website. I wanted to take everyone right back to basics. We seem to be flying along lately, lots of blocks, and speed. Unfortunately this has come at a price and that price is people are getting sloppy with their skating. So after the normal warm-ups and stretching we did some work on correct stance. Alot of the girls are remembering to 'keep low' but I noticed that they where doing it wrong, some where even bending at the waist with their knees locked. So I talked everyone through how to hold their lines. Thanks to the wonderful ZippyFish who was my model, she basically stood their while I prodded and pulled her into different positions for the rest to see what they where supposed to look like. We then spent some time skating around in this position but also with our arms pulled across our chests, elbows touching and our fists on our chins. Hopefully this will start to limit the amount of flailing and grabbing the seems to go on when people start to lose their balance and/or fall.

T-Licious then took over for a bit, talking us all through some balance drills. We really need to work on our skating being alot more fluid and solid. I know that sounds like a contradiction but if you skate Derby then am sure you know what I mean. So there we all where, wannabe Roller Derby hard-nuts, arms out gliding about the rink being figure skating princesses!! its gonna take awhile but we will turn her into a Derby Bruiser! We did alot of work on our crossovers, making them more fluid and concentrating on pushing more with the rear leg.

We then spent a few minuets doing 'free time' basically I allowed the girls to go off and do what they wanted, what they felt they needed to work on. Some skated at speed, some practiced falls, some stops. A few just had a chat. We then all came together again to work on starts, Duck walks to be precise. once everyone look like they had mastered them I then added the toe starts. Then onto stops. Then we played Red Light Green Light. Which seemed to go down well, and by then end of it we all seemed to be starting and stopping alot faster.

We then practiced  having someone 'appear' in front of you. Basically the faster more able skaters would side-step/booty block the less able so they could practice slowing themselves down and hopefully not back-blocking. Then myself and ZippyFish worked together going around and 'sandwiching' skaters so they got the feel for being blocked by 2 opposing skaters at the same time.

All in all I feel it was a good session, maybe I tried to cram too much in, maybe I didn't provide enough? I don't know, its been a long time since I have been asked to take a whole session on my own.

Then it was off to MrsBaxter's house for the Team Meeting, however you don't get to know the in's and out's of that, as its team members only. But lets just say alot was discussed. The 2011 intra-league season has been sorted. Our Debut plans are coming along nicely, we even almost have a name for it. Our plans for the newbie leagues mini-tournament 'Jam and JerusaSLAM!' are also muddling along happily. Vive La CRoC!!

Stay Skating, Derby Love

Rhayfen
xxxxx

No comments:

Post a Comment