It's almost a new season. I have to confess, I don't really know what to expect (and I'm the Interleague Coordinator).
What I do know is that things have been hard in BCR land since about September-October. Most of it is not worth rehashing; it's one of those situations where the more you rehash, the more you wonder if you should have made a different choice, the more you lose sleep over trying to find that one miraculous solution that would have made every single person happy. I'm an idealist and a compromiser - I like to believe that solution exists, but the truth is, it doesn't in every instance. Sometimes, we just have to take what we can get and make the best of it.
So here we are. A lot of familiar faces from the very beginnings of BCR aren't around anymore. It's pretty surreal to look around and realize that Amyn, myself, and Bruise are the only ones who were there for the founding of the team. According to some people, that makes me an OG.
Thing is, though, I've been here forever, around roller derby, that is. I'll be involved for my fourth season this year, skating for my third. In a sense, I feel like I should be a better skater than I am - but who doesn't feel like that? In a lot of ways, I'm disappointed in myself, but in a lot of ways, I'm not.
I look back two seasons ago, to the Mary Helley that ended up becoming the captain of Belles 'n' Bombshells and eventually the President of the league. Comparatively, I am light years past that girl. I understand more about strategy and teamwork, and I am not so unsure of myself that I let opportunities pass me by on the track. Well - okay, I lie. PART of that unsure girl is still there. But I like to think that she's fading the longer I skate.
This team has really been through hell backwards in the past six months. Maybe the past year. I could let it get to me, but the truth is, nobody else can ruin derby for you. You're the only one who can choose to put out your fire.
I've taken the past week and a half off from skating to get my shit together for the new semester (and to have a nice birthday dinner). The guess, though, I really needed the time to re-evaluate derby too. Drama is exhausting, especially when you are involved in a leadership position and you're trying to work through it, reassuring the team that the league is stable and healthy, while at the same time having to pretend you yourself aren't terrified that it's not. The December break was nice. I probably shouldn't have given myself more time off the past week and a half, but I guess I just wasn't done thinking about it.
Ahead of us this season are twelve bouts. Twelve all new bouts with no prior bullshit, no prior expectations. Clean slate. Whatever I screwed up last year doesn't matter anymore.
Bout season gets closer every practice. As I've learned from my time in this sport, it helps to have goals, and that's part of the reason I wanted to write this post today: to set some. To set them down in front of everyone who reads my blog, to release them to the derby goddesses (who I imagine to be sort of Valkyries on skates), and to begin getting down to work.
I think it's the most reasonable to set short-term and long-term goals-things for me to work on now, and things for me to accomplish by the end of the season. I hope to update my blog here and there with updates on how I'm doing with them.
Short Term:
1. Lose 20 pounds by June. When summer kicks in and our season starts its more stringent timeline, I'd like to be slimmer and fitter. Keep the muscle, ditch the fat.
2. Attend every skating practice through the end of March unless I am out of town visiting family. Of course, it's necessary to attend every practice you can regardless, but I set my particular date for the end of March because a) that's when our bout season officially starts, and b) I need the off-season training to get back into shape for Hub City.
3. Improve 25 in 5 time to under 4:30. When I was with BnB, one of my greatest challenges was making the 25 in 5. My endurance was terrible, and I could barely handle it. Making the time is not my problem now. I've always wanted to be faster - at one point last season, I got down to a personal best of 4:27. Right now, I'm running about 4:40, and I'm not happy with it. Ten seconds isn't much to shave off, and it's doable within the next few weeks. A few seconds every time we do it at practice is my goal. I would love to have it down to 4:30 by the time we take our WFTDA test in early Feb, but I don't know if I'll quite make it. My goal, therefore, is to have my time between 4:30 and 4:35 for the test.
Long-Term:
1. Play aggressively. If there's anything I've figured out, it's that I'm actually a pretty hard hitter, and a pretty aggressive blocker. When I play aggressively. That's the key term. When I am nervous about whether or not I am making the wrong play I don't take any chances at all, nevermind making the wrong play. When I play more aggressively, yes, I screw up sometimes. But it's better to screw up and adjust my playstyle to be more effective than to be so scared to screw up that I try nothing at all. One of the games where we got our asses handed to us, vs. Nashville's B-team ,I felt like I played my best. I didn't know where that skater came from. But what I knew after that bout was that she was in there somewhere - aggressive, did what she needed to do without over-thinking it. Yeah, she got sent to the box sometimes, but she also made some pretty good plays. And then I spent the rest of the season chasing her, trying to bring her back. This season, I will not chase her; I will be her. I will learn to leave it all on the track, because I only get one shot at every bout - and I need to make it count.
2. Make a lifestyle change. I'll admit it, before derby, I was like a lot of other people: Lazy with a capital L. Never played team sports, never really liked exercising. But, as I learned pretty quickly, derby is about a lot more than just looking cute and smashing into people on skate. The sheer strength and agility and physical fitness needed to play this sport has been both a shock and a stumbling block at times. Whether or not I knew it would take this much, though, I know it now. And if I want to be the best Helley I can be, then I have to make a choice: I can keep treating my body like crap, and keep making excuses for why I don't want to exercise (even though I know I feel MUCH better after I do), or I can eat better, train harder, and make a commitment to tune myself up not just for my team, but also for me.
3. Jam successfully. At least once. I've known since I started that I would never really be a jammer, but I will admit: I am terrified of it. I don't want to be a star jammer; I'm not built like that, and I love pack play a LOT. But what I DO want to do this season is to learn how to jam. I want to take opportunities to take the jammer panty at practice, and make myself do it, even if I don't want to. There's absolutely no reason at all for me to be scared of jamming, and I WILL learn how to do it successfully this season, even if it's only during scrimmages, and even if it's only to make me understand jamming better so I can be a better blocker. I don't really have any goals to do it during a game - I just want to get over my fear of it, and learn how to use knowledge of what a jammer has to do to my advantage when I'm in the pack.
As I look at my list of goals, some of them seem awfully big, but I think that's okay. If we don't dream big about ourselves, we're short-cutting ourselves. Who else will do it for us? If I don't believe that I can be that effective, hard-hitting blocker that takes care of business in the pack, why will my teammates believe it? Why will my jammers think I can protect them?
I think it's important for every player to self-evaluate. We may know that we're not experts at derby, but we can always get better. There's always something. These are my somethings. What are your somethings?
P.S. - Welcome to the new season, Burn City! <3
Showing posts with label endurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label endurance. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Monday, March 14, 2011
Losing It
It's bout season.
There's not much room to think about anything but when the next one's happening. Learning from the mistakes you made the last time you skated. Fixing your screwups. Learning new strategies.
This is the payoff. I've been with BCR through the entirety of an off season now, and now it's time to take all that hard work onto the floor. I'm proud of my team. We've worked hard, and we've trained well. I'm eager to see what happens when we put it all together and play other teams.
I've been extremely focused on the upcoming season. It's part of who I am to be driven. To want to do whatever I do very well. Joining a team like BCR, that's a tall order. It's taken all of my energy to train through this off season, and I like that. I want to be someone the team can rely on to handle her business on the track. I want to be an asset, have trained very hard to be an asset.
I found out today that in April, the whole BnB team is getting deleted from the international roller derby name roster at Two Evils. A couple of my former teammates (two of my three derby wives, in fact), messaged me about it today. They were really upset - it's like losing a part of yourself. It's a reminder that the team we worked so hard for is dead. There is no three second recovery for what our team went through.
Flash back to eight months ago, July. The inevitable explosion hasn't happened at BnB yet, but tensions are rising. We start a typical practice with another annoying skill drill: side step down one line, sprint to the other side of the rink. Sidestep down another line, sprint back. We do this for ten minutes at least - it seems like forever. I break a bit of a sweat, but mostly I'm just bored.
Next up, after we stretch, it's time for an endurance drill. It's just your typical 25 in 5; it's ubiquitous in derby. Sometimes it feels like we aim all our endurance training towards passing this one test.
The rink is hot. The air conditioning at Looney's never did work well in the summer, and it feels almost as humid in here as it is outside. Like you're swimming through the air. There's a nervous twitch in my stomach as I take the line. This drill always makes me nervous, almost sick. I know it's the one thing that would keep me from playing. Everything else on that test, I can do, everything. But the 25 in 5 is always a crapshoot.
The head ref (my husband) blows the whistle. We're off. I focus in on trying to pace myself and I agonize at how tired my body feels after only five laps. By fifteen, I'm slowing down. By twenty, my shins and calves are cramping so badly that my crossovers resemble limping. When I cross the line at 25 laps, my legs are noodles. I don't even have the leg strength to stop properly, so I drop to my knees, skid to a stop on the floor.
My heart is pounding. Sweat is pouring off my body, and I feel so hot that I'm having trouble not passing out. I'm panting, my breath sounding like loud, embarrassing gasps.
4:54. I wasn't the last to finish. I made it with six seconds to spare.
That, at BnB, was my accomplishment. Make it through the 25 in 5. Yes, I told myself, you may be a total wreck afterwards, but you passed the damn test. And that's what matters.
At least that's what I told myself. But when we took on PRRD a few weeks later, it seemed like a lot more than that mattered. I was one of the lynchpin players of the team, one of the only people who understood and cared about playing pivot. The team captain. I had to be in for a lot of jams. My team was depending on me.
I was exhausted before the first half was over. My body felt so bad I could hardly focus on putting one skate in front of the other, much less getting strategy together for my team. On top of that, my derby wife got injured and was in the middle of Ridiculously Bad Real Life Shit. To say I was unfocused is a massive understatement, and I felt very responsible for our loss. I was absolutely baffled when my team gave me the Most Valuable Skater award for that bout. It made no sense to me - it still doesn't, no matter how much I appreciate their love.
Derby is as intensely psychological as it is physical; it's a funny sport that way. I've said that over and over again because it's something that is always emphasized in my sport. I can't really speak for other team sports, but I've gotten to know that part of derby intimately. If your faith in yourself wavers, your opponents will sniff it out like a shark scenting blood. Believe firmly enough that you can't do something, and your belief will make it true.
It's not just your own fear, though. It's never just about you in roller derby. Other people's fears can affect your team's performance. I've watched fearful jammers linger in the back of the pack, praying for heaven to open up and give them a way through the pack that doesn't involve being in the sights of the other team's blockers. I've watched fearful blockers miss crucial blocks because they spent so much time calculating whether or not it was the right time to make a move. Hell, I've been that blocker.
What I didn't realize until far after BnB was over was that someone else's fear could affect training the way it did. I was so loyal to my derby wife. Endlessly so, in spite of how she may feel about that now; she wasn't in my head. She didn't understand how I rationalized everything she did because I was her derby wife. I was supposed to understand her.
I think I understand her better now, after I haven't talked to her for almost six months, than I ever did during my first season as a skater.
I think that as a coach, she was scared. We were alike in the fact that, however much we try to hide it, we thrive off the approval of others. If she admitted that she had never coached anything before, much less a sport as complicated as derby, if she admitted that she'd never been an athlete, didn't understand the way that athletes' bodies work, she would have risked that approval. How would the team have reacted to know that the person who had taught them how to skate, who had initiated them into this wonderful sisterhood, hardly had any knowledge about how to coach the sport beyond the basics?
We never got to find that out. But I think that we spent a season crippled by that fear. One of our referees was a former speed skater with wonderful ideas about how to incorporate off skates and endurance training, but my derby wife claimed that she had asked him to help her many times and that he wouldn't do it. I don't know whether that was true or not, and it doesn't matter - but I do know that she spent a lot of time running down his knowledge. What if he had been more right than she was about skating and how to do it?
Derby is a very open community. There's knowledge out there for the taking if you want it, and even a mailing list about how to coach a derby team with a massive archive that covers just about every issue you might wonder about. I begged her to join the mailing list, but she never would. What if she had discovered she had actually been teaching us the wrong thing all these months? What if she had discovered she had actually been focusing us as a team in the wrong direction?
When I started skating for BCR on October 5 of last year, I was a total wreck. I would have loved to blame my bad skating on the fact that I'd been off skates for a month, but I knew that if I were honest, there were just a lot of things I'd never trained for. My endurance wasn't the result of not skating, it was the result of never having done any endurance training, not in the entire year I skated in Montgomery. My lack of knowledge about strategy, my lack of ability in certain skills, the ineffectiveness of my blocks - it was largely a result of never having been trained in certain fundamentals.
It was, truthfully, largely, a result of having a coach who was terrified to admit that she didn't know it all.
I have my current coaches to thank for the skater that I am now. They have helped me unlearn bad habits by filling in the fundamentals I didn't know. Under their guidance, I've pushed myself harder than I knew possible. This team has made me want to be a better skater; it has made me realize that the best thing I can do for my team is to perform at the top of my ability. When I skated for BnB, I sacrificed a lot of my own training time to help newer skaters. I don't regret doing that, because every woman who wants the experience should know what it is to love derby. But I do regret not giving the team my best effort, not even knowing what my best effort felt like.
The last time I skated a 25 in 5, it was directly after skating 40 in 8 (I clocked in at 7:30, my best time on the exercise yet). I finished my 25 in 5 at 4:40, a better time than I made last July at BnB when the 25 in 5 was the only time trial we did. After my 25 in 5, I proceeded to complete a 10 in 3 with a fall at the end of each lap (2:28), and a 5 in 1 (:54).
This wouldn't have been possible at BnB. We were never pushed this hard at BnB. We were never shown the possibility of our potential. We did the minimum requirements of derby, and not much beyond it.
And that's why we lost every game we played last season. Badly.
I don't want to blame it all on her, our coach, my former derby wife. I am always responsible for my own performance, and I won't deny that that's a lesson I could have used last season. But derby is all about learning- about the sport, your team, yourself. I'm willing to admit that I was a poor player last season because I just didn't know.
I have to wonder what would have happened to the team if our coach had been willing to admit the same. Would we have been a better team? Would we have avoided the messy split that happened in late August?
It's impossible to say.
In a lot of ways, I'm thankful that it happened. I'm skating with a team that has never asked a damn thing about all the ridiculous drama that killed Belles. All that BCR has asked of me is my commitment. They pushed me beyond my former limits and forced me to ask myself how much I wanted to play this sport. That I'm rostered for a bout this weekend in Chattanooga is the answer.
The real tragedy in all this is that so many of my former teammates slipped between the cracks. That someone else's fear is keeping them from skating again. That someone else's fear kept them from ever knowing what this sport has the potential of being.
I would change all that, if I could. But short of erasing the past, I don't know the way to do it. It could be that this is another one of derby's sad stories - another instance where one personality soured countless others on a sport that is pure magic in its best form. I don't want it to be. But then, I can admit that some things are beyond my control.
There's not much room to think about anything but when the next one's happening. Learning from the mistakes you made the last time you skated. Fixing your screwups. Learning new strategies.
This is the payoff. I've been with BCR through the entirety of an off season now, and now it's time to take all that hard work onto the floor. I'm proud of my team. We've worked hard, and we've trained well. I'm eager to see what happens when we put it all together and play other teams.
I've been extremely focused on the upcoming season. It's part of who I am to be driven. To want to do whatever I do very well. Joining a team like BCR, that's a tall order. It's taken all of my energy to train through this off season, and I like that. I want to be someone the team can rely on to handle her business on the track. I want to be an asset, have trained very hard to be an asset.
I found out today that in April, the whole BnB team is getting deleted from the international roller derby name roster at Two Evils. A couple of my former teammates (two of my three derby wives, in fact), messaged me about it today. They were really upset - it's like losing a part of yourself. It's a reminder that the team we worked so hard for is dead. There is no three second recovery for what our team went through.
Flash back to eight months ago, July. The inevitable explosion hasn't happened at BnB yet, but tensions are rising. We start a typical practice with another annoying skill drill: side step down one line, sprint to the other side of the rink. Sidestep down another line, sprint back. We do this for ten minutes at least - it seems like forever. I break a bit of a sweat, but mostly I'm just bored.
Next up, after we stretch, it's time for an endurance drill. It's just your typical 25 in 5; it's ubiquitous in derby. Sometimes it feels like we aim all our endurance training towards passing this one test.
The rink is hot. The air conditioning at Looney's never did work well in the summer, and it feels almost as humid in here as it is outside. Like you're swimming through the air. There's a nervous twitch in my stomach as I take the line. This drill always makes me nervous, almost sick. I know it's the one thing that would keep me from playing. Everything else on that test, I can do, everything. But the 25 in 5 is always a crapshoot.
The head ref (my husband) blows the whistle. We're off. I focus in on trying to pace myself and I agonize at how tired my body feels after only five laps. By fifteen, I'm slowing down. By twenty, my shins and calves are cramping so badly that my crossovers resemble limping. When I cross the line at 25 laps, my legs are noodles. I don't even have the leg strength to stop properly, so I drop to my knees, skid to a stop on the floor.
My heart is pounding. Sweat is pouring off my body, and I feel so hot that I'm having trouble not passing out. I'm panting, my breath sounding like loud, embarrassing gasps.
4:54. I wasn't the last to finish. I made it with six seconds to spare.
That, at BnB, was my accomplishment. Make it through the 25 in 5. Yes, I told myself, you may be a total wreck afterwards, but you passed the damn test. And that's what matters.
At least that's what I told myself. But when we took on PRRD a few weeks later, it seemed like a lot more than that mattered. I was one of the lynchpin players of the team, one of the only people who understood and cared about playing pivot. The team captain. I had to be in for a lot of jams. My team was depending on me.
I was exhausted before the first half was over. My body felt so bad I could hardly focus on putting one skate in front of the other, much less getting strategy together for my team. On top of that, my derby wife got injured and was in the middle of Ridiculously Bad Real Life Shit. To say I was unfocused is a massive understatement, and I felt very responsible for our loss. I was absolutely baffled when my team gave me the Most Valuable Skater award for that bout. It made no sense to me - it still doesn't, no matter how much I appreciate their love.
Derby is as intensely psychological as it is physical; it's a funny sport that way. I've said that over and over again because it's something that is always emphasized in my sport. I can't really speak for other team sports, but I've gotten to know that part of derby intimately. If your faith in yourself wavers, your opponents will sniff it out like a shark scenting blood. Believe firmly enough that you can't do something, and your belief will make it true.
It's not just your own fear, though. It's never just about you in roller derby. Other people's fears can affect your team's performance. I've watched fearful jammers linger in the back of the pack, praying for heaven to open up and give them a way through the pack that doesn't involve being in the sights of the other team's blockers. I've watched fearful blockers miss crucial blocks because they spent so much time calculating whether or not it was the right time to make a move. Hell, I've been that blocker.
What I didn't realize until far after BnB was over was that someone else's fear could affect training the way it did. I was so loyal to my derby wife. Endlessly so, in spite of how she may feel about that now; she wasn't in my head. She didn't understand how I rationalized everything she did because I was her derby wife. I was supposed to understand her.
I think I understand her better now, after I haven't talked to her for almost six months, than I ever did during my first season as a skater.
I think that as a coach, she was scared. We were alike in the fact that, however much we try to hide it, we thrive off the approval of others. If she admitted that she had never coached anything before, much less a sport as complicated as derby, if she admitted that she'd never been an athlete, didn't understand the way that athletes' bodies work, she would have risked that approval. How would the team have reacted to know that the person who had taught them how to skate, who had initiated them into this wonderful sisterhood, hardly had any knowledge about how to coach the sport beyond the basics?
We never got to find that out. But I think that we spent a season crippled by that fear. One of our referees was a former speed skater with wonderful ideas about how to incorporate off skates and endurance training, but my derby wife claimed that she had asked him to help her many times and that he wouldn't do it. I don't know whether that was true or not, and it doesn't matter - but I do know that she spent a lot of time running down his knowledge. What if he had been more right than she was about skating and how to do it?
Derby is a very open community. There's knowledge out there for the taking if you want it, and even a mailing list about how to coach a derby team with a massive archive that covers just about every issue you might wonder about. I begged her to join the mailing list, but she never would. What if she had discovered she had actually been teaching us the wrong thing all these months? What if she had discovered she had actually been focusing us as a team in the wrong direction?
When I started skating for BCR on October 5 of last year, I was a total wreck. I would have loved to blame my bad skating on the fact that I'd been off skates for a month, but I knew that if I were honest, there were just a lot of things I'd never trained for. My endurance wasn't the result of not skating, it was the result of never having done any endurance training, not in the entire year I skated in Montgomery. My lack of knowledge about strategy, my lack of ability in certain skills, the ineffectiveness of my blocks - it was largely a result of never having been trained in certain fundamentals.
It was, truthfully, largely, a result of having a coach who was terrified to admit that she didn't know it all.
I have my current coaches to thank for the skater that I am now. They have helped me unlearn bad habits by filling in the fundamentals I didn't know. Under their guidance, I've pushed myself harder than I knew possible. This team has made me want to be a better skater; it has made me realize that the best thing I can do for my team is to perform at the top of my ability. When I skated for BnB, I sacrificed a lot of my own training time to help newer skaters. I don't regret doing that, because every woman who wants the experience should know what it is to love derby. But I do regret not giving the team my best effort, not even knowing what my best effort felt like.
The last time I skated a 25 in 5, it was directly after skating 40 in 8 (I clocked in at 7:30, my best time on the exercise yet). I finished my 25 in 5 at 4:40, a better time than I made last July at BnB when the 25 in 5 was the only time trial we did. After my 25 in 5, I proceeded to complete a 10 in 3 with a fall at the end of each lap (2:28), and a 5 in 1 (:54).
This wouldn't have been possible at BnB. We were never pushed this hard at BnB. We were never shown the possibility of our potential. We did the minimum requirements of derby, and not much beyond it.
And that's why we lost every game we played last season. Badly.
I don't want to blame it all on her, our coach, my former derby wife. I am always responsible for my own performance, and I won't deny that that's a lesson I could have used last season. But derby is all about learning- about the sport, your team, yourself. I'm willing to admit that I was a poor player last season because I just didn't know.
I have to wonder what would have happened to the team if our coach had been willing to admit the same. Would we have been a better team? Would we have avoided the messy split that happened in late August?
It's impossible to say.
In a lot of ways, I'm thankful that it happened. I'm skating with a team that has never asked a damn thing about all the ridiculous drama that killed Belles. All that BCR has asked of me is my commitment. They pushed me beyond my former limits and forced me to ask myself how much I wanted to play this sport. That I'm rostered for a bout this weekend in Chattanooga is the answer.
The real tragedy in all this is that so many of my former teammates slipped between the cracks. That someone else's fear is keeping them from skating again. That someone else's fear kept them from ever knowing what this sport has the potential of being.
I would change all that, if I could. But short of erasing the past, I don't know the way to do it. It could be that this is another one of derby's sad stories - another instance where one personality soured countless others on a sport that is pure magic in its best form. I don't want it to be. But then, I can admit that some things are beyond my control.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Making Yourself Better... for Who?
I'll tell you a secret about me: for most of my life, I have been hopelessly insecure. We're talking self-effacing to the point of neglecting my own needs because I don't think they're important. There's a million reasons for it, but the purpose of telling you is not so I can sit here and psychoanalyze myself.
When I started skating for the Belles, and especially after I became the Captain and primary pivot for the team, I had confidence that I could handle it for one reason and one reason only: because I almost always consider my own needs last, that makes me the consummate team player.
That was how I handled it during my first season as a skater. I devoted a lot more time to raising up the newer skaters to get them ready to bout than I did to improving my own skills. The team knew that I would teach them what I knew, and they knew that even if all they needed was a shoulder to cry on or someone to vent to, I'd be there for that too. I had a lot of teammates tell me that when it came to bout time, I was one of the most protective blockers we had, and that I was "the only one" helping them through the pack.
I guess that's just me; I value every one of my teammates to the point where I will do anything to protect them in the pack. Even as a pivot, I'll drop back to the back of the pack if nobody's helping the jammer. I'll try to run interference and sacrifice myself, taking blocks to keep that blocker from hitting my jammer.
Since I've transferred teams, that hasn't changed. One of my favorite things about roller derby is that it's this sisterhood, this family. BCR has that same ideal of team, and protecting your teammates, that I was scared I would never find after Belles went under. But this is roller derby; this is what we do.
I started skating with BCR (again) on October 5, 2010. Doing that, I quickly realized that I would be one of the weakest links. I was slow. My endurance was terrible. Things that my other teammates could do in their sleep, I didn't have the faintest clue about. That put me in a position I wasn't used to: how was I supposed to help people if I was at the bottom of the totem pole?
I learned an important lesson, and I learned it quickly: if you don't improve yourself, you're not any damn good at helping your team. How can I help a jammer get through the pack if I can't even keep up with the pack? How can I be aware of what's going on if I'm focusing on how much my muscles hurt, or trying to catch my breath?
I knew that I would have to get better as an athlete to play with my team. Why would you put someone on the roster if they can't keep up? For that reason, I've undertaken what I have; I've gone to more practices per week than I ever had with BnB. I've even started working out on my own when I'm not "required" to by a team practice.
This is a big deal for somebody who was never able to consider their own progress important on their last team. But it's made a big difference. My body is stronger, and more able to withstand what my team asks of it. My hits are better. My times on endurance exercises are improving. I don't run out of breath, and my leg muscles take a whole lot longer to turn into jello.
With that comes a whole new world of possibilities: if I pivot for BCR, I won't have to run the pack medium slow if I don't want to. If I want to chase a jammer down, I've got a lot better chance of getting her now. If I want to protect my jammer, I'm more stable, which means that I'm a more likely distraction or object of frustration for somebody who really wants to knock me down.
But it's been a revelation. I didn't get here by focusing on other people. I got here by working on me first. Without working on me, I wouldn't be of any use to my team, because I'd still be struggling.
I am by no means a perfect skater. But I've improved vastly in three months with BCR, way more than I thought possible. The best part is that it's a continual process. Now that my body is stronger, I can work on honing my instincts, understanding when to block without over-analyzing, understanding how to direct a team like this if I ever end up playing pivot again.
Maybe as important is the fact that, without even intending to, BCR has taught me something important about me, and about how I live my life. I've always thought it was selfless to put others before yourself. It is, but what I never wanted to realize is that it's kind of stupid to always put others before yourself. Doing that allowed me to develop bad mental habits; it allowed me to continue indulging in a mindset of total insecurity. It allowed me to continue devaluing myself to the point where I never worked on my own derby skills because I subconsciously didn't think I was worth it.
But I am. I haven't overcome the things I have in order to just fester at the bottom of the heap. I love this sport. I love my team. And the real sign that I love my team, the real selfless act, is the length that I will go to improve myself for BCR. The saying goes that you're only as strong as your weakest player. BCR has inspired me to eliminate my own weaknesses. Not just physical ones- mental ones too.
Speed can be improved. Endurance can be trained. New skills can be learned. What I think is truly priceless is the way that derby makes you into a better person. A better person for the benefit of others. We should all live our lives that way.
When I started skating for the Belles, and especially after I became the Captain and primary pivot for the team, I had confidence that I could handle it for one reason and one reason only: because I almost always consider my own needs last, that makes me the consummate team player.
That was how I handled it during my first season as a skater. I devoted a lot more time to raising up the newer skaters to get them ready to bout than I did to improving my own skills. The team knew that I would teach them what I knew, and they knew that even if all they needed was a shoulder to cry on or someone to vent to, I'd be there for that too. I had a lot of teammates tell me that when it came to bout time, I was one of the most protective blockers we had, and that I was "the only one" helping them through the pack.
I guess that's just me; I value every one of my teammates to the point where I will do anything to protect them in the pack. Even as a pivot, I'll drop back to the back of the pack if nobody's helping the jammer. I'll try to run interference and sacrifice myself, taking blocks to keep that blocker from hitting my jammer.
Since I've transferred teams, that hasn't changed. One of my favorite things about roller derby is that it's this sisterhood, this family. BCR has that same ideal of team, and protecting your teammates, that I was scared I would never find after Belles went under. But this is roller derby; this is what we do.
I started skating with BCR (again) on October 5, 2010. Doing that, I quickly realized that I would be one of the weakest links. I was slow. My endurance was terrible. Things that my other teammates could do in their sleep, I didn't have the faintest clue about. That put me in a position I wasn't used to: how was I supposed to help people if I was at the bottom of the totem pole?
I learned an important lesson, and I learned it quickly: if you don't improve yourself, you're not any damn good at helping your team. How can I help a jammer get through the pack if I can't even keep up with the pack? How can I be aware of what's going on if I'm focusing on how much my muscles hurt, or trying to catch my breath?
I knew that I would have to get better as an athlete to play with my team. Why would you put someone on the roster if they can't keep up? For that reason, I've undertaken what I have; I've gone to more practices per week than I ever had with BnB. I've even started working out on my own when I'm not "required" to by a team practice.
This is a big deal for somebody who was never able to consider their own progress important on their last team. But it's made a big difference. My body is stronger, and more able to withstand what my team asks of it. My hits are better. My times on endurance exercises are improving. I don't run out of breath, and my leg muscles take a whole lot longer to turn into jello.
With that comes a whole new world of possibilities: if I pivot for BCR, I won't have to run the pack medium slow if I don't want to. If I want to chase a jammer down, I've got a lot better chance of getting her now. If I want to protect my jammer, I'm more stable, which means that I'm a more likely distraction or object of frustration for somebody who really wants to knock me down.
But it's been a revelation. I didn't get here by focusing on other people. I got here by working on me first. Without working on me, I wouldn't be of any use to my team, because I'd still be struggling.
I am by no means a perfect skater. But I've improved vastly in three months with BCR, way more than I thought possible. The best part is that it's a continual process. Now that my body is stronger, I can work on honing my instincts, understanding when to block without over-analyzing, understanding how to direct a team like this if I ever end up playing pivot again.
Maybe as important is the fact that, without even intending to, BCR has taught me something important about me, and about how I live my life. I've always thought it was selfless to put others before yourself. It is, but what I never wanted to realize is that it's kind of stupid to always put others before yourself. Doing that allowed me to develop bad mental habits; it allowed me to continue indulging in a mindset of total insecurity. It allowed me to continue devaluing myself to the point where I never worked on my own derby skills because I subconsciously didn't think I was worth it.
But I am. I haven't overcome the things I have in order to just fester at the bottom of the heap. I love this sport. I love my team. And the real sign that I love my team, the real selfless act, is the length that I will go to improve myself for BCR. The saying goes that you're only as strong as your weakest player. BCR has inspired me to eliminate my own weaknesses. Not just physical ones- mental ones too.
Speed can be improved. Endurance can be trained. New skills can be learned. What I think is truly priceless is the way that derby makes you into a better person. A better person for the benefit of others. We should all live our lives that way.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Derby Resolutions, 2011
I remember thinking in December of 2009 that I was in a vastly different place, derby-wise. I had just begun training as a skater with Belles 'n' Bombshells. I had just gotten a derby wife. My derby wife and I had spent New Year's Eve together, with our respective significant others. I was very happy. As I've noted, things changed very drastically in 2010, but when the year started, I was in a very good place. I was very comfortable with my derby life.
Right now, I think I'm happier - and wiser. Yes, I lost my first derby wife, which is something that I will always in some senses regret, no matter how badly I feel it turned out. However, a lot of people who came to mean a lot to me during the course of that year with BnB are still a part of my life. I love them just as much now as I did when I first met them - my two wonderful derby wives, Malice, Zelda, DT, Slim, Moth, Delirium, and my sweet little sisters Mystique and Reaver. We may not be skating together (except for Slim and I), but the happy memories aren't ever going to go away.
But I'm also in a much better place as an athlete. As I've mentioned over and over and over again, Burn City Rollers have shown me something entirely new from what I knew about playing derby. They've shown me a whole new level of hard work, dedication, determination, and athleticism. I love where I am, even if it might be a little lonelier than it was this time last year.
I was afraid, when BnB folded, that no matter where I went, no matter what team I skated for, I would never find another team that made me want to be as good as I could be. I was luckily wrong. I love my new old team. I want to be the best skater I can possibly be, and I can already tell that I am well on my way to breaking barriers that used to be impossible, unconscionable to even consider breaking when I was the Belles' captain.
That having been said, I wanted to share my Derby Resolutions with you. I've come up with three goals for this new year, three goals that I think will make me the best skater I can possibly be, and three goals that I hope will show my team just how much it means to me to have a place among such talented skaters.
They are:
1. Keep working on my endurance, no matter how much it hurts. I've discovered since BnB folded that my biggest problem when it came to bout time was endurance. I used to skate my 25 in 5 and struggle through it, hassling for breath and nearly puking at the end of it. That has changed drastically since I started skating with BCR. My speed has improved. My cardio endurance has shot through the roof. And my lactic acid tolerance has even improved to a point where I'm not finishing every time trial in total agony.
But I can still do better. BCR is one of the most athletic teams I've ever seen. And that challenges me. I know that I can be faster. That my endurance can improve. And that makes the pain worth it. The aching muscles, the sweat pouring out of ever pore... it's all worth it in the end. No matter the pain, I'm going to keep setting up challenging workout weeks, and keep sticking to my goals.
2. Learn to quit over-analyzing hits and just trust my instincts. I've said previously in this blog that during the BnB days, I was almost taught to be a passive hitter. Conserve your energy. Hit only when you know it will be effective. That led to me over-analyzing every single hit I thought about making, and ending up, overall, being a very passive blocker.
No more. Since starting with BCR, I've learned that if you have the right technique and the right training, hits don't have to sap all your energy. All you have to know is how to do it, and then trust your instinct to tell you when to go. This is probably the hardest goal on the list for me, because I'm very much more mental than I am instinctual. But I can learn. I know I'm a very sturdy skater, but I want to be one of the people who make other skaters wince when they know they're about to take a hit. I know I can do that, if I can only learn to trust myself, and to play more aggressively.
3. Pay more attention to what I eat, because the quality of fuel affects the quality of the performance. This is almost a no-brainer. I have done what I feel is a good job watching what I eat, and paying more attention to calories. But now I want to change the quality of the fuel- more efficient metabolism, and more healthy meals.
What are your derby resolutions for the year? How do you want to improve yourself for your team? Or for yourself?
Right now, I think I'm happier - and wiser. Yes, I lost my first derby wife, which is something that I will always in some senses regret, no matter how badly I feel it turned out. However, a lot of people who came to mean a lot to me during the course of that year with BnB are still a part of my life. I love them just as much now as I did when I first met them - my two wonderful derby wives, Malice, Zelda, DT, Slim, Moth, Delirium, and my sweet little sisters Mystique and Reaver. We may not be skating together (except for Slim and I), but the happy memories aren't ever going to go away.
But I'm also in a much better place as an athlete. As I've mentioned over and over and over again, Burn City Rollers have shown me something entirely new from what I knew about playing derby. They've shown me a whole new level of hard work, dedication, determination, and athleticism. I love where I am, even if it might be a little lonelier than it was this time last year.
I was afraid, when BnB folded, that no matter where I went, no matter what team I skated for, I would never find another team that made me want to be as good as I could be. I was luckily wrong. I love my new old team. I want to be the best skater I can possibly be, and I can already tell that I am well on my way to breaking barriers that used to be impossible, unconscionable to even consider breaking when I was the Belles' captain.
That having been said, I wanted to share my Derby Resolutions with you. I've come up with three goals for this new year, three goals that I think will make me the best skater I can possibly be, and three goals that I hope will show my team just how much it means to me to have a place among such talented skaters.
They are:
1. Keep working on my endurance, no matter how much it hurts. I've discovered since BnB folded that my biggest problem when it came to bout time was endurance. I used to skate my 25 in 5 and struggle through it, hassling for breath and nearly puking at the end of it. That has changed drastically since I started skating with BCR. My speed has improved. My cardio endurance has shot through the roof. And my lactic acid tolerance has even improved to a point where I'm not finishing every time trial in total agony.
But I can still do better. BCR is one of the most athletic teams I've ever seen. And that challenges me. I know that I can be faster. That my endurance can improve. And that makes the pain worth it. The aching muscles, the sweat pouring out of ever pore... it's all worth it in the end. No matter the pain, I'm going to keep setting up challenging workout weeks, and keep sticking to my goals.
2. Learn to quit over-analyzing hits and just trust my instincts. I've said previously in this blog that during the BnB days, I was almost taught to be a passive hitter. Conserve your energy. Hit only when you know it will be effective. That led to me over-analyzing every single hit I thought about making, and ending up, overall, being a very passive blocker.
No more. Since starting with BCR, I've learned that if you have the right technique and the right training, hits don't have to sap all your energy. All you have to know is how to do it, and then trust your instinct to tell you when to go. This is probably the hardest goal on the list for me, because I'm very much more mental than I am instinctual. But I can learn. I know I'm a very sturdy skater, but I want to be one of the people who make other skaters wince when they know they're about to take a hit. I know I can do that, if I can only learn to trust myself, and to play more aggressively.
3. Pay more attention to what I eat, because the quality of fuel affects the quality of the performance. This is almost a no-brainer. I have done what I feel is a good job watching what I eat, and paying more attention to calories. But now I want to change the quality of the fuel- more efficient metabolism, and more healthy meals.
What are your derby resolutions for the year? How do you want to improve yourself for your team? Or for yourself?
Friday, December 31, 2010
Equipment Review: Wheels
I got my first pair of real derby skates in February 2009. They were a pair of Riedell R3's, the Tuner package. They included upgraded Radar Tuner wheels in any hardness you wanted. I chose the red ones, which are the second softest Tuners. At the time, I chose them as much for the color as I did for the grip, but since BCR skated on a concrete floor, it helped a lot to have wheels that were grippier than whatever was on those crappy Academy Cobras.
They have served me well. I have used them for well over a year at this point; nearly two, as a matter of fact. I've watched other people wear through their wheels in two months, and still, my Tuners kept on truckin'.
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I was almost reluctant to get rid of the old Tuners, but as long as they've lasted, they're finally starting to lose their grip. On a floor like BCR's, that's a definite negative. Since I came back, I've struggled with maintaining speed and control on our track, which let me know one important thing: the Tuners had to go.
Right now, they're sitting in the middle of my office floor, divested of their bearings. My husband ordered me a pair of Atom Poisons for Christmas, and I tested them out at open skate last night. Before I went, I cleaned and oiled my bearings pretty meticulously so that I could try to get the best possible performance out of my new wheels.
I'm one of the taller rollergirls on our team, and also probably one of the beefier girls on our team, at least as far as leg muscles are concerned. I needed a wheel that I could really dig in with, one that wouldn't slip around the turns no matter how hard I pushed. For me to get as much power out of my stride as I can get, I needed a wheel I could depend on. My derby wife Vixen had gotten some Poisons not too long ago, and loved them. I was hoping for the same luck, but, given that she skates on a wood floor most of the time, I wasn't too hopeful for a repeat performance.
They were better than I expected. Much better. the wheels are soft to the touch; in that respect, they're really a lot like the way my Tuners felt when I first got them. They're supposed to be hybrid wheels, though, meaning that they grip well on slick floors, and give you plenty of maneuverability on sticky floors. That part I've yet to test.
On our slick concrete, I was able to fly like I never had before. I gave them a test run by going proverbial balls out for a few laps, and was shocked at how well they gripped. I was able to crouch down low in the corners, and instead of the wheels slipping, they held, and I could push hard to get the maximum stride.
I also tested them out for a 25 laps in 5 minutes. I easily made the time- that's nothing exactly new, as I do usually make the time. However, this time, it felt different. I wasn't flying when I tested out my speed, just kind of taking it at a pace in between medium and sprinting. The wheels held well, no matter how low I crouched or how hard I pushed. When I finished, the only thing that was hurting was the blister on the bottom of my foot. My legs weren't cramping, and I wasn't gasping for air. No doubt, a lot of this is because I've been working my ass off to improve my endurance since I started with BCR in October.
But a big part of it was that my equipment wasn't working against me. When I can push powerfully, I don't have to exhaust myself with tons of tiny strokes. Instead, I can fully extend all the way through my strides and get the maximum length out of the push before I have to take another one. That was a wonderful feeling.
I also tried some slicing last night, and the wheels grip so well that I was able to slice sharper and faster than I ever have before. I can't imagine what they will do on a grippier track. Stops are perfect: tomahawk, t-stop and plow stop were easy as pie. The wheels have great friction with the track, and they do just what I wanted them to do. Bellissimo!
As I said, I haven't tried these on a different track yet, but so far, I'm extremely satisfied. I hope to upgrade my bearings to Bones next, and see what that does for me. As my wise teammate Ziggy said last night, the skates don't make the rollergirl. But if your equipment is terrible, you won't skate to your potential, because it's mechanically impossible.
Atom Wheels, Test 1: 10/10
They have served me well. I have used them for well over a year at this point; nearly two, as a matter of fact. I've watched other people wear through their wheels in two months, and still, my Tuners kept on truckin'.
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I was almost reluctant to get rid of the old Tuners, but as long as they've lasted, they're finally starting to lose their grip. On a floor like BCR's, that's a definite negative. Since I came back, I've struggled with maintaining speed and control on our track, which let me know one important thing: the Tuners had to go.
Right now, they're sitting in the middle of my office floor, divested of their bearings. My husband ordered me a pair of Atom Poisons for Christmas, and I tested them out at open skate last night. Before I went, I cleaned and oiled my bearings pretty meticulously so that I could try to get the best possible performance out of my new wheels.
I'm one of the taller rollergirls on our team, and also probably one of the beefier girls on our team, at least as far as leg muscles are concerned. I needed a wheel that I could really dig in with, one that wouldn't slip around the turns no matter how hard I pushed. For me to get as much power out of my stride as I can get, I needed a wheel I could depend on. My derby wife Vixen had gotten some Poisons not too long ago, and loved them. I was hoping for the same luck, but, given that she skates on a wood floor most of the time, I wasn't too hopeful for a repeat performance.
They were better than I expected. Much better. the wheels are soft to the touch; in that respect, they're really a lot like the way my Tuners felt when I first got them. They're supposed to be hybrid wheels, though, meaning that they grip well on slick floors, and give you plenty of maneuverability on sticky floors. That part I've yet to test.
On our slick concrete, I was able to fly like I never had before. I gave them a test run by going proverbial balls out for a few laps, and was shocked at how well they gripped. I was able to crouch down low in the corners, and instead of the wheels slipping, they held, and I could push hard to get the maximum stride.
I also tested them out for a 25 laps in 5 minutes. I easily made the time- that's nothing exactly new, as I do usually make the time. However, this time, it felt different. I wasn't flying when I tested out my speed, just kind of taking it at a pace in between medium and sprinting. The wheels held well, no matter how low I crouched or how hard I pushed. When I finished, the only thing that was hurting was the blister on the bottom of my foot. My legs weren't cramping, and I wasn't gasping for air. No doubt, a lot of this is because I've been working my ass off to improve my endurance since I started with BCR in October.
But a big part of it was that my equipment wasn't working against me. When I can push powerfully, I don't have to exhaust myself with tons of tiny strokes. Instead, I can fully extend all the way through my strides and get the maximum length out of the push before I have to take another one. That was a wonderful feeling.
I also tried some slicing last night, and the wheels grip so well that I was able to slice sharper and faster than I ever have before. I can't imagine what they will do on a grippier track. Stops are perfect: tomahawk, t-stop and plow stop were easy as pie. The wheels have great friction with the track, and they do just what I wanted them to do. Bellissimo!
As I said, I haven't tried these on a different track yet, but so far, I'm extremely satisfied. I hope to upgrade my bearings to Bones next, and see what that does for me. As my wise teammate Ziggy said last night, the skates don't make the rollergirl. But if your equipment is terrible, you won't skate to your potential, because it's mechanically impossible.
Atom Wheels, Test 1: 10/10
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Skate Your Booty (Off)
I crapped out last night on off-skates practice. Admittedly, it was partially laziness; I got home from a late day at work and was frankly exhausted. I know that I would have felt better if I'd suited up and gone to exercise, but I let my laziness speak for me.
However, it was partially also the muscle pain from Monday. I usually get REALLY bad DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), which I know that you're just supposed to work through as normal. My fear, though, was that if I went and brutalized my leg muscles again like I did on Monday, I'd be too sore to skate at practice tonight. It seems, so far, to be a fairly justified decision, since my legs feel a LOT better today.
It's a difficult balance for me, though - I've never been one of those people who just work out to work out. In the past, it's been an accomplishment for me to skate twice a week. It's a bit difficult to go from that into an aggressive, seven days a week training plan for the off-season, and I don't quite know how to motivate myself to keep it up. I have a feeling, though, that practice tonight (which I'm already hemming and hawing about) will be motivation enough to remember why I'm doing this.
****
I knew tonight was going to be brutal... I just had a feeling. Cho certainly didn't disappoint. Endurance and body work for two straight hours.
I don't feel like updating about every minute thing- there's still a shower to take, and a bit of a snack to be had before bed, before I have to drag my sore ass out of bed in the morning.
Improvements I noticed: Last week, we did something called "the gauntlet." It was as follows: 40 laps in 10 minutes; 25 in 5; 10 in 3 with a rockstar at the end of each lap; 5 in 1. The first time through, last week, I made all the times save the 25. During the 25, I sat out. My back had cramped up so bad from pushing the 40 that I couldn't handle 25 more. I made my times on the other two, presumably because I'd had the time to rest out.
This week, I decided I wasn't going to sit out no matter what, so I didn't. My times obviously weren't as good. Cho cut our goal down for the 40 laps to 8:00. I made 38 in that time. I was able to do 21 of the 25 in 5 minutes. I just barely made my 10 with 2:48, and barely skirted my 5 at :58. However, I consider it a huge improvement, since I actually made it through all of them without giving up on my body.
Things I'd like to be better: we did a drill called thighmaster intended to work up quad and core strength. It involves squats, which have always been pretty painful for me. I'd love to say I didn't cheat on them and not go as low as I could have, but I did. I've got to learn to go ahead and go through the pain because without the pain I can't do better. I'm particularly disappointed in how I skated during that drill. I'm also disappointed with how I behaved during our hitting drill. I still have a HUGE problem with lacking the aggression and initiative to just hit people. Again, it's a holdover from Belles 'n' Bombshells, where we were taught it was better to save your hits instead of use them, which, as I believe I've noted before, resulted mostly in passive skating, and worrying too much about whether it was the right time to hit someone and missing the opportunity entirely. I'm still letting this mindset rule the day. I know I'm a hard hitter, but I don't take the initiative to show that. And I hate that.
Things I'm puzzled about: the inside the leg pain I've been talking about lately. I think I'm beginning to narrow it down to either the way my shoes/skate boots fit when I'm exercising, or the pressure of my ankle brace. It tends to be worse on the right leg, which is where I wear my brace, but I do have the pain in both legs, which leads me to think I might need different foot support in my shoes. I'm going to also try lacing the shoes a little less tightly tomorrow to see if that makes a difference, as I was getting some pretty gnarly nerve pinches along the top of my foot tonight as well that eased up a bit when I unlaced the bottom set of laces in my boot.
Still some things to improve on, but this is a long off-season. Next week, we don't have any practice starting Sunday because of Thanksgiving, so I know it will be a test of willpower. But with my husband there to remind me why I'm training so hard, I don't think that'll be much of a problem.
However, it was partially also the muscle pain from Monday. I usually get REALLY bad DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), which I know that you're just supposed to work through as normal. My fear, though, was that if I went and brutalized my leg muscles again like I did on Monday, I'd be too sore to skate at practice tonight. It seems, so far, to be a fairly justified decision, since my legs feel a LOT better today.
It's a difficult balance for me, though - I've never been one of those people who just work out to work out. In the past, it's been an accomplishment for me to skate twice a week. It's a bit difficult to go from that into an aggressive, seven days a week training plan for the off-season, and I don't quite know how to motivate myself to keep it up. I have a feeling, though, that practice tonight (which I'm already hemming and hawing about) will be motivation enough to remember why I'm doing this.
****
I knew tonight was going to be brutal... I just had a feeling. Cho certainly didn't disappoint. Endurance and body work for two straight hours.
I don't feel like updating about every minute thing- there's still a shower to take, and a bit of a snack to be had before bed, before I have to drag my sore ass out of bed in the morning.
Improvements I noticed: Last week, we did something called "the gauntlet." It was as follows: 40 laps in 10 minutes; 25 in 5; 10 in 3 with a rockstar at the end of each lap; 5 in 1. The first time through, last week, I made all the times save the 25. During the 25, I sat out. My back had cramped up so bad from pushing the 40 that I couldn't handle 25 more. I made my times on the other two, presumably because I'd had the time to rest out.
This week, I decided I wasn't going to sit out no matter what, so I didn't. My times obviously weren't as good. Cho cut our goal down for the 40 laps to 8:00. I made 38 in that time. I was able to do 21 of the 25 in 5 minutes. I just barely made my 10 with 2:48, and barely skirted my 5 at :58. However, I consider it a huge improvement, since I actually made it through all of them without giving up on my body.
Things I'd like to be better: we did a drill called thighmaster intended to work up quad and core strength. It involves squats, which have always been pretty painful for me. I'd love to say I didn't cheat on them and not go as low as I could have, but I did. I've got to learn to go ahead and go through the pain because without the pain I can't do better. I'm particularly disappointed in how I skated during that drill. I'm also disappointed with how I behaved during our hitting drill. I still have a HUGE problem with lacking the aggression and initiative to just hit people. Again, it's a holdover from Belles 'n' Bombshells, where we were taught it was better to save your hits instead of use them, which, as I believe I've noted before, resulted mostly in passive skating, and worrying too much about whether it was the right time to hit someone and missing the opportunity entirely. I'm still letting this mindset rule the day. I know I'm a hard hitter, but I don't take the initiative to show that. And I hate that.
Things I'm puzzled about: the inside the leg pain I've been talking about lately. I think I'm beginning to narrow it down to either the way my shoes/skate boots fit when I'm exercising, or the pressure of my ankle brace. It tends to be worse on the right leg, which is where I wear my brace, but I do have the pain in both legs, which leads me to think I might need different foot support in my shoes. I'm going to also try lacing the shoes a little less tightly tomorrow to see if that makes a difference, as I was getting some pretty gnarly nerve pinches along the top of my foot tonight as well that eased up a bit when I unlaced the bottom set of laces in my boot.
Still some things to improve on, but this is a long off-season. Next week, we don't have any practice starting Sunday because of Thanksgiving, so I know it will be a test of willpower. But with my husband there to remind me why I'm training so hard, I don't think that'll be much of a problem.
Monday, November 15, 2010
American Jumping Bean
Today's butt-kicking is all about plyometrics. I'd never even heard this word until I started skating seriously, but in the opinion of many skaters (speed skaters especially), plyometrics is what can make the difference between a good skater and a great skater - a good skater practices only on skates, and a great skater trains off-skates with plyometrics to improve muscle strength, explosiveness, and agility.
Given that those are three things that I really feel I need as a skater, I can't ignore plyometrics. Besides, if speed skaters do it, there's no reason it wouldn't be good for roller derby skaters; in spite of the different natures of our sports, there's a good deal of crossover, at least as far as what we want out of our bodies. Both sports call for good cardio and muscle endurance and strength, good explosive power for sprinting past other skaters, good agility for slipping through the holes other skaters leave as they move around the track, and a strong stride that uses as few strokes as possible to go as far as possible.
That having been said, my plan for this week, as it has evolved, involves me working on some cardio endurance, muscle strength, and explosiveness training today.
Here's today's regimen:
WARMUP: 1 lap walk, 2 laps jog, 1 run, 1 cooldown.
Stretch.
Run Coliseum stairs - goal time, 20 minutes or less for a whole lap.
PLYOMETRICS:
-tuck jumps, 3x 10
-lunge jumps, 3x 16 (8 per leg)
-box jumps, 3x 12
-forward lunges, 3x 10
-backward lunges, 3x 10
-squats, 3x10
-wall sit, 2 min.
COOLDOWN: brisk walk, 2 laps.
Stretch.
In practice, it didn't go badly at all. I was decidedly not in an exercising mood today; it was gray, rainy, and on those types of days, I really prefer to just hang out around the house and relax. Oh, and it was also chilly outside. One of those typical Alabama November days that had me much more likely to enjoy curling up under a blanket and reading a book than working my butt off at the Coliseum.
To the Coliseum we went, a little bit later than originally planned. We started off with a three-lap warmup instead of five. It had been a few days since I'd exercised and, I admit, I crapped out because my shins and ankles were feeling grumpy pounding on that concrete floor. We stretched, then got ready for the real kicker- running all 40 sections of the Coliseum seating, up and down the stairs until we'd completed a whole lap.
We tried this for the first time about a week ago, and I was not impressed with my own results. I was easily winded, my legs felt like jello, and I had to stop a few times because I didn't feel like my legs could maintain the strength to go safely down the stairs. Tonight, I set the two of us a goal: Make the whole lap with no stops, in under 20:00.
That was a resounding success. Our ending time was 11:42. This kind of blew my mind, to be honest. Like I said, the first time I'd done it, my legs had felt positively awful. This time, I even paced myself carefully, starting out more moderately than I could have so I could have a burst of speed to finish at the end. I was out of breath at points, but that was the point, of course. I was frankly shocked that our time could be that much different (it took at least 20 minutes the first time we tried it). I guess I'd chalk it up to a bad day, or maybe just knowing that I had the pressure of a time limit; that tends to make a big difference for me when I'm trying to beat a clock.
After the out and out cardio, we switched to out and out plyometrics. It's a bit of a meaningless distinction to make, however, considering how out of breath I got doing the jumps. The lunge jumps I found easy, and could probably increase the reps to 20 or more. I didn't start feeling any tiredness until the third set. The other two, I could definitely sense some muscle jello going on- the farther up I tried to tuck my legs after more reps, the harder it was for me to do that. Sometimes I felt like I was barely getting off the ground. The only thing that I had an issue with was the landing; again, doing these tuck jumps on concrete was hurting the hell out of my ankles, and I think at points I was landing way too hard. That's something for me to work on, and perhaps research a bit. There were points where I was definitely getting more than muscle pain out of those exercises. Another alteration I want to make for our next set of plyo is the rest period in between exercises. We took brief rests in between each set (maybe about 30 seconds or so), but the rests between the different jumps were three minutes, and I think that was too much; for the next plyo set we do, I'm bumping the time down to two minutes.
We moved on to the lunges next, and I set the time between those down to one minute, because they were much less high impact. I also bumped up the reps - for the forward and backward lunges and squats, we did three sets of 20 rather than three sets of 10. The lunges were a bit challenging by the end, but I think, again, it's a case where we may want to increase the reps; maybe 30 per leg instead of 20. The squats I definitely felt, especially the lower I got. By the end of the sets of squats, my knees were shaking badly, but my quads were burning in that good kind of way. From there, we moved on to a 2 minute wall sit, which, by this point, was VERY challenging. I had to readjust my position a number of times and couldn't keep holding a 90 degree angle with my legs. My legs felt outright weak and wobbly after I finished it.
That, of course, was a perfect time to run a one-lap time trial around the top of the coliseum. We don't know exactly what the distance is, but we think each lap is about 1/4 of a mile. Both of us took off at a dead sprint. We both got about the same time, with a three second difference between. I actually finished the faster of the two of us at 1:14, which pleased me since my husband is usually the faster of the two when it comes to running.
One thing that was very strange about running that lap: I controlled my breathing pretty well for most of the lap, because I had noticed that I have a bad tendency to hold my breath when I'm doing cardio. For about halfway around the lap, I wasn't particularly winded. When I was on my third leg of four, I started to lose my breath a little bit, but that felt normal. Oddly enough, the last five sections of seats, my body started giving. It was like a switch snapped off- all of a sudden, my legs were rubbery, and I could hardly push without feeling like all my muscles were going to snap somehow. I finished slower than I wanted to (perhaps a pacing error on my part, after maintaining a relatively consistent pace for most of the lap). It was a very strange physical experience; mentally, I was still pushing myself, but my body gave up on me before I was ready for it to. I'm not sure what I could have done to push through those feelings at the end of that lap, and I was also dizzy when I sat down afterward.
Overall, though there were negatives and positives, it was an overall positive experience. I can tell that, despite what you might call rather low reps for the plyo, the exercises are working. Sitting down to get in the car, my legs almost buckled- the sign of a good workout, no doubt.
I followed up some advice about doing cardio and loaded up on antioxidants for dinner: spinach, garlic, beans, potatoes. Since then, I've taken a nice long shower, and I believe I'm going to put some heat on my ankle before I go to sleep tonight, just to see if I can relieve some of the soreness.
I've been taking melatonin to sleep most nights lately- don't think I'll need it tonight. I'm exhausted before 11:00, and I'm totally okay with that.
Tomorrow night, team off-skates practice back at the Coliseum. Expect a report from that no-doubt surprising ass-busting, with the bonus entertainment that I have no idea what I'm getting into!
Given that those are three things that I really feel I need as a skater, I can't ignore plyometrics. Besides, if speed skaters do it, there's no reason it wouldn't be good for roller derby skaters; in spite of the different natures of our sports, there's a good deal of crossover, at least as far as what we want out of our bodies. Both sports call for good cardio and muscle endurance and strength, good explosive power for sprinting past other skaters, good agility for slipping through the holes other skaters leave as they move around the track, and a strong stride that uses as few strokes as possible to go as far as possible.
That having been said, my plan for this week, as it has evolved, involves me working on some cardio endurance, muscle strength, and explosiveness training today.
Here's today's regimen:
WARMUP: 1 lap walk, 2 laps jog, 1 run, 1 cooldown.
Stretch.
Run Coliseum stairs - goal time, 20 minutes or less for a whole lap.
PLYOMETRICS:
-tuck jumps, 3x 10
-lunge jumps, 3x 16 (8 per leg)
-box jumps, 3x 12
-forward lunges, 3x 10
-backward lunges, 3x 10
-squats, 3x10
-wall sit, 2 min.
COOLDOWN: brisk walk, 2 laps.
Stretch.
In practice, it didn't go badly at all. I was decidedly not in an exercising mood today; it was gray, rainy, and on those types of days, I really prefer to just hang out around the house and relax. Oh, and it was also chilly outside. One of those typical Alabama November days that had me much more likely to enjoy curling up under a blanket and reading a book than working my butt off at the Coliseum.
To the Coliseum we went, a little bit later than originally planned. We started off with a three-lap warmup instead of five. It had been a few days since I'd exercised and, I admit, I crapped out because my shins and ankles were feeling grumpy pounding on that concrete floor. We stretched, then got ready for the real kicker- running all 40 sections of the Coliseum seating, up and down the stairs until we'd completed a whole lap.
We tried this for the first time about a week ago, and I was not impressed with my own results. I was easily winded, my legs felt like jello, and I had to stop a few times because I didn't feel like my legs could maintain the strength to go safely down the stairs. Tonight, I set the two of us a goal: Make the whole lap with no stops, in under 20:00.
That was a resounding success. Our ending time was 11:42. This kind of blew my mind, to be honest. Like I said, the first time I'd done it, my legs had felt positively awful. This time, I even paced myself carefully, starting out more moderately than I could have so I could have a burst of speed to finish at the end. I was out of breath at points, but that was the point, of course. I was frankly shocked that our time could be that much different (it took at least 20 minutes the first time we tried it). I guess I'd chalk it up to a bad day, or maybe just knowing that I had the pressure of a time limit; that tends to make a big difference for me when I'm trying to beat a clock.
After the out and out cardio, we switched to out and out plyometrics. It's a bit of a meaningless distinction to make, however, considering how out of breath I got doing the jumps. The lunge jumps I found easy, and could probably increase the reps to 20 or more. I didn't start feeling any tiredness until the third set. The other two, I could definitely sense some muscle jello going on- the farther up I tried to tuck my legs after more reps, the harder it was for me to do that. Sometimes I felt like I was barely getting off the ground. The only thing that I had an issue with was the landing; again, doing these tuck jumps on concrete was hurting the hell out of my ankles, and I think at points I was landing way too hard. That's something for me to work on, and perhaps research a bit. There were points where I was definitely getting more than muscle pain out of those exercises. Another alteration I want to make for our next set of plyo is the rest period in between exercises. We took brief rests in between each set (maybe about 30 seconds or so), but the rests between the different jumps were three minutes, and I think that was too much; for the next plyo set we do, I'm bumping the time down to two minutes.
We moved on to the lunges next, and I set the time between those down to one minute, because they were much less high impact. I also bumped up the reps - for the forward and backward lunges and squats, we did three sets of 20 rather than three sets of 10. The lunges were a bit challenging by the end, but I think, again, it's a case where we may want to increase the reps; maybe 30 per leg instead of 20. The squats I definitely felt, especially the lower I got. By the end of the sets of squats, my knees were shaking badly, but my quads were burning in that good kind of way. From there, we moved on to a 2 minute wall sit, which, by this point, was VERY challenging. I had to readjust my position a number of times and couldn't keep holding a 90 degree angle with my legs. My legs felt outright weak and wobbly after I finished it.
That, of course, was a perfect time to run a one-lap time trial around the top of the coliseum. We don't know exactly what the distance is, but we think each lap is about 1/4 of a mile. Both of us took off at a dead sprint. We both got about the same time, with a three second difference between. I actually finished the faster of the two of us at 1:14, which pleased me since my husband is usually the faster of the two when it comes to running.
One thing that was very strange about running that lap: I controlled my breathing pretty well for most of the lap, because I had noticed that I have a bad tendency to hold my breath when I'm doing cardio. For about halfway around the lap, I wasn't particularly winded. When I was on my third leg of four, I started to lose my breath a little bit, but that felt normal. Oddly enough, the last five sections of seats, my body started giving. It was like a switch snapped off- all of a sudden, my legs were rubbery, and I could hardly push without feeling like all my muscles were going to snap somehow. I finished slower than I wanted to (perhaps a pacing error on my part, after maintaining a relatively consistent pace for most of the lap). It was a very strange physical experience; mentally, I was still pushing myself, but my body gave up on me before I was ready for it to. I'm not sure what I could have done to push through those feelings at the end of that lap, and I was also dizzy when I sat down afterward.
Overall, though there were negatives and positives, it was an overall positive experience. I can tell that, despite what you might call rather low reps for the plyo, the exercises are working. Sitting down to get in the car, my legs almost buckled- the sign of a good workout, no doubt.
I followed up some advice about doing cardio and loaded up on antioxidants for dinner: spinach, garlic, beans, potatoes. Since then, I've taken a nice long shower, and I believe I'm going to put some heat on my ankle before I go to sleep tonight, just to see if I can relieve some of the soreness.
I've been taking melatonin to sleep most nights lately- don't think I'll need it tonight. I'm exhausted before 11:00, and I'm totally okay with that.
Tomorrow night, team off-skates practice back at the Coliseum. Expect a report from that no-doubt surprising ass-busting, with the bonus entertainment that I have no idea what I'm getting into!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Building a Better Zombie
Now that the last bout of the season is over for BCR, it's time to move into the off season. We'll get our holiday break somewhere around mid-December, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not all that interested in it!
When I read descriptions of off-season training, I felt some consternation, if not outright dread. Long hours of painful plyometrics, workouts where muscles turned to jello, and lots and lots of endurance training, running, weight-lifting... Well, it's just not as fun as skating, that's for sure.
Without a strong foundation, though, you can't BE the skater you want to be. I realize that, now that I'm training with a more experienced team, or, frankly, a team that is simply smart about training.
Bar none, Belles 'n' Bombshells rushed us into bout season. No, we didn't have our first "real" bout until June, but we played in MRV's black vs. white bout in April. Even from November, when I started with the team, to April, I wasn't prepared. Nor was I starting from zero like a lot of derby skaters are- I already knew the rules, and I already had all my basic skate skills. It was an issue of muscle strength and pure endurance, and it continued to be those issues throughout the season.
If nothing else, BnB proved a point through example: poorly structured practice time during the off-season will result in poor play and the increased risk of injury during bouting season. We engaged in strenuous activity before stretching, once we had passed our 25 in 5 time, we never revisited the exercise, and we continued to do exercises that were useless to us well into bout season, such as basic stepping drills to teach beginners crossovers. Practices were inconsistent and lacked physical challenge. By the time our season was done, we were practicing once a week on skates, and everything else was left up to the individual skater, with poor monitoring practices, and no system of punishment for skaters who did not main activity, nor system of reward for skaters who worked hard on their own.
On the track, this had its natural results. We were unorganized and had a difficult time playing as a team because we only skated together once a week and, as I noted, we were often doing exercises that weren't useful to us during those practices. It showed in more than just strategy, though- we almost never scrimmaged, so our hits were poor and easily telegraphed. More importantly, our endurance was terrible. We would go out, hang tough for a few jams, and then get exhausted by the end of the first half. In the second half, we wouldn't even be able to make a pass at staying up with the other team- they'd run away with the game easily.
It's time for all that to change. I've spent a season chasing endurance like it's some kind of elusive phantom. Maybe it is, but it can't run forever- especially if I train to catch it. Today I've been doing my research, finding out what it is that skaters need to build up the agility, speed and strength that it takes to keep fighting every jam, no matter if you're playing a single jam at a time, or six in a row. And I'm coming up with a plan.
Aggressive interval training, plyo, and on-skates endurance drills until I can't stand it anymore. I'm tired of giving up on myself, and I'm tired of not having the wherewithal to push through line drills and sprints.
Much like with losing weight, I'm setting myself goals for endurance training:
-Cut 40 lap time down to 8 minutes or less.
-Cut 25 lap time down to 4:30 or less.
-Break through the pack as a jammer. I still haven't done this yet as a BCR practice because their packs are so tight and fast, and I don't currently have the speed or the agility to sprint through holes when they open up.
My plan for this week is as follows:
1) Monday - one hour cross-training at Coliseum.
2) Tuesday - one hour off-skates team practice at Coliseum
3) Wednesday - two hour team practice on skates
4) Thursday - open skate endurance training
5) Friday - one hour cross-training at Coliseum
6) Sunday - two hour team practice on skates
And I'd like for this to be applicable to every week, mostly because I need to get into a habit of a) skating as often as I can every week, and b) exercising regularly, so that when it comes time for a break, I'll be used to exercising often, and I won't be tempted to slack off.
Usually, my problem is that I can't figure out things to do. Right now, I'm full of ideas about what I could do to improve my endurance, as well as my general fitness level, which is something that I feel good about.
I also feel good about making this week's plan public. See folks - it's all out here, and now I'm accountable. I'll post details as the week goes on, perhaps report a bit on whether I feel I'm improving, and the overall body effects I'm experiencing.
Here's to building a better zombie, one step at a time. Next season, the huffing, puffing Mary Helley of the past will be a distant memory.
When I read descriptions of off-season training, I felt some consternation, if not outright dread. Long hours of painful plyometrics, workouts where muscles turned to jello, and lots and lots of endurance training, running, weight-lifting... Well, it's just not as fun as skating, that's for sure.
Without a strong foundation, though, you can't BE the skater you want to be. I realize that, now that I'm training with a more experienced team, or, frankly, a team that is simply smart about training.
Bar none, Belles 'n' Bombshells rushed us into bout season. No, we didn't have our first "real" bout until June, but we played in MRV's black vs. white bout in April. Even from November, when I started with the team, to April, I wasn't prepared. Nor was I starting from zero like a lot of derby skaters are- I already knew the rules, and I already had all my basic skate skills. It was an issue of muscle strength and pure endurance, and it continued to be those issues throughout the season.
If nothing else, BnB proved a point through example: poorly structured practice time during the off-season will result in poor play and the increased risk of injury during bouting season. We engaged in strenuous activity before stretching, once we had passed our 25 in 5 time, we never revisited the exercise, and we continued to do exercises that were useless to us well into bout season, such as basic stepping drills to teach beginners crossovers. Practices were inconsistent and lacked physical challenge. By the time our season was done, we were practicing once a week on skates, and everything else was left up to the individual skater, with poor monitoring practices, and no system of punishment for skaters who did not main activity, nor system of reward for skaters who worked hard on their own.
On the track, this had its natural results. We were unorganized and had a difficult time playing as a team because we only skated together once a week and, as I noted, we were often doing exercises that weren't useful to us during those practices. It showed in more than just strategy, though- we almost never scrimmaged, so our hits were poor and easily telegraphed. More importantly, our endurance was terrible. We would go out, hang tough for a few jams, and then get exhausted by the end of the first half. In the second half, we wouldn't even be able to make a pass at staying up with the other team- they'd run away with the game easily.
It's time for all that to change. I've spent a season chasing endurance like it's some kind of elusive phantom. Maybe it is, but it can't run forever- especially if I train to catch it. Today I've been doing my research, finding out what it is that skaters need to build up the agility, speed and strength that it takes to keep fighting every jam, no matter if you're playing a single jam at a time, or six in a row. And I'm coming up with a plan.
Aggressive interval training, plyo, and on-skates endurance drills until I can't stand it anymore. I'm tired of giving up on myself, and I'm tired of not having the wherewithal to push through line drills and sprints.
Much like with losing weight, I'm setting myself goals for endurance training:
-Cut 40 lap time down to 8 minutes or less.
-Cut 25 lap time down to 4:30 or less.
-Break through the pack as a jammer. I still haven't done this yet as a BCR practice because their packs are so tight and fast, and I don't currently have the speed or the agility to sprint through holes when they open up.
My plan for this week is as follows:
1) Monday - one hour cross-training at Coliseum.
2) Tuesday - one hour off-skates team practice at Coliseum
3) Wednesday - two hour team practice on skates
4) Thursday - open skate endurance training
5) Friday - one hour cross-training at Coliseum
6) Sunday - two hour team practice on skates
And I'd like for this to be applicable to every week, mostly because I need to get into a habit of a) skating as often as I can every week, and b) exercising regularly, so that when it comes time for a break, I'll be used to exercising often, and I won't be tempted to slack off.
Usually, my problem is that I can't figure out things to do. Right now, I'm full of ideas about what I could do to improve my endurance, as well as my general fitness level, which is something that I feel good about.
I also feel good about making this week's plan public. See folks - it's all out here, and now I'm accountable. I'll post details as the week goes on, perhaps report a bit on whether I feel I'm improving, and the overall body effects I'm experiencing.
Here's to building a better zombie, one step at a time. Next season, the huffing, puffing Mary Helley of the past will be a distant memory.
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