Off Skates practicing

Hooray for BODYPUMP! The program changed yesterday and as always the first hour of new program I couldn't quite keep up. The theme of this program is burning calories. The week before I felt really powerful despite the long break so I added small weights to the back part. Which was such a bad idea! After doing the lift ups it was a hell to do triceps. But like always it felt good afterwards. Some good news coming up, my muscles are not even close to the soreness I had last Tuesday. Especially my thighs are quite alright and I did super clean squats, really to the perfect angle. That is some killer result from only one week. Maybe next week I can lift up a little for the squats and see if I can still go low enough. And drop the back weights back to 10 kg. That's a maybe, this week is going to have more exercise than last week so I'm still trying to feel the optimum amount.

Here's our practice place after the Open Skate on Sunday. Such a dreamy view and it was still light at 5 pm. Soon it's gonna change into a darker view.

It's time for a key points review, yeah! This time I'll take a look at it from off skates point of view. Now that we've got on skates practices three times a week I won't have so much time to do off skates workouts, but there are few I don't want to miss out on.

1. Agility & explosive power
So how to improve this off skates? We had a great agility session with the team USA coaches. We did small jumps for about 45 seconds, a time that was good to start with. The point was to jump over a line with your both feet jumping and landing at the same time back and forth and not to jump on the line, but precisely on the two imaginary boxes that the line separated. Soon I noticed that my upper body did not move that much and the more I tightened my core (abs, back and sides) the easier it was to make the little jumps precise. Well of course it was not perfect and I've only practiced it a couple of times after the boot camp but it's something that can be quite easily improved. What's the use of this? It makes your calves, thighs and core work out at the same time. You learn to control your upper body when your feet are on the move which improves your balance. And what was the point of gravitation for women? (Everyone lift you hand! You know the answer!) Hips. What are our hips doing in this drill? Enabling a small movement from side to side. We do not work with the sides of our body that often but in roller derby you need to be able to jump in different directions and from different positions. You are unconsciously just jumping from one situation to another. Or at least you should be able to. That is really tiring if you don't have the strength to do it.

The agility session had various versions of the jump. One was to jump in four boxes, numbering the boxes from 1-4 and then changing the order how to jump. We are having a similar drill today on our off skate practice so I can tell you more about it tomorrow with a fresh touch.

I want to praise BODYPUMP for helping with the explosive power. Doing squats with weights and especially the jumps we've had in the old and this new program are very useful. Jumping as high as you can and dropping your knees to the angle of 90 degrees and jumping again from there does good for the muscles we need moving fast on the track. I want to be able to jump around the track too if needed. I've already noticed that if you have a certain hole where you want to squeeze in between before it gets closed, sometimes the fastest way is to leap instead of skating. Maybe it's just my long legs but the better I get at it the longer leaps I will be able to do with this pair of spaghetti.

2. Skating stance
Squats, more squats and keeping a good posture. Only last week my dear Lupus told me that my squats look good because of my good posture. How awesome is that? Feedback without even asking it. I think a lot of things when I do squats. First of all I take a deep breath and fix my position: a light bending of the knees, tighten my abs, squeeze my buttocks together and turn my shoulders back and down to a relaxed open position. All that ensure that I have a straight back, can breathe well and then I'm ready for some pain. All this goes quite effortless when I'm feeling energetic and am on a good mood. We also have a good mirror in our bathroom that enables me to spy on my position and the angle I am when heading down.

But(tocks) when it comes to balancing I am often shaking and losing my balance and with weights it takes more concentration to have your weight on both feet and doing the movement equally with both thighs. This is good too. You will get off balance with your skates on and need to get the balance back. Learning how to deal with that is really good. I have already learned something about the muscles that make a balance and abs are one of them. I try not to use my hands when balancing but of course sometimes I need to. Looking at your feet does not help. Concentrate on something on a wall on the same level as your eyes and stick to it. Tighten up your abs and straighten your back and get to it. Usually it works and even if it doesn't you'll get better at it by trying.

3. Courage
Try new stuff, explore the possibilities of different off skates workouts! That is what I want to do with courage off skates. The first thing I want to add to this list is getting back on the pole. Pole dancing gives courage and self-confidence. Spinning yourself upside down and holding yourself there is a Courage Therapy and I need it. Letting your hands go and making your thighs do all the work or hanging from your hands exercising your abs makes you feel like a partial superwoman. I'm lucky have my teammate El El Cool Jessie with me on this so we can have a laugh while getting on the superwoman mood.

4. Endurance
Since we are having skating practices three times a week this is the part I will lack the most considering off skates. After 3-5 weeks I am hopefully able to do more off skates practices as I get in better shape and this is the part I will add to. As long as it's possible I will do jogging outside, then switch to a treadmill or indoor cycling. The minimum exercise is to last 30 minutes and a good one would be 45-60 minutes. I will no longer do my 15 kilometers and up runs simply because I have no time for those anymore. If I'm fit enough in the spring I will try to do one longer run which I like to dedicate to the becoming of the light season. Everyone's invited! You never know, maybe we'll take part in Naisten Kymppi again, the Finnish 10 kilometer run meant only for women.

5. Communication
Sometimes I have a bad day or a moment and might say something I regret. A new rule is not to only regret but to talk about it, say I'm sorry aloud and not only think about it. "Maybe she didn't notice" or "She might not get hurt from a small thing like that" are not to be in my thoughts anymore. I'm not a superwoman so there are bound to be frogs from my mouth, but I don't want to leave them running around.

The same goes the other way. If I feel bad something someone said to me I will rather talk about it than to just bitch it up in my mind. So what if someone thinks I'm making it too much of an issue, at least I feel fine and hopefully the other person notices I just care and want us to be close. There are misunderstandings, different tones of voice, different ways of saying things. Everyone's different, so they also communicate differently. We've only just began to get to know each other so there's no knowing the ways this group will work before we try it out.

A little drums for me! I'm now in charge of PRD public relations! Mostly communicating with the newspapers now but maybe more on the future. Our chairwoman is still having the most communications to herself because she's the closest to a superwoman I know in that kind of thing!


CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IMAGINE A COOL PICTURE HERE THEN CLOSE YOUR COMPUTER AND GO AGILITY TRAINING WITH ME!