1. Agility & explosive power
2. Skating stance
3. Courage
4. Endurance
5. Communication
First of all a little note about my practice attendance percentage. Hopefully I've calculated it right, but I've attended 16 of 19 PRD practices since the new attendance started on 1st of September. That makes my percentage 84%, quite good. In addition I've been to the USA boot camp, on a strategy lesson, checking minimum skills and one FTP class. From that I could claim my attendance and participating shows my interest in this sport. Also I've finally taken the step to enter the NSO world too and volunteered to be a non skating official in December.
1. Agility & explosive power
I've successfully passed minimum skills in August and my skills in leaping, jumping, turning, running with toe stops, rolling with one skate and doing zigzag trough the track are in a sufficient level. There actually hasn't been that much this agility training since USA boot camp and our practices has gotten more intense, so we haven't had that much time to improve our own weaknesses. But one thing I've tried to keep in mind when warming up: rolling with fore/back wheels.
It was such a good thing to participate on FTP last Sunday because we did some agility, trained cross overs with a pair and had skating time to practice our own stuff. I would love to take part another time too, but somehow my calendar is filling to the top. Our own practices have actually included less scrimmaging than I thought but more usefully scrimmage-like drills. It has been more to do shorter drills so we can learn the point and some strategies too.
Explosive power is something that I've failed real bad. I'm quite happy with my agility level - I'm felling less all the time, keeping a better balance and becoming more stable all the time. But explosive power, I need you! One reason is my injuries that have kept me from doing anything hasty in fear of getting my injuries even worse. That is of course a wise thing to do and has partially helped me achieve a better balance. But I want to get in shape for great jumps, leaps and sudden changes, so this is the first subject on my to do -list when I get my injuries totally fixed.
2. Skating stance
Oh dear. So I have talked about my stance and suggested that my injuries came of a bad stance. Now I need to get that right, 'cause all the pain in my buttocks is actually more likely to have come from a too tiring skating style, not from a bad stance. Of course there's still work to do to get into perfect skating stance but I'm on my way there. The good thing about getting injured is that you really dig deep to find how to do things right and now I'm able to fix it. One really important note for me has been not leaning my back in front of me too much but to have my back as leaned as my shins/ankles are.
The part that has made my muscles hurt is strain for a lot of exercise and my skating style. In effective skating we use our abs and our buttocks with our thighs and hips. I've skated quite much in a style I skate in a pack: small skating, short strokes. That does not activate my abs and buttocks almost at all so all the strain falls to my thighs. There was one drill at the USA boot camp about long strokes and I will more and more concentrate in having a couple of strong long strokes instead of many small strokes.
3. Courage
"We have three on skates practice times per week now in autumn 2012 and at least two per week in spring 2013. That amount should guarantee that I will be more confident on skates."
That's me on September 5th, 1½ month ago. Already now after such a short time I feel again more confident. I mentioned earlier about not falling that much anymore. Even though I get hit by another skate or my own I can keep my balance better than 1½ months ago. A small thing but makes practice less tiring too. Getting down and up is exhausting. I am also more confident in having fun on skates, jumping around, running with skates and toe stops.
I still need to improve leaping and jumping. I've been keeping my jumps down because of my injuries but there will be a point when I'm okay again and then it's just all about my courage.
4. Endurance
This is something that I haven't really especially worked for. I've been counting on my endurance history and now that I've done about one run a week it still seems to be quite good. That is my overall endurance when running or cycling or even skating, like we tried out yesterday. 100 laps without a pause was a piece of cake, the only regret I had was to not have skated faster. The 100 laps was also a great way to improve basic skating skills.
There are other things to consider in endurance that have come to my notion. Like for example now that I've been forced to leave RVP lessons out of my schedule for a while I've done the mistake of not worked on my abs enough. Of course BODYPUMP lesson includes some muscle toning for abs but quite a little. And it's not just the abs but the whole core of my body, the middle section that needs work. It will help with my balance too, so this is really something I need to get on right now.
5. Communication
We all communicate more on the track. I had the best feeling when checking the minimum skills the other week when we left those test participants to skate the track for a while when we had a short talk. I noticed the pack started to communicate, I hear many "get back in the pack" and "get the pack together" shouts and it made me smile. To communicate even in a simple skating around the track is where it begins. I'm still quite clueless about communication on it's best, I've only had some tips from my dearest man that we could have some secret signals for different strategies so we could shout them out loud in play.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti