Work hard, Hit harder

Tonights CTRV practice was a very quiet and intimate session, with only 6 attendees. Holly was coaching, Tom sat out with a cold, that left me and Claire, regular attendees, and our two guest skaters, Nina (Nina's Flytrap) and Paul (Bollock Obama). 

After a quick skate round and stretch for warm up, we looked into practicing proper derby stance. Man I need to practice my squats, they sting! 

Speed Skating stance

We practiced this, with crossovers for a while, then moved onto 'lateral turns'. Im not even going to try explain this, but in basic terms, pretend you're holding a tea tray, turn your torso to 'serve some customers' and your feet will follow. It's an important skill to learn as it allows you to cut across the track, cut across another players path, and essentially push them off the track. I think its called lateral blocking, but dont quote me, although I have heard another name for it. For those with tender ears and eyes I'll call it 'the C-word-Block'. Ultimately the best block to learn as it totally disables the other players actions.

After learning the lateral turns, through cones, and any direction around the hall, we then had the short discussion of to contact or not to contact. By unanimous decision we voted CONTACT!!! I wasnt expecting to have it thrust upon me until after christmas, so this was an early christmas present. Holly paired me with Claire, and Nina with Paul. At first, and in fact the whole way through the drill we looked like this . . . except with smaller boobs, haha! 

Claire's aim was to 'lean' into me, in effort to push me off the track. My job was to resist, so I did. And I did an effing grand job of it. Such a good job in fact, we only stopped once we got to the corner and spun out, with the most spectacular of falls I have achieved so far, ending up with us both looking like this . . . 

Yes, and we even had the smiles on our faces!

After we played with shoulder checking, we then moved onto some light shoulder hits. Paul, being big, was our hittee, and Claire, Nina and I were the hitters, biaaaatch! Catching up with Paul I did fear for my life, he's like 7ft tall with his skates on. But, lucky for me, he saw me coming, crouched down to my height and sat back and took my tiny nudge. Hmm, piece of cake, not as scary as I thought it'd be, so the next time I went in harder. We did about 4 rounds of hits, and I put more force behind each one, and by my last one I even managed to make Paul say 'ow'. WOOOP! I like to think we would have looked something like this (imagine I'm the lady in red- no, not Chris de Burghs one, that one in the picture) 

After our little battering sesh, we then moved onto one footed glides. Paul, Claire and Nina worked on slaloming, while Holly talked me through some techniques to stop my left foot veering inwards. I told her I was quite the professh on my right foot but when it came to being on the left, I did struggle. After a little tinkering with my balanced stance, we managed to get me going in a straight (ish) controlled line on my left foot. Once I get that foot mastered I'll be away. 

So, at tomorrows play night I'll be practicing left footed glides, lateral turns and stance.