Following practice on 3/27

Today was a hard day. There are many things that factor into this and no one area is to blame though I'm putting most of it on work. For the rest of this to make sense, I must write a bit about my day job. I work as a theatre technician. Since my theatre is attached to a University, our busy times are generally from the middle of a semester until the end of it. This translates into right now has gotten very busy. Getting a chance to skate outside of practice in the past two weeks has been difficult. I missed last week's practice due to work and I would definitely rather have been getting my butt kicked in dry land practice than at work.

This past week was a really tough one at work. I had 2 shows, longer days, that I had to work. The other two days were spent setting up equipment in preparation for our opera. A lot of lifting was involved of heavy things and even when you lift from your legs, your back sometimes is involved whether or not you want it to be.

Add on top of this the stress from the week before of playing both myself and my boss as well as the extreme temperature changes (my back doesn't like it when it goes from nice to stupid cold overnight), has for a sore me. In addition to all of the above, I'm now finding opportunities to do dry land type things. I engage my core whenever I possibly can. Instead of bending at the waist to untie my shoes, I will do into a squat and hold it for each shoe. I'd spent most of the past week doing some sort of working out but not nearly enough stretching. I've also quit soda and my eating habits have gotten a bit out of whack (a weird work schedule will do that to a girl).

The sum of all of the above meant that as soon as I started skating, I realized I was sore and tight everywhere and that I really needed to see my chiropractor. We started skating in laps around the entire space (there's an audience/stage area and then the backstage area; when we practice, the curtains are raised and it is one space), which had recently been mopped and was still a little wet. I'm having a real hard time not skating knock-kneed. I need to get some really good arch support which was confirmed as a solution which I'll get into later. Betty, one of my friends who introduced me to roller derby, has threatened to put something (I said I was going to find a midget) to put between my knees to keep them apart. It's one of the biggest things I need to work on and one of the hardest for me.

After some warm-up laps, we broke into our group (pink, blue, scrimmage) and continued warm-ups together. I'm in the pink group, which was oddly small today. We started skating around the track and on a single whistle, we dropped to one knee and popped back up. On a double whistle, we did both knees and then up. After doing that in both directions, we worked on starts from a down position. I fully understand the concepts of all of this stuff and how I'm suppose to do it. However, my body isn't to that point yet. I need to spend a lot more time working on my core and my legs don't just let me pull them up quickly. I fall onto a knee and it takes me forever to get back up or so it seems. This isn't to say that I haven't improved for I have done that. I get up much faster than I use to but today I was winded shortly after we started. I'm not sure if it was the cause of not drinking enough water the last couple of days or what but I was hurting early on.

We then did foot work. We do various agility things. This is part of the building blocks so that we can do awesome things. While I never got this when I was an active music student, I've learned through skating that even when you know you've got something, you still work on it so you can combine all of the muscle memory when it counts. After the first set, Hanna, one of the coaches, came over to talk with me about my knock-kneed problem. She told me that I needed to be really conscious of it as it will help my agility if my knees are kept apart. She told me that this was a big problem for her and that they want to build on good habits. This is where getting better arch supports came in as Hanna told me that she has fallen arches and needs to use high arch inserts to keep things in line. The other recommendation she gave was to do this sort of work with a basketball type object between my legs to help force them apart. I can't build the muscles if I'm not forcing them into the right position a bit.

Despite this putting me way behind the other girls (there are usually more of us too), it was really helpful advice. It's something that I've been hearing from quite a few people but hadn't gotten any solid advice on how to fix it other than to keep working the hip muscles. Now I have a plan to work on getting better. The footwork has gotten much easier than when I was first doing it almost a year ago. I couldn't step without rolling to save my life. Now, I still roll a little but I have much more control. I'm also ridiculously good on my toe stops. We were walking down the line on them when I realized I wasn't doing drum corps (we marched backwards on our toes in my corps) and could get really low while on my toe stops. Lydia actually complemented me on how awesome it was to see me dig in.

We then worked on stops, something that isn't very strong for me yet. Angelfire, another MNRG guest coach of the day, had us start with toe stop stops which none of us ever do. In fact, we've been told to not do it but Angelfire did point out that occasionally you need to be able to do it so we tried. It was the first stop I'd learned over a year ago and hadn't really used it in a long while but it did come back. Not my best stopping technique but far better than my t-stops. I don't know why but t-stops and I don't get along very well. It's not that I don't understand them. I think it's that my feet go stupid. The last time I went skating I was starting to get them down again. Today, it was a struggle as though that last time on skates didn't happen. Stopping with my right foot behind is still my strongest stop which means I really need to work the other side. The last stop and the one I'm best at is the snowplow. I was terrified of this stop when I first learned it and believed that there was no way for me to be able to do it. Then, just before the time of my drama, it became the only stop I could reliably do. That was a really cool feeling. I'm not completely consistent with it yet but I can actually stop with them.

The thing I had most fun with was the sprint starts. I haven't tried running on my toe stops since I was preparing to tryout for NSRGs last summer and I didn't really do it then. This came really naturally and felt awesome. The duck walk starts I wasn't really sure if I was even doing them right. At this point, the fact that I hadn't eaten a lot and that I'd eaten too soon to practice were starting to catch up with me as well as my sore back. I was falling a lot (not really that new) but when I got up (which was a little slower than normal), I was sore in my lower back. I should also mention that I am very well endowed. I'm actually afraid that they have grown again which if they have, I would seriously consider breast reduction surgery. They are heavy and it's hard to get the right stance, for me right now, with them. I know how to stretch out my lower back as it's always been a tight area for me but it was annoying to have to keep going over to the side to stretch out even though I knew if I didn't that it would hurt worse later and even potentially do damage. Lydia was okay and even recommended it at one point. It was a bit frustrating to be otherwise fine but in a load of pain whenever I'd get into the right stance.

The finally drills were the starts from the ground again but this time we got more instruction on what we were doing. Unfortunately, I started having a coughing fit and then it felt like I was going to vomit and as I always feel worse after I vomit, I was determined to not let it happen. I had taken a lot of falls, a few more than normal probably, and was just beat. I hated that I wasn't able to finish out the drills but every time I started to get into position, the bad feelings all would resurface.

One of the bigger highlights of the day for me was the support that I was getting from my fellow skaters. I was having so many issues from the falling and the knock-kneed skating to my toe stops suddenly deciding that they should come out of my skates. They had been in so tight that I couldn't move them without a tool before practice. I know I should get someone to look at them as this has become ridiculous. They need to stop doing this. I've been very reluctant to get close to any of the other girls because of how badly I was hurt and rejected this past fall. I don't want to go through that again. I don't want girls with the same experience to tell me that I'm not athletic enough or that I'm too old to do derby. I don't want to feel like I belong to only have to turn around and pack up. I know rationally that this isn't going to be the case but it causes me to be more interested in talking with the MNRG skaters than with my fellow Debu-Taunts as the MNRG skaters are actively doing derby in a demanding league. I could handle getting advice from them. Today, not only were people supportive and asking if I was okay when I'd fall, but they were starting to offer advice. Yet the way they did it was so much different from this fall that I didn't feel the need to get defensive. I think the fact that there were only about 13 of us today made a huge difference. There were moments when I was the last one doing something (lots of falling again) that they would help me to push myself. If I was the last one doing the foot work drills, someone would jump into the next line and do it with me.

Another odd thing was at the end of practice, we gathered around. The girls who will be involved with this coming bout (pre-show and derby 101) were given information they needed and then were asked to put a skate in to win a comp ticket. At that point, I skated over to my stuff to get my gear away (I was also shaky and having a bit of chills). As I started to take my gear off, I noticed they were doing core work. I was torn between going over there and doing it and just ignoring it especially as I wasn't the only girl not over there. My body won and I just got packed up and slowly made my way out but a bit of me feels like an ass for not doing it. One thing that makes me feel a bit better is that I probably use my core more during the week at work than most girls do.

I will sadly be missing the next two weeks of practice due to work but will hopefully get out skating at least once a week if not more though as it's two big productions for the next two weeks, I'm not certain. If nothing else, I will be finding time to do some real dry land and not just "I'm at work and standing around so I'm going to do something useful for my core" dry land.