Getting back on the figurative horse

The last couple of weeks have been rather busy for me. Work and personal life have been eating up quite a lot of time. Then there's the derby stuff. Many of my fellow skaters are getting injured or having to leave the league for various reasons. As I've written before, that's been hard for me. It's also been hard not having (or making) the time to go skating.

Part of the reason I've not made more time is that there's a part of me that's a little scared. I didn't get hurt badly when I took my fall at the beginning of November but it still hurt. The worst part is that I know *exactly* what I was doing at the moment I fell. Transitions.

There's a history there with my learning how to do a forwards to backwards transition. I think too much and my hips don't open up wide enough. I also over think it. This is a constant problem in my life and especially in my skating. I think too hard and then I doubt and then I fall.

Since my injury, I've gone skating but I've been very, very reluctant to do transitions, which of course means that I've been making myself do them.

When I was growing up, my mom tried to get me into horse back riding as that was something she had really enjoyed as a kid. She'd even gone on to raise her own horses. The horse that she wanted me to ride, Spot, was very stubborn and very smart. Spot knew that if she scared me or didn't do what I wanted, that I'd get frustrated and not try to ride her again. Guess what happened? Exactly what the horse thought would happen.

 There's the saying of you have to get back on the horse after it bucks you off but sometimes, it really hurts. I eventually got back onto a horse though it took several years and I was usually anxious the entire time up to getting on the horse. I don't want to take years getting back to working on transitions so I've decided to pick myself up and get back at it even though this is how I gave myself whiplash.

I've slowly been working back up to being confident about transitions. That's the major thing. I'm not confident about them when I'm skating in a circle. If I'm over to a side and just going back and forth, I'm okay but as soon as I get on the big floor, I doubt myself.

Saturday morning, I went skating with my Sweetie. We missed the lessons but one of the instructors happened to be there. He came over and chatted with me and I used it as a chance to work on my transitions. Sometimes it simply takes hearing the same thing in several different ways. He watched me and pointed out some things I already knew I was (or in most cases, wasn't) doing. Stay low. Keep the back straight. Don't lean forward. Then he did something that really surprised me. He had me take his hands and lightly press down, as though I was holding onto a table. After he let go, I kept my hands in that position and he had me turn around. I could do it! It turns out that as I was turning, the outside shoulder (example: if I'm turning to the right, then it's my left shoulder) would start to turn in the correct direction and then would pull back, causing me to fall into a pile of Ferret.

I went back and forth in the center for the rink quite a few times to get it down. Tuesday night, we went skating again. Once again, I was horribly nervous and was over thinking it on the floor so I took myself to the "kiddie pool" (a small practice area off to the side) and did a couple of transitions. Then, even though I knew I'd look like a dork, I skated out to the center and, raising my arms up almost like a ballerina, I started doing transitions.

They still need to be faster but they are happening now. Two of my derby friends were there and got just as excited as I did when I did it without falling. Now the real key is to remember that confidence I found and to keep it up. It's all baby steps but if I hadn't decided to get back up on my "horse", I wouldn't have improved. That is the most amazing thing about skating. Every time I skate, something gets better, even on my really hard days.