Sunday, January 29, 2012

Wednesday Jan 25 League Practice. All kinds of fun.

It just occurred to me that I hadn't posted anything about my last practice! I know you were all probably awaiting my rambling report with bated breath so huge apologies if I ruined anyone's week...  ; )

It was all kinds of fun.

I'm old and tired, the poor hubster is sick, and the wee ones with their ever-morphing super powers have really beat us down this weekend so my memory is a tad foggy in regards to what I had for breakfast today let alone what I did in the middle of last week. But a few drills stand out for me in the haze.

One super cool exercise was standing still, closing our eyes and allowing ourselves to lose our balance forwards, backwards and to the sides. The goal was to lean so far you fell off balance, then right yourself by getting to your derby stance. Totally fun. I felt like I was back in the karate dojo, doing my katas with my eyes closed. A kata is sequence of moves that mimics one side of a fight.  After much practice it's like a gorgeous dance, an amazing mix of fluid, controlled movements punctuated by sharp, clean strikes, kicks or jumps. At one point I opened my eyes and was totally surprised because I had rolled about 15 feet back, completely away from the group that was spread around the length of the track. I had no idea I was rolling I was so deeply into the exercise.

Another invigorating exercise we did was working with a partner, and counting for each other as we did 5 laps, alternating with them till  you both had skated 15 around the outside of the entire rink. Crazy, crazy bonkers fun. The rink is pretty big, so we were getting an awesome endurance work out. I am COO-COO for endurance drills. Seriously, I could just do them till I dropped, or they closed the rink, whatever came first. So much fun.  On my 15th lap I skated into the group of "counters," realized I hadn't considered that I needed to stop so I went to a knee and then to my side and slid baseball style for about 8 feet. Super fun.

We also skated our 25 in 5 on the actual derby track and my partner tells me I was at 23 laps at 4 minutes. Wooo hooo! I have no idea what my finish time was but man that was fun, especially right after skating 15 fast laps around the outside of the track. Talk about a derby high.

Like I said, I'm wiped this evening, the derby high has dissipated and my memory is foggy at best. So until next practice, that's all I have to report. Can't wait!!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

First Vice Quads Practice January 24

Last night was the first Vice Quads team practice. There are two things on my mind:

1. Perhaps I shouldn't have been such an overachiever and run hard for several miles as well as do a million squats with weight the night prior to practice and that is why during my first loop of warmup I strained one of my hip flexors, completely putting the emergency brakes on the fun that was practice last night.

Basically I was skating with one leg. I couldn't lift my foot to crossover or push with my right leg without feeling like there was a 20 pound weight pulling on the muscles deep in my hip crease. My karate teacher used to call this "dead leg." By the end of practice my leg was numb, and my toes were tingling when I laid down to go to sleep. I loathe feeling limited in any way and I have caught myself actually pouting today as I ice it.

2. "Holy @$*% what just happened??!" This pretty much sums up my first experience of practice bouting. So crazy fast paced, an enormous amount of things to be aware of and balance. So many possibilites of tight, communicative teamwork, of strategy. On an uninjured leg I will be loving learning to play.

Speaking of learning, I have a huge amount to do. I consider myself a fairly decent skater, but it's an entirely new skill set needed to play and actually understand what the (*bleep*) is going on. I had a toddler freak-out filled day yesterday and I was frazzled coming into practice. In my exhaustion I caught my way too familiar habits of frustration and perfectionism when learning new skills kick in before I had a chance to inhibit them.

In Alexander Technique inhibition is a concept used to suspend your habitual reactions to stimuli, to allow yourself a chance to respond in a more efficient way. It is a tool that allows students to release themselves from unconscious, often inefficient habits of response to stimuli. We have so many habits of movement and thought, some of them serve us well and others create huge obstacles for us. For me personally this particular habit of harshly judging myself always presents itself. I am always way too hard on myself, and this is an extremely inefficient habit, a huge interference to my learning and enjoyment of experiences.

I'm 40 years old. I've been lucky to have enjoyed several past lives, each another facet of what makes me me today, chock full of learning and growth. In gradeschool I was a skater and dancer. In highschool I got hardcore into dance. I joined a dance company after a year of college. Then I had my own little dance company and collaborated with an amazing group of people for years in Pittsburgh. When I moved to NY I studied Karate and got to compete. I had the luxury of studying Alexander Technique for 3 years and getting certified to teach.I taught Alexander privately and at a yoga center and started a home furnishing business when living in New York. I became a mom twice. Throughout all of these vastly unique lives this habit is the underlying thread. It keeps presenting itself to me over and over. You'd think it would be about time I believed in its inefficiency and extinguished it as I begin the roller derby portion of my life.

Another concept from my past karate life that I think applies really nicely is that of "Beginner's Mind," which I have found extremely helpful in countering this demon of a habit. I will include a brief definition here:

Shoshin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maybe when I'm 50 if I still haven't learned I will get that kanji tattoed somewhere I can see...

Alas, the wee ones are rising. My system requires more coffee and my hip begs for more ice. Looking forward to practice tonight and allowing myself to work with this mindset.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Saturday, January 21

I know it sounds completely ridiculous but I am seriously never sore until at least a day and a half after working out. What's up with that?? I wasn't sore from Wednesday night's practice until Friday morning. Then I bravely decided to go run at the gym for 25 minutes that night. Never felt that decision until Saturday morning, as I woke, was having my coffee and getting ready for practice at 9:30. I still maintain that this phenomena is the result of some sort of super heroish genetic mutation involving extended adrenaline rush/derby high, but Alan, who is the person you'd totally want as your lifeline on "Who wants to be a Millionaire" and knows EVERYTHING always poo poos me so alas, my daydreams come to a screeching halt.

The point I am eventually getting to (I admit I am a meanderer both in speech and writing) is that Saturday morning was COLD. Arctic, windy cold. And I was freshly sore. But I slathered on the BenGay, took a couple ibuprofen, pulled on some awesome derby socks, got my ass in the car, turned on my beloved 80's/90's satellite radio station and got myself to practice. And as usual, I was so glad I did. I left two hours later energized.

We did crossover and footwork drills, skated 25 in 5, and did a ton of drills working on our T, plow, and tomahawk stops. It was a big turn out so we also skated in a super long pace line and the front person got to weave backwards through the line. The skaters in the line were also passing several sponges back and forth as we skated. So much fun. At one point I was passing the sponge forward and someone was weaving in front of me. They bumped my arm as they weaved and I dropped the sponge. In my giddiness I shouted out something about dropping the spirit stick, referencing one of my favorite movies (apologies for the annoying ads):



Since I'm referencing this movie I will indulge my need to include another favorite clip. Sparky's flourishes kind of remind me of the types of wacko things I end up doing when I'm practicing my tomahawks and therefore I believe this clip is somehow a pplicable to my blog...


And let this entry be deemed an entry of video sharing!! I got a few new pairs of socks last week and being the nerd I am had to try them on with my skates. This is a video of me showing off a pair of new socks, my girl enthralled with my skates and my husband egging me on to skate in very tight, toy filled, carpety quarters. Just an average pre-dinnertime at our house:


All joking aside, I'm marveling at our bodies and how they work, all the things we are capable of. The league is officially back in full swing, practicing 3 times a week. I am in heaven, feeling a bit guilty that I'm allowed to have this much fun, feel this vibrant, strong, focused and alive. It feels slightly selfish, having the absolute luxury of enjoying this experience so fully. I'm discovering how isolated and stagnant I allowed myself to fall in attending to my mom responsibilites. I am not in any way complaining, but these kiddos are totally consuming. It is extremely challenging to miss 2 bedtimes a week, knowing how fleeting these moments with the wee ones are. But when I'm out on the track, gear on and skating with these amazing, intelligent, powerful and funny women it recharges me, makes me remember who I am underneath the necessity of momming.  It's so incredibly easy to allow myself to fall into letting the kids and their needs define me. Somehow I had forgotten about my spirit, that spunky fire I possess. So I have decided that derby makes me better, happier, more tolerable, and most importantly a better mom and person.

Friday, January 20, 2012

First League Practice of the Season! January 18, 2012

Adrenaline pumping, heart pounding joyfully in my chest, breath expanding my whole torso, deep derby stance, arms swinging and fast crossovers with my feet as I sprint the track with about 15 or 20 other girls. Coasting on a few of the turns, bending deeply with my right leg out to the side just slightly, leaning to my left and feeling that amazing wind on me, like a dog with its head out the car window. I want to go faster, dig deeper. I'm feeling my feet through my skates in ecstatic conversation with the floor and my legs surprise me with their availability for more.

This is extraordinary. I am super energized and the happiest I've been in weeks. The closest experience to flight I can imagine. I'm deeply in touch with myself, blissfully free, unencumbered by my daily momming duties. Truly, this moment cannot get any better.

And then, the guys working on the sound system test it out by playing "Thriller." In its entirety.

OMG!!!!! I can't believe this is actually happening. It's a tiny bit of magic, just surreal enough to send me over the edge into Giddyland. A mythical place I had almost forgotten existed lately, being sick on and off for two months, and struggling to care for the wee ones.

If I haven't mentioned it already, music is essential to my being. I experience it and the vibrations it offers with my whole. Even if I am perfectly still it's as if my cells are dancing. From as young as I can remember there are songs that mark moments in time.  I hear them and the details of that time come back to me, fill my mind, my heart, my very skin.

I laugh like a maniac, skate even harder, exit the track, and in true, glorious nerd form proceed to perform the zombie dance from said song as I loop with my group and wait for the next round of the Pyramid Drill.

Ah, the Pyramid Drill. Fun fun fun fun fun. Did I say fun?? We were broken into two groups of about 15 or 20 skaters. This is an endurance drill, you are supposed to alternate groups and sprint a series of 1,3,5 and 7 laps and then 5,3,and 1 laps. Works out to 25 laps total, broken up into the intervals I mentioned and with a few minutes break in between as you wait for the other group to finish. Extra fun with images of MJ, his sweet leather jacket, red capri pants and the boogying living dead in my head.

I feel the need to share that this experience was especially meaningful to me on a very personal level. My girlfriend that died last month organized a "Thriller" party a few years back with the goal of all of us learning the choreography and dancing it together in her tiny NY living room. It was one of her favs. I miss her so much, and this combined with the rush of skating totally made my day. I can just hear her, eyes twinkling and going bonkers clapping and laughing about this and the strange random existence of the two.

Besides the awesome Pyramid Drill we also worked on suicides. The coach set up 2 cones at different distances across the rink from the wall where we would start. The deal was we would start on our stomachs or backs on the floor, pop up, sprint to the first cone and do a one knee fall, get up, sprint back to the wall we started at, tomahawk stop, (i will explain what this stop is in the next paragraph) sprint back out to the second cone and do a one knee fall, sprint back to the wall, tomahawk stop, then sprint all the way across to the opposite wall, one knee fall and sprint back to the original wall and tomahawk. We repeated this whole drill minus the falls, only with tomahawk stops.

I missed the practice where we learned the tomahawk stop. So needless to say, this drill was a little rough around the edges for me. Instead of flipping backwards and stopping on my toe stops I kept doing these wacky spread eagle Nancy Kerrigan-ish spins. Or perhaps more akin to Snoopy in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Which I have to say were kind of purdy, but utterly useless.



I must confess, after plundering through the suicide drill, and vowing to make amends my new all-time favorite thing is the tomahawk stop. I want to keep doing them over and over I am so addicted. It's one of the more bad ass derby moves if you ask me and if I had known about them they would have been enough for me to want to skate derby sooner than now.

What you do is turn backwards while skating and then slam both toe stops down to stop. It's a very quick and abrupt stop, but sometimes you slide backwards just a little as well. You need to have one leg kind of in front a bit and really need to bend your knees. This stop is pretty handy if you need to take off quickly again because you already have your toe stops down and are ready to run.

I realized last night the total secret for me is to let my head and shoulders whip super fast similar to spotting in dance. That way you are already looking in the opposite direction and not spending too much time in the turning backwards transition. Another important detail I "stumbled" upon (hee hee...LITERALLY) in my learning process was never, ever for any reason to look down at the floor. Once I figured that out I got it. It was the end of practice and one of my teammates and I had an insane amount of fun skating behind each other, hip whipping off the front person so we could pick up more speed and then turning to tomahawk and putting on a ridiculously campy show of our most threatening derby faces and arm gestures.

Gosh I love this. I just can't imagine my life without it. I am so glad I had the balls to go for it last September. I will leave you with a parting video for your enjoyment.