Let’s just rewind a little.
You’ve found some courage to come to roller skate class as an adult for the first time.
Following the quaking knees and heightened senses as adrenaline floods your body, you have somehow managed to put the protective gear on and the roller skates. You’ve stood up, walked like a penguin and over a couple more classes, become hooked on this 8-wheeled life.
You leave class astounded at what you’ve managed to achieve in such a short while. Yes, you’ve not actually spoken to anyone, because you’ve been concentrating, but you are still absolutely buzzing!
Sound familiar?
After a few more weeks, you’ve stopped apologising for not being able to stop and found enough confidence to be curious at the other side of the hall. Your confidence has grown in line with your skate experience and as long as you’re not the ‘worst one’ in the group, you’re happy to join in.
Hang on though. Why are we worried about being the worst one? What does this really mean?
At some point in our childhood, we have probably been ridiculed for being slow to learn a skill. Then we have told ourselves the story that we are terrible at learning certain things, or that we are clumsy. And even worse, we have spent the rest of our lives finding evidence to back this up! We believe, all skills are within our grasp to learn with enough practise – although some skills do seem to come more naturally to some folks than others.
But what if this is actually mindset? Maybe a ‘gifted learner’ or someone who seems to pick up new skills ‘like a natural’ is someone who simply believes they can. Someone who didn’t tell themselves a story about being terrible at all new things. Huh, wouldn’t that be a revelation.
So, you’re having a lovely time at skate class on Sundays. You feel you’ve made enough progress that you can venture to other places to skate and made a couple of new skate pals too. You’ve seen things that people can do and now you want to learn more.
Ta-daaaaaa! You’re ready for the skills workshops.
Our skills workshops have a focus each week, but we will usually include one or two other skills.
Our instructor team know how long it takes to develop each skill – often a year or more to become truly proficient – which is where we’d love you to be – but you decide how long your skate journey continues with RGG.
What happens at a Skills Workshop?
We start with a rolling warm up. We never expect people to be able to do everything in the way our instructor will demonstrate, just do your best. There is a HUGE range of experience in the room, please bear that in mind. The rolling warm up usually has the same elements each week, so you’ll become familiar with the movements.
Following a short water break, we will outline the skills to be taught. These will be demonstrated so you know how they should look and why they look like this. Our coaches will then take you through the progression in the movement/skill. We strongly advise it is better to have a very solid foundation and spend weeks or months to building a solid foundation, rather than trying to keep up with folks who have significantly more experience, as this will lead you to develop ineffective technique. Our coaches will chat with you while you practise the movements during the workshop so you understand how the movement should feel in your body.
The skills workshops are for folks who are ready to learn more, beyond the fundamental skills of getting you rolling and stopping. If you want fast flow (eventually) and fun, then these are for you. In the same way as our Beginner classes, we offer a permissive approach. That is, you decide if the level in the progression is for you, or not. Folks in this session have accepted that falling is part of learning to roller skate. Any time you learn a new skill, you will test your balance, and very likely overbalance aka fall. It’s an important part of the process. As long as you feel suitably protected, then go for it!
You don’t need any additional equipment for the skills workshops. If you want to try different wheels, our wheel library is available for use.
We find that folks who attend the skills workshops regularly, build a solid bank of skills that allow them to more confidently explore even more skate spaces and even other skate disciplines. If you are considering Skate Love BCN 2024, then you should definitely come! We prepare skaters to get the most from this festival by delivering a wide range of skills that are useful in street skating. Our outdoor meet-up season was severely affected by the weather this year, but we will continue to offer free meet-ups and roll outs when we can.
Maybe you will be the least experienced skater in the room. However, if you are there to push yourself and keep learning, then we are here to support you to achieve that.
See you later, skater!
RGG Coach Team
xox
