You’ve blocked time out for yourself in your calendar. (Marked ‘essential appointment’ – go you!)
You’ve made sure you’ve got the right socks and your boots are well maintained.
You’ve scoped out the right space, that will offer what you need – not too many distractions, a place to concentrate.
You’ve sorted out your playlist, so your beats are both motivating and uplifting.
You’ve remembered your water and a snack.
You get to the place and YOUR MIND GOES BLANK.
All the saved videos and reels (thwarted by poor internet coverage – noooooo!)
There is something about the space that makes you feel a bit off – but it’s intangible. It’s enough to throw your brain back into panic mode though and now that mental list you had has gone, like smoke.
Now what? You don’t want to waste your precious time pootling about!
First of all – no time is a waste of time if it is for self care. Even if you were not able to have practise plan A, it’s still not a waste of time. Pootling about on your skates is still building experience and if you suddenly didn’t feel like skating, then actually putting them on and doing the thing is great. You showed up for yourself, freaked out a bit and did the thing anyway!
However, this mini series is intended to support you to work on fundamental skills that will elevate your confidence AND your skills – nice! Let’s start with balance.
I love fundamental skills. Even now, 15 years into my skate journey, I love fundamentals skills classes and take other people’s classes as often as I can. I no longer consider myself an inexperienced skater, so why do I enjoy fundamental classes so much? Because I don’t have to think as hard about the skills. Because I trust my body to know when to bend more and catch myself if I overbalance. Because I can fully relax and just enjoy someone else’s point of view or way of teaching that skill. Because I love learning and I can always learn something new. I do also enjoy a challenging class that pushes me out of my comfort zone, but I definitely love a fundamental class.
Balance and roller skating are key. Ah ha, you say – this is obvious Mel! I have pretty good balance. I spend my days not falling over. Exactly. Therefore, you will need to re-learn HOW to balance on your skates. You will also likely need to build those core stabilising muscles, by challenging your balance – this takes time.
Please don’t rush through the stages of the balancing exercises. Even if you already have a good foundation of core stability and strength, I’d suggest giving yourself a few weeks or months to build up.
Variables: Changing any of the following will help you build experience faster.
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the ground you’re skating on (indoors / outdoors are the most noticeable differences)
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your speed (slower is harder – standing still is the most challenge for your core)
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your wheels (RGG’s Wheel Library is now at The Skate Sanctuary for you to use)
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any other changes to your equipment
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other distractions that may worry you, eg. dogs, small kiddos
I’m not suggesting that you incorporate all of these things into one session – this took years to build. Also, humans don’t like change. Often if you change one thing, you may think “Well I don’t like this.” My suggestion would be to try 3-5 times on different occasions and times of the day before you make a decision.
If you are a website member, check out my video below, filmed at The Skate Sanctuary, about Balance.
There are suggestions about how to build up the challenge level, so you never feel stuck with what to practise again.
If you’re not yet a website member, you can sign up for £20 for life! You’ll get access to a whole heap of videos, that now, with a fabulous studio to create content and tutorials will be added to on the regular.
