It’s happening isn’t it? Roller skating is getting under your skin and you’re learning that you are really enjoying the feeling of slowly being able to control the wheels and get your body to do stuff you never thought was possible.
Did I mention that you need to bend your knees? Oh, only once or twice?
You can ONLY bend your knees when you feel relaxed, so in order to be able to relax, we need to teach our bodies that what we are working on is non-threatening – a full fear response resulting in fight-or-flight mode isn’t necessary.
What better way to relax our body than working on something slow and flowy like a backwards dip?
Well – slow movements take MORE muscle control than moving quickly – holding your balance is much harder slowly – this is why less experienced skaters fall. (They are also in the tough situation of actually going fast enough to be less in danger of falling means they feel really out of control!) So a deliberately slow movement like the backwards dip will take a lot of practise to get it looking like you want to.
This is why I want to remind you to FOCUS ON HOW IT FEELS NOT HOW IT LOOKS.
I’ve broken down how to do this move in this video, available on YouTube. If you’re local to Leeds and would like to join our Focus & Flow roller dance class, if you can manage parts of this video, you’ll be totally fine.
