Skatefreestyle workshop: May 4th and 5th near Bremen, Germany

Tim and I will be heading to Bremen, Germany for a freestyle slalom workshop on May 4th and 5th. We are greatly looking forward to it, as it has been a long while since we've given a workshop, and in the meantime we've gained quite a bit of teaching / skating experience that we're both eager to share.

The content of what we teach will of course depend on who our students are. In the recent past we've had success doing choreographed slalom runs with students, which gets people working on every aspect of their slalom at once --including the flow, transitions, the individual moves making up the combo, as well as getting people to see how they can combine things in new ways themselves. So we'd like to incorporate this into the weekend, as well as teaching you some stylish new slalom moves. However, please let us know what you are interested in as well, so we can get an idea of what everyone in the group is looking for.

The weekend will be a time for eager slalom skaters to learn, share, and practice. Whether you are a beginning slalomer or advanced one, as long as you can skate forwards and backwards and are ready to practice for at least a solid eight hours (spread over Saturday and Sunday) and learn some slalom theory as well, then the workshop is for you.

The skating hall will also be open later on both Saturday and Sunday for some extra hours of skating (if you've got the energy left in you).


What: Skatefreestyle slalom workshop. Slalom style, techniques, and combinations.
Who: ICP certified inline slalom instructors Megan McIntosh and Tim Schraepen
Where: Zum Schoofmoor, Lilienthal, Germany Street where the sporthall is located in Lilienthal, Germany:
 https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ll
When: May 4th and 5th, from 10:00 - 17:00 both days (1 hour lunch break plus several 15-minute pauses for snacks and recharging)
Price: Workshop price is €90 per participant. This covers two days of instruction. It does not cover the cost of your lunch, so either bring your lunch along with you or be prepared to buy some food while we are there.
Minimum level: Basic skating skills (forwards, backwards, stopping, be able to balance on one foot for short stretches).
Protective gear: Encouraged
Participants: Maximum 12 people (sign-up and deposit in advance required to confirm your spot, so please don't wait until it might be too late)

How to sign up:

1. In order to reserve your spot in the workshop, make a deposit via the Paypal button on the righthand side of the blog page. You can either make a €20 deposit to reserve your spot and pay the remainder in cash on the day of the workshop, or you can pay everything at once by selecting the €90 option.
2. Please email me (Megan) at megan9mm@gmail.com and include the following information:

• Your full name
• Your telephone number
• How much slalom experience you have
• Any particulars you are interested in learning during the weekend. 
• Whether you made the deposit or if you've paid in full
• Approximately when you paid, so I can cross-check my payment list with the sign-up list.

Any questions, please ask! Hope to see you there.

WFSC 2011 Geisingen! Also, Nerves

This year's world championships might actually be my favorite competition of all time. For the record, this year's PSWC probably clocks in as my second favorite of all time.

However, I think as far as my own skating goes, Geisingen takes the cake. Not only was I able to have a positive, carefree attitude about the whole experience, but I also skated better in competition than I ever have before, which turned out to be terribly good timing, it being the world championships and all.

Actually, aside from London where I flatly refused to participate after flubbing my classic (again) and being road-weary and just wanting to be home (in Belgium), I think my skating has gotten better in every competition this year. Of course that has something to do with training, but I think more of it is finally being able to skate in a battle without feeling like my legs have turned into cooked spaghetti.

In the past I have always felt like I am fighting two battles when skating in a competition --the one that everyone sees in the Youtube clips, but more importantly the one in my head where I was willing myself to go into the cones and feebly imitate the tricks that I could do so well in practice. That was always the most frustrating thing about competing: knowing I could do something perfectly well, but never being able to show it when it counted because of being incapacitated by nerves.

Now, three years later, I am finally at the point where I can use nervous energy positively, instead of letting it sink into my stomach and fill me with dread.

The last time I was "bad nervous" in a competition was in Bremen back in April. Actually, I was only nervous before the competition, because by the time I had to skate, I had made the decision that I wasn't going to let that get to me anymore, and then it started to be fine. I didn't do it alone; other enlightened people (especially Sinead!) helped me. :)

If only it were that easy, right? But really, every competition since then, it's gotten a little bit better and better, but only because I maintain my commitment to that decision and I reinforce it all the time. I still have nervous flutters, but now they don't seem so bad, and I can use them differently than I used to.

I also used to wonder why women skaters seem to get more nervous than the men during battles, but somebody pointed out to me that the men don't feel any less nervous than the women; it's just that the women talk about and/or show their feelings more. Ha. So true.

Anyway, one skater (who reads my blog! Yay!) actually came up to me at WFSC and asked me what I do in order to deal with nerves during competition, and I've been thinking about his question since then. I feel particularly qualified to answer this question, because I have personally gone from feeling debilitated by fear to actually enjoying skating in competition, with most of that progress having been made this very season. So, here are a few things you can also try to do, if you find yourself at a competition (or anywhere) and you feel like you might want to run away and hide instead of doing the thing you are supposed to do.

Mastering your nerves takes time and practice, just like slalom itself. So don't beat yourself up when you have a slip-up and retreat back into scared, I-don't-want-to-do-this mode. If you hold yourself to too high a standard, you will get too nervous trying not to be nervous!

Here's what I recommend:

1. Acceptance. The first thing to do is to accept what you are feeling, and know that it is a physical response to chemicals being released in your system. Realize that this response is programmed into you so that you can use it to survive, and that you can learn to use this flood of chemicals for something positive, but that it takes time and practice.

2. Be positive, even if you don't feel positive (aka fake it til you make it). When you are at the competition, feel free to talk about how you are feeling, but don't be negative, and don't reinforce your fears. For example, it might help you feel better if you say out loud, "I'm nervous," because then you are acknowledging your feeling, and then your friend next to you can reassure you and encourage you. But it won't help at all if you say "Oh no, I'm going to skate so badly!" The latter statement won't help you feel or do any better, and in fact it will probably make you do worse.

3. Stay warm, but don't overheat. When practicing before your competition, keep the blood flowing through your muscles, and don't skate too hard or too much. Staying warm will help you temper some of the nervous energy before your competition, and will also distract you from analyzing every minute of competition before you have to go on, which can wreak havoc on your nerves. If you are sitting down for awhile and feel your muscles start to stiffen, get up and roll around for a few minutes and give people high-fives. Then take a few passes through the cones without trying to perform anything impressive. But by all means, warm up your harder tricks so that you feel confident about them. If there are tricks you don't feel confident about, then it's probably best not to try them in the competition anyway. Stick to the tricks you know you do well. You will feel less nervous doing skating you are comfortable with, and you will feel better about it when looking back at the Youtube clips. (How I wish I had learned this in the beginning...well, Naomi told me, but I didn't listen.)

4. Gravitate towards the people with good energy. Skate with them in the warm-up area, support their performances, and let their energy be contagious. Instead of making you feel like you are shit at skating and not worthy of being there, you will be filled with the wonderful knowledge that you are all in it together, that you are all connected. And we are. We are all passionate about this lifestyle, and if we weren't, we sure as hell wouldn't be traveling to competitions. Guess what? We all pretty much hang out in parking lots and are all abnormally thrilled by the sight of polished cement. If I am feeling the nerves creeping in and trying to take over, these are the kinds of thoughts I usually try to distract myself with, and they always make me feel better. The little Buddha I wear around my neck helps me remember this, too.

5. Focus your energy where it's most effective for you. Where do you do your best skating? Is it showing off in front of a crowd of passersby in the city park? Is it when you are all alone with your headphones on? For me it's the latter. So when I compete, I have to shut the people out and enter my own little world, because if I let other people in while I am skating, I immediately become self-conscious and uncomfortable. I hate to do it, because I know the people around me are supportive and it's comforting to hear their cheers, but when it comes to the actual skating part, it has to be just me and the cones. Any deviation from that has to be really careful, or otherwise I will lose concentration. On the other hand, some skaters seem to be lit from within when a crowd (or a camera) is nearby. These people might never want to shut the audience out when they are competing.

6.  Skate like you've got nothing to prove. Even if you are a beginner (or just still feel like a noob) and feel embarrassed that you are not better than you are, try not to let that bug you about competing, because everyone was a noob once, and everyone learns at a different pace. Besides, some people have a lot more time and energy to dedicate to slalom than others. And not everyone is going to become as good as Martin Sloboda, no matter how much they practice, nor should that matter, because you are YOU, which is entirely unique. Your level shouldn't detract from your enjoyment of skating in the competition. Just show what you've got, and know that if what you've got ain't that good, the next time will be better.

As a side note, if you are one of those people who are "waiting to be good enough" to compete, just an FYI: you will NEVER feel good enough, so just start now and get the benefit of all the learning competition provides! Hell, I've been competing almost as long as I've been slaloming and I'm all the better for it. The only damage it's done me is produced more than a few embarrassing Youtube clips, which are starting to look kinda cute to me a few years later, and in the meantime I've learned so much about myself and about slalom, not to mention met the most amazing people I've ever known. So if you're on the fence, just come down and hang out in the cones...in front of the judges. :)

Well, that's pretty much the only advice I have to give on coping with nerves. There is still a lot that could be said about the approach to competition with respect to other factors, but this is (again) a long post and I'll leave you with the vids of my classic run, which was really fun to do!


Here is Carmen's video of my run:


Here is the Frozwheels video of my run, which is beautifully made, but I thought I was posing for a still picture at the beginning, not video, and therefore I blink into the camera like an owl in the sunshine...


Well, it still wasn't perfect, but I'm happy with it, and I hope they are all better from here on out! By the way, the song is "Drop That Thing" by Groove Armada.
Thanks for reading. :)
xoxoxo
meg

You Know You’re A Slalom Skater if…

10. You think of distances in terms of the spaces between cones.

9. You think of the people on the sidewalk as human cones.

8. You never travel out of town without your skates, tools, cones, chalk, and a meter.

7. You have had a skate signed by your favorite slalom skater.

6. You got a smartphone so you can watch Youtube trick clips while you are out practicing.

5. Half of your Facebook newsfeed is in a language you don’t understand because of all the international slalomers on your list.

4. When you meet Korean people (non-skaters), you ask them if they’ve ever heard of Kim Sung Jin.

3. You hoard old wheels and rationalize that you’ll use them for slide. You learn slides in order to validate this practice.

2. You are always on the lookout for the Holy Grail: the weather-proof outdoor place with perfect floor where you won’t get kicked out.

1. You’ve saved up for months and traveled a long distance to take part in a slalom competition, even though you know you won’t come close to winning.

Just a silly little list I came up with on the train ride home last night. :)

Off to the World Championships in Geisingen tonight with Tim, Pierre, and Alexandre representing Team Belgium, and myself representing Team Americelgium, or something like that. It will be a tiring weekend, but I hope it's memorable and fun, and that I can learn something new from Asian skaters! Also, I hope I do a good job with my classic routine this time, because I've prepared very carefully and had a good time doing so.

As always, thanks for reading.

xoxoxo

meg

Training for kazachoks [strike that, new title: EXPLOSIVE POWER!]

Okay, so from the title alone, I've already lost readers, but I'm not concerned with that.
[Edit: The new title is much more appealing, but would have been better if the text strikethrough feature was enabled for post titles.]

And yeah, so, instead of pondering deep philosophical questions of aesthetics this time, I just wanted to share some things that have been helping me train sitting tricks, which I've been lustily attacking since Battle Belgium as part of my ironic "I want to be able to do everything for 20 cones" mission I have been on. It's an ironic mission because of my last post, but I'm just going to ahead and not worry about that and go with the flow. If I'm fixated on training tricks for 20 cones, I might as well, right?

Well what I've been doing is training a different trick at the beginning of each session for 20 cones. Sometimes it goes well, other days it does not. If I'm not in the mood for disciplined trick practice, I only take ten minutes or so and pound out a trick as well as I can, before moving on to more interesting matters. If I am in the mood for this kind of work, an hour or more can slip by, which generally leads to a certain level of progress and / or frustration, depending on the day. However, in lieu of getting too frustrated, I will sometimes switch to a different trick in a different family in order to keep my slalom session productive and fun. Of course, before I do this, I force myself to stop and address WHY the trick isn't going well in the first place, and I can usually pinpoint an answer, even if I can't seem to make improvements at that moment.

The discipline comes from not giving up after the trick begins to fail, fighting to save the trick, and making it through the entire cone line, no matter how many cones are knocked in the process. Once we start trashing the cone lines, the overwhelming urge is to skate out of the cones and fix them, I know, but there is a mental satisfaction that comes from NOT doing this, so I recommend it for all your slaloms. I may not have a 20 cone perfect footgun in the 80's yet, but I make it all the way to the end of the line, dammit, and feel all the better for it.

In our Tuesday night lessons, that is actually a rule we have in place: Don't fix your cones until you made it through all 20 cones. It's something Naomi has always advocated, and it's a good rule. Stopping to pick up cones interrupts your learning process, so don't do it, okay?

Anyway, about the sitting tricks. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're a major trick family, and I've been learning to love them even when they don't love me back. Now I'm working on kazachok, which involves more than the average footgun, because it's jumping from one footgun to the other, without letting the heel of the air leg touch the ground. You will probably see a lot of people with their heels touching the ground in their kazachoks, but any Russian will tell you that it doesn't count if the heels touch. Personally, I'm not particularly opinionated on the matter, but I'm aiming high and not letting my heels touch.

Ok, so on to the good fun trainy bits. Or the quadricep torture, depending on how you look at it:

• Train your footgun so it is really good. 20 cones good.
•  Train your other leg footgun so it is of the same depth and quality as your "good" leg, but it doesn't have to be perfect for 20 cones. Practicing in cones is better because it makes you stronger, but a nice off-cones footgun will be fine, for your "bad" leg.
• Repeat the first two steps, but backwards.
• Off skates training: Wearing sneakers, and preferably on grass (it's easier on the knees), begin by sinking down into a footgun on your "bad" leg, not using hands. Extend your hands in front of you to help keep balance and not fall back onto your butt. While still squatted, retract the air leg so you are squatting on two feet. Extend your other leg in the same manner. Stay down the whole time. Do this ten times every day and you'll see improvement in a week.
• Off skates, next step: Begin jumping from one leg to the other. Start small with just three jumps; from your bad leg, to your good leg, and back to your bad leg. Then try it again, starting from your good leg, to your bad leg, and then back to your good leg. If you find yourself coming off balance in this exercise, steady yourself by touching the ground with a hand or two, and try to push your weight forward if you feel like you are falling back. Do everything in your power not to fall out of the exercise, to get yourself back onto two feet, and to stand back up. Why? Because when you are skating, you will want to do the same. It might be murder on your quads, but that's kind of the point.
• On skates again, practice forwards as well as backwards, in order to create learning synergies. To clarify, you will learn faster by working on both forwards and backwards at the same time, as opposed to saving backwards for when you've already mastered forwards.

Note that these exercises do not have to be mastered in order; rather, you will probably find yourself working on all of them. That's why I opted for the bulleted list as opposed to numbering it.

General tip: Make sure you extend your legs out until they are as straight as possible. It looks so much nicer when the extended leg is perfectly straight. Not to mention it's a lot harder to do while keeping your heel off the ground, but the result will be worth it.

Another general tip: Stretching is your friend. I attend a yoga class once a week so I know I am going to get deep stretching at least one day in the week, but take care that you incorporate an intelligent stretching routine into your training. I rarely do deep stretches before slalom because it leaves the muscles temporarily weak. By deep stretching, I mean spending 30-60 seconds in a stretch, right at the point where you have to direct your thoughts away from the uncomfortableness of it but not at the point of causing actual pain. I try to save that for after slalom or for an off-day. However I do stretch lightly nearly every day. I'm not going to go into a long tangent about stretching at this moment, but keep in mind that it will help you with this whole sitting tricks thing, as well as in general.

Last general tip: Don't cheat and come up off your heels. That will not help you. I don't even know if this is a tendency for anyone, but I just know for a fact that it is a lot easier to do a footgun squat in high heels than it is in sneakers. Great, now this means I will have to try kazachok the next time I'm in heels...

Once you've made it this far with your footguns and jumping on your feet, you should be able to do a few jumps reliably well on skates. And if you can't yet manage to sink into footguns off-skates, at whim, you might want to take a look at this post where I talked about getting into a footgunny frame of mind. And when you can do some jumps on-skates, don't stop training the off-skates jumps, because you will need to develop explosive power in order to be able to jump from one side of the cone line to the other. The best kazachoks (in my humble opinion) are not mere footguns jumping from one foot to the other with a short slalom pump in between, but footguns jumping across the line continuously, not straight up and down but actually from side to side, which requires a lot of strength and explosive power. Gotta love that explosive power.

Yeah, I want to get me some of that.

Well, if you try these things out, I'll be training right along with you, so good luck to all of us. I know it's a lot of training, but it's exactly the kind of project that will keep me occupied in the coming weeks and months. Once I get further along I might be able to contribute more info on the subject, but for now, I still have work to do on those pesky footguns.

Thanks for reading, and happy skating!
xoxoxo
meg

"Where's the Freestyle?"

The time has come, dear internet friends, for me to blog. In the past two months, it has often crossed my mind, but only now do I feel truly ready to say something on this internet platform. Every time someone says they read this, it startles me a bit, but people are reading (even if they don't comment), so it's nice to know I have an audience.

So, the Cobra still waits, a recluse in his dank and foul den, but that's not what we are here today to talk about. No, no, we are here today to discuss something else which is equally mysterious in nature. It is a thing from which the sting cuts just as deeply and painfully as that of the dark serpent. It is elusive, unpredictable, and surprises many with its swift, cruel justice. And like its shadowy counterpart, this beast will likely warrant several sessions of Socratic questioning, wringing of the hands, and general melancholy and stomach upsets.

We are, of course, talking about battle judging.

But what about battle judging? We all know about the rules. What's that, you say? You DON'T know the rules of a slalom battle? Oh, well, why don't you go ahead and download them from here. There you go.

Great. Now that you are well-versed in the law of battle, let's take a look at some stuff, now, shall we? And since I am not in the habit of publicly critiquing other people over the internet without their consent, let's just go ahead and look at some video starring little ol' me.

Let's start with Battle Belgium 2009, when I had been slalom skating for about one year, and thought skorts were the greatest thing EVAR:


The reason I chose this video is because, well, Chloe is in it, and I just happened to come across it when looking for the video of this year's women's final.

NOW, take a look at the video from the women's final from this year's edition of Battle Belgium:


Can you please tell me what's wrong with this picture (video)?

Yes, that's right. My freestyle looked better two years ago.


How depressing is that? Sure, I can do some TRICKS now. Oooooh, how we all love TRICKS. I'm stronger. I'm faster. I am smoother. I fall (slightly) less. My fashion is less 1980's-Madonna. There are a lot of things improved about my skating in general, and also specifically my slalom. And when there is no competition in sight, my freestyle is actually very good, sometimes rather awesome, I must admit. But as far as freestyle in competition goes, I was stylin' it out better in '09, because I didn't really care about doing tricks during the battle. Because, well, then I couldn't do any.

Well, I will be the first to go ahead and say that I spent too much time during this final doing screw-type tricks. I did a bunch of toe-toe screws, swans, and toe-heel screws. I have been training these tricks really hard so that I can do 20 of all of them, so doing about half that number of each felt about as ordinary as eating Loops for breakfast. I really enjoyed the power of being able to turn as many as I wanted, without being controlled by my own lack of technique which, in the past, used to dictate how many of each of these things I could do.

And for that, I would like to thank Polish women skaters. :)

I didn't sleep for two nights in a row after judging the battle in Berlin. It was a thoroughly traumatizing experience, because the essence of battle judging is lining up four of your friends, and then telling two of them that they can't play slaloms anymore. And then there are all the gray areas. Which is better --a line of beautiful, playful freestyle; or 20 labored toe shifts? You tell me.

No, really. You TELL me.

After Berlin, I found myself preoccupied with the concepts of rules and justice. I started reading about all kinds of rules, systems, ways that people cope with and eliminate uncertainty. I might have gotten slightly carried away with my learning, but I was looking for answers to help me sleep at night, because after all, I DO take this whole slalom thing rather seriously, even though I try to keep it light.

So what's the answer? Which is better, the freestyle or the toe shifts?

Well, according to the rules, it's the technical difficulty of the skating being presented that must be considered. Technically, we are supposed to leave aesthetics out of it, while still incorporating into the judgment the qualities of speed, continuity, finishing of each trick, integration into other freestyle, and the range of tricks presented. That's a whole lot to see, and judge, during somebody's 30 seconds.

However, this still doesn't give us an answer. Let's say that the toe shifts were executed without fault, that they were clean, but that they just looked like they were a lot of hard work and they weren't pretty to watch. And let's say that the freestyle was gorgeous, it gave you goose bumps, and it was fast and fluid and clean.

Out of these two things, which is more technically difficult to display?

Now, here is where we get to the fact that judges are humans with souls, and that they are very often impassioned skaters themselves. Personally, as a skater with loads of experience practicing one-wheeled tricks with only moderate success, and also with loads of experience simply expressing joy through my feet, I would be tempted to say that the toe shifts are more technically difficult. After all, I seem to have no problem coming up with nice-looking freestyle, right? So it must be easier to do.

Also, it's taken me a long time to train to be able to turn as many screw-type tricks as I want, and to be able to do them consistently in battle as well. The "freestyle" part I have also worked on, to be sure, but I've spent more time gritting my teeth and PRACTICING on the non-freestyle movements. And maybe that's where I'm going wrong.

WAIT. Maybe it is only easier for me. What about this "trick monkey" type skating (Dance, monkey, dance!), where skaters execute their complicated trick sequences like good little robots and then roll on over to their coaches for a Sweet Cookie? (Yum yum.) And, of course, if they fail, they get a Shame Cookie. (Yum yum, but with tears rolling down their faces as they choke on the bitter crumbs that taste of their own ineptitude.) How easy is it for them to bust out a line of gorgeous freestyle?

Of course I'm being completely over the top and sarcastic (and mean no offense to anyone who sees himself in this category of skating) but I'm also not going to pretend that I've never fallen prey to this mentality myself...after all, how many screws did I turn in the battle final? And can I please have a cookie now, hold the shame?

So, how do we define and reward the soul of freestyle? Because I want to. It's very important for me, and I know it is for so many people. This discussion has been on everyone's mind all year. I know the answer lies in the fact that we have to reward both the difficulty and beauty of slalom, but the beauty part is so often perceived as subjective. However, it's only subjective to a degree. As a culture we can define our own standards of beauty, and in fact these standards already exist, which is in part amusingly demonstrated by the huge wrench in the system that the Koreans' dancing has thrown into everything. :)

Well, before I write again, I WILL have revisited my art philosophy books. There must be some applicable thoughts in there somewhere, and if not, I'll just keep questioning til I discover the answers.

Anyway, it's all part of a greater adventure, and I'm very happy to be a part of it.

Until next time, enjoy your slaloms (however you like them served up!) and thanks for reading. :)
xoxoxo
meg

So pretty much this whole post is a good advertisement for skating with protective gear.

Let's see, in the past nine days, I have

-been to 3 rollerparades
-gone ice skating and tried ice slaloms (!)
-tried out speed skates for the first time
-messed around on quad skates at a rollerdisco
-practiced lots of slides
-enjoyed & practiced lots of slalom in several places
-gone to yoga, of course

Oh yes. We hung around a bit in a skatepark as well, but I'm not really counting that because I was too chicken to drop in on the quarter pipe there, because of the fact that it's more concave than anywhere else I've dropped in before, and also, I didn't have any guidance from Vicky Denissen, who taught me how to do it in the first place and has a good eye for when I'm about to do something dangerously wrong, and a knack for reassuring me to go ahead when I'm doing something right.

But anyway. We went to a "roller disco" night last night, which was really fun even though there weren't a lot of people. I played with some quad skates for awhile, and they are really great for dancing, because of the stability they afford, and also the way your foot is applied to the ground. This was maybe the second or third time I've been on quads (not counting any birthday parties at the roller rink I attended as a small child), and I really got a feel for them last night, even though I didn't keep them on too long. It's brilliant (and a novelty) being able to shift your weight to the outside of your skate while keeping your foot flat on the ground, and vice versa. Instead of outside and inside edges, you have outside and inside wheels. Sitting tricks are ten times easier (in a straight line, anyway!) because of the fact that you have a stable little platform to roll on, and dancing moves look and feel very, very cool. Slalom is much more difficult with quad skates, of course, but it is possible, and I could manage some tricks quite well, but only up until the moment that I would forget I was on quads instead of inlines, and then I would screw up fantastically. :)

Also, here is what I've learned about downhill since my last post, which is actually embarrassingly obvious, but I just didn't think of it myself at the time:

As slalomer on a rockered setup, we are only riding on two wheels. Therefore it's much less stable and more difficult to get speed than if we were on a flat setup going downhill. It's also scarier. :) The solution? Duck down low (duh). The scary feeling is gone, you go faster, and your wheels make more contact with the ground. I should have thought of it last week, because I've done this many times during the rollerparades. Anyway, this time was WHEEEEEEEEE! I'm still not as fast as I'd like, but then again, I'm also not really ever satisfied with anything about my skating, so there you go.

However, the rollerparade in Brussel this time didn't hold a candle to the one the week before. We took a path that didn't include the huge hill from the last time, which was disappointing. :(

One of the coolest parts of the night was at the end of the tour when we kept barreling down the entrance ramp into the parking garage, ducking under the arm of the parking gate (I was doing footguns underneath it), and looping further and further down until the very bottom level, leaning left the whole time and feeling the centrifugal force. We kept taking the elevator back up to the top and doing it over again.

Let's see, in other news, I bruised my tailbone at the first Brussels rollerparade I attended, thanks to going for a parallel slide on a tiled floor and getting my blade caught in the tiny gap between two tiles and suddenly BAM! I was down. I'm still sore, but luckily that's not a fall I've experienced ever before and hope not to again. I think surfaces for sliding are just like for slalom...if you're strong at what you are doing, you can manage almost anywhere, but I'm definitely not good enough at sliding to be pulling off parallel slides where the ground is not forgiving. By the way, they do make such a thing as butt padding, and it would have literally saved my ass had I been wearing it at the time.

Within the same ten minutes of that happening, I also had a head-on collision at a good speed (I was gearing up for another slide) with another skater, who was also getting ready to slide. We had been skating in the same direction but maybe six feet apart, which was probably a little too close. Then he turned unexpectedly and we pretty much ran into each other at full speed. It was like playing a game of chicken where nobody chickened out.

In the moment before impact, though, I realized what was about to happen, so I reached out to absorb the energy rather than try to deflect it, which worked pretty well. Neither of us were knocked to the ground, and I only ended up pinging the bone above my right eye on his helmet (Helmets: Great if you are both wearing one. Not if only one of you is.). At the time I worried that my eye would be black the next day, but it never got beyond pink and a bit puffy, which was fine by me, and it didn't really hurt after the fact, unless I pressed on it.

This other skater was actually really cool to skate with (which was why we were running around sliding in the first place), and he was doing something which I would be tempted to call heel-heel cobra (!) as we were skating along with the tour. There was another guy cruising along seemingly endlessly, and REALLY FAST, doing back toe-wheeling (!), and at one point he also busted out an impressive back-flip from practically a stand-still.

So yeah. A lot of the Brussels guys can already slalom pretty well because they are such good skaters, but they don't seem to prefer the cones, which is too bad for slalom! Because they can really SKATE.

Well, that's all I'll say for today, and the title of this post kinda says it all. However, to be fair, much of the skating I've described here is not really slalom-related. I've been wearing wrist guards and sometimes knee pads when practicing slide, although I have to say, they only place I've fallen down hard is on my butt. I did wipe out rather poorly on ice in a hockey slide and bruise my leg, but that was due to the fact that I was still figuring out the mechanics of sliding on ice again, as opposed to on concrete.

I never thought there would come a day that sliding on asphalt would be easier for me than sliding on ice, but hey, look, here we are.

Thanks again for reading and HAPPY SLIDING!
xoxoxo
meg

The Rollerparade / Megan's first downhill

Well I touched on the fact that I went to the Brussels rollerparade last week, but I didn't really say anything about it, and it was a great experience. I think I've been missing out all my life, because when I took up inline skating, I went straight for slalom and didn't really involve myself in these kind of skating tours. There is also the small fact that these sorts of skating tours DO NOT EXIST in the United States, so that's probably also part of it. Well, maybe there is a skate somewhere in the US (Big Apple Roll? Skate Boston? I don't know) that somehow compares, but I've never seen anything like it before. In Belgium, it's all very official, you see, and in the States, if skaters plan on marauding through the city, it's usually just that --a bunch of skaters who meet up and attack the roads together because it's safer than doing it alone or with just a few people. Safety in numbers (and also fun).

Here, there are hundreds of skaters, followed by a throng of cyclists, and the police block traffic at every intersection as we roll on through, and there is a bright pink Evian pickup truck with DJ in the back who looks like he is very much enjoying hanging out in the back of this pickup truck as he is paraded all through the city while he plays music that booms out of big speakers which are set up alongside him in the back of the truck. Along with this, there is a separate Evian truck stocked to the gills with bottles of water, which are doled out at pauses, as well as a Red Bull VW Bug, which also provides free jolts of energy at several points in the tour.

Now, I've been taking part in these tours in Hasselt since I moved here, and it's always a nice skate; usually it's no more than three hours, most of it is flat, and it's very relaxing. We can talk with people while we're skating, we can goof around with wheelings, and it just feels good to be able to stretch out and skate on roads that are usually full of cars. During the pauses, we put down cones and slalom until it's time to go. It's a nice way to spend a Monday night. Also, in Hasselt, the numbers are much smaller than "hundreds," although I couldn't really aim to guess accurately at how many people actually *do* show up. 150, not counting bikes? I'm not sure. Anyway, it's still waaaaaay more people than I've ever seen skating in one place at one time in the USA.

However, when I went to Brussels on Friday, it was a whole different game. There were maybe more than twice as many people as come to Hasselt, plus lots of cyclists. The group left from Palais de Justice at 8:00 pm, and we got back to the same spot at 12:00 midnight. It was fantastic. Unlike in Hasselt, the skate was anything but flat. I was told that the route is never the same twice, but I'm guessing that there are certain bits that get woven into the tour repeatedly, because there was one amazing and looooong downhill section which everyone knew to anticipate. A bunch of longboarders were also there at the top of the hill to take advantage of the road being closed, so they had to know in advance that the tour would go through that spot.

I've never done much downhill, mostly because once I get the feeling that I'm going too fast to be able to stop effectively (and I'm not wearing any protective gear), I get quite nervous. As my skating improves, the upper threshold for how fast I am comfortable going for a long period of time continues to go up. However, I didn't really know what to expect going into the downhill. Naturally I wanted to play the same game as everybody else, so I lined up at the starting line at the top of the hill, ready to run à la speed slalom. Some people counted down, and then suddenly everyone tore away running madly to get speed going into the downhill. However, the running wasn't really necessary, because we picked up speed anyway, and enough of it to get that feeling I get when Tim's driving and I stick my head out the car window and I can't quite catch my breath...it's very exhilarating.

After the initial start, I was going at a good clip and trying to get comfortable with it, but I got going too fast and had to slalom to slow down until I felt comfortable again. After that I let the speed build back up and it wasn't as frightening as it was the first time, and I relaxed into it a little. My bearings were great (I was so happy I had cleaned them the night before!) and my wheels didn't jitter like they used to when I would skate down a big hill very fast, at least not until I was going *too* fast and had to slalom a bit again. There's nothing like bombing down an asphalt hill on your two feet at top speeds to make you think about the fact that you have absolutely nothing protecting you if you fall down or crash into something.

So yeah. Downhill is kind of scary, the same way riding a motorcycle is kind of scary. But it's also fun. :)

On that note, please enjoy this short clip of Greg Mirzoyan bombing down the salt mine in Poland. (!) It's pretty badass. :)


Well I still have stories to tell but they will have to wait til next time.
Thanks for reading and have fun out there! And also, BE SAFE.
xoxoxo
meg

Battle Warsaw / Slides!

First of all, Tim and I will be scheduling Skatefreestyle workshops for the autumn and winter. Summer is just too busy with travel and competitions for us to be giving any in the next few months.

Second of all, we've been up to a lot in the past few weeks, including Battle Warsaw last weekend, which was very different this year than it was last year. The technical level has grown astronomically, which was amazing to see. For me it was very revealing about just how lazy I actually am with training in comparison, as I tend to practice one trick only for as long as it is entertaining, and then I move on to something else. You can see that the Polish skaters train very specifically and very effectively, until a trick is of water-tight consistency. I have taken their example to heart this week and spent the majority of my time working on tightening up tricks and beginning with a few new ones. It's satisfying in its own right, especially with a good drum and bass mix in my headphones, which easily provides a one to two hour backdrop while I plug away at wheelings or sitting tricks or whatever.

However, many of the skaters at the battle appeared to ONLY train tricks, with no nice freestyle mixed in. Without the freestyle, only half the job is done, in my personal opinion. This was reflected in the judging, as I made it through to the final ahead of people who are technically further along than I am, and I assume this is because I was one of the few female skaters representing "freestyle slalom" as a whole, as opposed to "slalom tricks." I was very proud to make it to the final; it was actually the goal I had going into the battle, and once I got there, I didn't really fight. I came in fourth place. *Maybe* if I had fought I could have secured third, but I'm not really sure who I could have beat in that final, because the level was VERY hard.

I was a bit nervous skating in this battle, as opposed to other recent battles, so that was a little disappointing, because I couldn't really pull off any back wheelings, and my sevens were still failing left and right, whereas I am knocking out 7-9 of them easily in practice. Before Paris, I hadn't trained seven in a month of Mondays and just kind of took it for granted that I could do them, and it's been showing in battles lately. So, I've been back to the grindstone and they've improved massively in the past few weeks. However, they still didn't work in Warsaw. This is possibly the most frustrating thing, that I KNOW I can do a trick really well and then I fail it because I am a bit shaky. It just goes to show how sure of your tricks you must be in order to do them well in competition. With back wheeling, I am inconsistent in practices as well as in public. However, I've been drilling the crap out them all week, so maybe I will show some improvements in the next battle. Currently I am shooting for the elusive 20 cone back toe wheeling, and while I've come as close as 19, I've never gotten down the whole line without a single tap or mistake.

Anyway, back to Warsaw, the atmosphere at the battle was quite competitive and serious, and I didn't get much of a sense of the camaraderie amongst the skaters that I so depend on in order to keep bringing me back to battles. However, I realize that a lot of peoples' motivations are different than mine, and that for some people, winning is the only way to have fun. No matter. To each his own. However, it does concern me if this attitude becomes prevalent, and then people shy away from competing. On the one hand it is not necessarily a bad thing, because then it opens up the sport to having several different levels of competition and different kinds of events, but on the other hand, it does not help the sport if the competitions themselves have smaller and smaller numbers of people entering to compete. This is absolutely not the case so far; in fact, there are more people than ever in the freestyle slalom rankings, so I guess it's just a natural part of the evolution of the sport as it gets more popular and the level improves.

Personally, I am still improving all the time and know I am nowhere near the top of my potential, so I will continue to compete as long as I feel like I should be doing so, because I WANT to be as good as the people who are the best, and I know I can be, but it just takes more practice and more experience...i.e. competitions.  

The women's slide competition in Warsaw was my favorite part of the whole weekend. I hadn't signed up to take part originally, because I hadn't practiced any slides in ages. I had sort of lost interest in sliding somewhere between last summer and this one, partially because of the fact that I didn't really know how to improve, and I tire easily of something when I know there is no improvement. I suppose I could have sought out internet videos and studied them to learn, or bugged people to show me things, but I didn't, probably because I've been enjoying slalom way too much and I am content most of the time to just keep skating around the cones. Anyway, Ukranian skater Ksenija Komarchuk had an infectious enthusiasm about the whole thing and basically said to me, "Come on, why aren't you sliding?" which of course, worked on me and I signed up! Lidia Wardzinska was also taking part, and it's basically because of those two that I didn't want to be left out. :)

Ksenija took me on as her sliding paduwan and showed me heaps of tips and tricks, AND Mistrial slide, which I had never done before. I learned so much from her that when I left the competition area on Saturday evening, I left with an altogether different outlook on slides in addition to already being improved from the morning. Not only that, I managed to take fourth place in the women's slide competition, which was held apart from the men's only due to late registrations like mine (sorry, organizers!). Last but not least, I managed to do the whole thing in short shorts, and all of my skin remained intact, a fact of which I am very proud. :)

This week I practiced slide a bit on my own and with Pierre Alix, and I can feel how it's different than it used to be. Different better, if still rather noobish.

Well, apart from Battle Warsaw, there's actually been a lot going on, skating-wise, in that I've been training quite diligently. Last night I also had the pleasure of taking part in the Brussels Rollerparade for the first time, and I am hooked. I will be joining as often as possible until the season is over, that's for sure.

To close off, please enjoy some of these EXCELLENT slide tutorials, which come, fittingly enough, from Ukraine. :)

First up: Mistrial slide


Parallel slide


Pornstar slide


There's lots of these tutorials so check them out and happy sliding!
xoxoxo
meg

Tim & Megan Slalom video :)

Oh hey!

Here's another fun video, this time of Tim and I screwing around at the rollerparade in Hasselt on Monday. Wicked fun! Extra special thanks to Mia and Bram for making this, because it's really cool of them to do that. I've also never really looked at Tim and I skating in such rapid succession, so it's cool to see how differently we skate from each other. Tim's style is super cool and unique. <3

Mine is coming along. What I'm really happy with about this clip is that we are just playing around (hence I tried backwards sevens and toe shift), and I am actually showing that attacking quality I've always wanted to master. I don't even care that I didn't really do any "tricks" in this clip. :)

I hope you like it.

A few slalom clips starring...ME!

Oh hi.

Here's a video demonstrating the Sun, in case you need to practice yours. If you click through to the Youtube page with the video, there is a detailed explanation of every step of the move:


Here's a video clip in which I show a cool little hoppy combo I learned from Igor, so I call it "Igor hop." Although I am pretty sure Igor calls it "Korean leap." :)


And lastly, here's my classic run from Paris, which ends very, very sadly. :(


That's all for today! I'm still wrangling with that horrid beast out there, the Cobra, so don't worry, I didn't forget about that. :)

Thanks for reading!
xoxoxo
meg

LHSKontest Women's Final video

I haven't finished the Cobra series. Sorry for the cliffhanger. :-P

Anyway, here's a really nicely done video from the Le Havre LHSKontest this year. I realize that most videos of me to find on the internet are all two years old (and I've only been slaloming for three!) and in the videos, I'm not nearly as good as I am now, but they're still cute to watch anyway. Especially with the skorts...oh Lord. There will probably be a whole post dedicated to the skorts, but not today.

Anyway, this battle was rather recent, it was loads of fun, the atmosphere was lovely, and the people were great, so I hope you can also enjoy:

LHSKontest 2011 - Finale Freestyle Slalom Femme... par LHSKiki

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Cobra, Part 2 (of 3)

To my surprise and delight, yesterday evening, right around the time I clicked "publish post," I received a short video clip in my email of two of my Skatefreestyle teammates practicing nothing other than the Cobra. So I wanted to make sure I kept these posts timely and relevant to them right now as they are working through their struggles with the exotic beast, especially since I am out there with them in spirit, at least in part. The other part of me is very much enjoying being home, but I consider these posts my small contribution to the team. 

Tonight we take a look at my own experience chasing the deadly Cobra. So, onwards and...onwards! Because "upwards" doesn't really make sense here. Yeah.

The McIntosh Cobra Chronicles:

The whole saga begins at the April 2010 slalom retreat in Belgium with Naomi, where Jurgen and I, and possibly a few others, demanded from Naomi that she magically zap our feet into being able to do this trick. At the time we got the breakdown from her on the entry from toe-heel snake, but our success in execution was limited. She also told us to sit back on the toe, with almost no weight on the heel. (in my case, the right toe and left heel). The heel is for steering, we were informed. We could get into the Cobra, fine, and maybe sneak forward half a meter or so in the same direction as our toe-heel screws, but then we would spin around and around in heel-toe screws. Oh, poor us.

Then, that May in France, at LHSKontest 2010, I received some further advice from Chiara Lualdi on this trick (she is a master of all tricks that screw with your mind like Cobras, inverted eagles on toe and heel, etc;), who told me to sit back onto my right toe and counteract with my upper body by bringing my left arm forward. At that time, I was told that I was leaning forward too much as a result of trying to thrust my left leg out on heel. And let me tell you, that doesn't feel pretty, people.

Still no dice, although I was already adding to my body of knowledge on the mysterious Cobra (cue ominous snake hissing sound now).

We then cut to San Francisco in June 2010, where I reunited with Team Skatefreestyle for a week of practicing together while Naomi simultaneously ran a slalom retreat. At that time I was acquainted for the first time with an Irish skater named Sinead Howick, who learned the Cobra from Naomi in the course of the retreat. I saw her gradual but definite success out of the corner of my eye, and was consumed by feelings of jealousy and longing. I wanted my legs to do that too! But they wouldn't. Not without spinning around, whirling me down a dark tunnel of shame.

The score was thus

Deadly serpent: 3

Pitiful human: 0

I gave up on chasing the Cobra for the rest of that summer, and it was easy to do, distracted by battles and traveling and all the good things in life. Plus, learning a proper footgun was a big priority, so the need to practice Cobra sort of dissipated. I briefly flirted with it again in September 2010 at the Jeonju, Korea competition, aided once again by the ever-helpful Marina Boyko (whose name I am finally spelling correctly! Sorry!), but I still had no success. I knew I didn't have the right feeling. Everything about the trick felt very wrong.

Side note: When you are learning slalom, new tricks will often feel very weird. However, there is a big difference between weird and wrong. When a trick feels weird, it's the sensation that you are doing something you have never done before, your body is not used to it, and you have to think yourself through every step in order to succeed. However, what you will learn to feel is the imminence of the trick being good one day. When it's weird, you know it will get better. You will learn to feel it. When it's wrong, you will also learn to feel it, if you don't know already. Wrong means that it hurts, or that you absolutely cannot sense a balancing point, or even sometimes that it's too easy. If you have your doubts about what you are feeling, consult a slalom expert. But if it hurts, please stop, and change what you are doing.

End side note.

After Korea, that was the end of the Cobra for me for a long time. The summer slalom season was over, so we retreated into our winter habits, which included long practice sessions in the sporthall on weekends followed by well-deserved dinners in delicious restaurants. Life is tough, I know. However, I did chip away the ice at my favorite practice spot to keep my learning curve high.

And then, the Cobra came back to haunt my dreams.

This year at Battle Bremen, the Cobra revealed itself once again throughout the women's competition. Their hips didn't lie. In reaction, I whinged. I whined. I actually wondered if my legs were just too thick to lock into that position (not valid, by the way). At that time, Cris Pers assured me that it is not a flexibility trick. Sinead Howick said that if I could do toe-heel screw, then I could definitely do the Cobra. I wanted to believe them. I really did.

And still, I doubted.

Back in Le Havre, France, for this year's edition of the LHSKontest, I once again made it to the final. And once again, there were Cobras dancing up and down the cone line. Both Zoe Granjon and Sinead Howick busted them out as final tricks in the battle final, in backwards and forwards versions, respectively. They looked like they were having so much fun. I wanted to join them ever so much. Sinead even did a funky dancey Eastern arm thing as she glided, with ease, all the way out of the cone line.

And then, the next time I went out slaloming, after more than a year of wanting to do this move, I managed a teeeeeny tiny little Cobra slaloming in the 120's cone line, where my heel and toe were just about even with each other. Rightfully, I celebrated.

Well, of course this story has a happy ending, though the saga of my Cobra is far from over. I am far enough along at this point, however, where I feel like I can let you, my dear reader, in on the mysteries of this trick. Since I saw Sinead again at PSWC, I got her opinion on what I was doing, and I even managed to consult Polina momentarily to see what I am still doing wrong. It's a work in progress, but a labor of love.

Current Score:

Slithering reptile: 3

Tenacious cone warrior: 3

(I get extra points for maintaining a positive attitude even though I've still got a ways to go.)

So, the next time, we will deal with the mechanics of this sneaky beast.

This post is dedicated to all my cone-dodging Skatefreestyle peeps out in San Francisco right now, under the tutelage of Miss Natalie UJUK.  *thumps chest*

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Cobra, Part 1

What's this? Another post, so soon after the other? The weather must be bad, or I must be avoiding homework, right? Actually, neither. I'm just finally HOME. We've been all over the place lately, and it's nice to actually sit on our couch and blog to the blogiverse. Universe. Whatever. So, without further ado, in this mini-series of posts, I bring you my (unfinished) journey into the den of the Cobra. (DUN DUN DUNNNNN!)

The Cobra was made famous by (and possibly invented by?) Polina Semenova, and it has now has become a relatively commonplace trick in women's slalom battles. It's one of those tricks that completely messes with your head because you were not aware that humans were able to bend that way, and you're not entirely sure they are supposed to. So basically, it's got that bendy-legs quality that makes slalom so attractive and interesting to many of us in the first place. 

Here is the women's battle final from PSWC 2011, with skating from Julia Kulagina, Anya Ziertmann, Marina Boyko (I really need to stop spelling her name wrong! apologies), and Polina. (They skate in that order in the video, just in case you can't hear the announcer very well.) Polina performs the Cobra both forwards and backwards starting at 8:01 or so. Please feel free to enjoy the whole video if you want, and I bet there are other instances where other skaters in the round do the same trick, but I wanted to make sure I presented you with a moment where Polina does this trick, because I tend to think of it as hers. 

OK, without further ado, to the viewing of the Cobra! Watch out that it doesn't GET YOU.  

PSWC 2011 Slalom Battle Women Final by REKIL.RU from ReKiL on Vimeo.

Did you see it? Isn't it CRAZY?

(Well, no, this is actually Crazy, but let's stay on topic please.)

Well, we're just getting started here, but as you could have guessed from the title of this post, it's a two-parter. Or maybe more. But I promise to bring you part two within the week, because I've already written a lot of it, but it's not quite ready.

Until Part Two, my wheeled comrades! I'm off to go skating or watch Indiana Jones or sleep or something.

As always, thanks for reading.

xoxoxo

meg

What I've been up to

After Battle Bremen, I went to:

1. LHSKontest III: Le Havre battle. Awesome weekend. Such a chill atmosphere with cool people. And the DJ played KRS-One for me during my battle round, so that's a big plus. It was the first wholly post-cathartic battle for me as well, and the feeling of being in a competition is now entirely changed for the better. It's something I hope to continue and cultivate.

Then I went to Dutch class and started getting my butt kicked by this semester's workload at my program in Brussels. Yowza!

2. Skatefreestyle slalom workshop, Groningen: Don't worry if you didn't hear about it. We didn't *really* advertise for it. It was a small but amazing group. We also took part in a slalom showdown, ate pancakes inside a ship, shot some skating video, and generally had a ball.

In between, I practiced! And did homework.

3. PSWC: Paris Slalom World Cup: This year, the PSWC redeemed itself to me by being very cool and very fun. Last year, not so much, because I was really ill. The afterparty on Sunday night clinched it for me as the most magical competition to this date. Also, my classic run was SO GOOD...until I fell at the end. Great. Yeah. World #1 Marina Boyko told me that I am doing really well, but I need to fall less. She is right. :)

4. Skatefreestyle slalom workshop, London: This workshop was our first in Hyde Park, and it was good to do hot on the heels of Groningen two weeks prior. After this workshop, I am eager to ramp up our schedule of them, but it's difficult with so many competitions. So, I'd like to schedule more things locally, so it will be logistically easier for us to do.

So now you know why I haven't posted.

See you soon!
xoxoxo
meg

Battle Bremen

Well, I don't want to get in the habit of waiting ages between posts and then apologizing for the lack of content in the interim, so let's just pretend that it hasn't been long and that I've been regaling you with interesting and useful thoughts on slalom this whole time. :)

We went to a battle in Bremen, and before the weekend, I was thinking about not taking part at all (*gasp*) because I hadn't been skating at all for a couple of weeks (*bigger gasp*) because I honestly hadn't felt like it whatsoever (*biggest gasp of all*). The reason for this is that I realized in the midst of a real training session that I was no longer taking any pleasure from slalom skating and that I was just doing it because I felt like I had to, which is of course not true. So I stopped rather suddenly, and didn't train or skate for a few weeks. Without slalom, frankly, I felt a bit empty. So, I learned a valuable lesson from my trial separation from slalom, and I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon.

In retrospect, I think having a break was actually a good thing for physical reasons also, because the twinges of knee pain that had been creeping in during my early-spring training bonanza have now disappeared, and I suspect that they were the result of overuse. I have a borderline reverent respect for the human knee and always take care to avoid messing mine up, as it's not something that is easily rehabilitated and you're born with the only two.

But anyway, I digress. Bremen was fun, and even though my classic run was a mess, I'm glad I got to do it. I think I need to go back into it and take out some things that are just too hard. It pains me to do it, because I can do all those tricks when I'm practicing, just not all together in a formal run set to music. That's frustrating, but that's life.

This is also a nice lesson for me from taking part in competition, which is something that I've been debating stopping for quite some time. However I reached a milestone in Bremen and was actually able to relax a little while skating in the battle. I was not good in the final, but it was a huge victory for me to be able to actually enjoy myself instead of just make it through the experience. Saturday morning I was still thinking I wouldn't register at all, but then I realized that I would only be disappointing myself, so I went ahead and took part, and I'm really glad I did. I still had some nerves in my stomach, but I didn't have them in my head, which was quite tolerable, and more akin to the lovely nervous butterflies I used to have before going out on stage in a play. Those nerves I used to experience in theater were healthy, stimulating nerves, and that's what I hope I can eventually have when skating. I think skating in Bremen was a big step towards this, and I look forward to this weekend in Le Havre for (hopefully) more of the same, or (even more hopefully) an even better feeling.

The biggest help to me in terms of coping with nervousness better was (of course) something that Tim said to me. He mentioned to me how he thought I only started getting so nervous after I got sponsorship, and I think he's right. Because of that, I have felt an imperative to be good and that I need to win competitions, when in fact I wasn't advanced when I was originally sponsored. Tim said the important thing for me to do is just to skate like I can and do, because I am showing my slalom, not my competition result. He's right, of course, and remembering that really helped me feel more at ease in the battle.

This battle in Bremen actually had a lot of characteristics in common with the battle in Le Havre last year, for me, anyway. I unknowingly did a stupid final trick, same as I did last year in Le Havre. Whoops. Not that it would have changed the result (it wouldn't have), but my choice was the result of me not knowing the strategy of a final trick. This time I went for 20 cone screw, but 10 toe-heel and 10 toe-toe. I always thought that if a final trick was a combo that it would count as one trick if it showed no transition. But apparently changing from heel to toe counts as a transition because the foot goes flat for a second in between screws. If I had jumped from heel to toe then it would have counted as one trick. *shakes head* Whatever, now I know! And now you do, too. :)

Well, my slalom is far from finished. I'm still working on a lot of wheelings and wheeling transitions, and all I want is consistency! With these tricks at the moment, I am consistently inconsistent. Watching the men's battle competition was inspiring...the level that they are at with wheelings is leaps and bounds above the women, in general. In Western Europe, anyway. :)

As far as style goes, I think my skating is looking pretty good. It feels really good to do, anyway. Nothing holds me back anymore. I used to have hiccups and slow-downs and awkward moments, and now I feel like I am flying through the cones most of the time, totally free. That's the best feeling.

Except for on 50's. I still have to get that flying feeling on 50's.

Okay, I have a new goal! Flying feeling on fifties! 1-2-3 go!

Well I'm off to go chase that feeling. Thanks for reading this, and have fun skating!
xoxoxo
meg

Us...and our heroes

Hey guys, Pierre-Alix is wearing a Captain America t-shirt and lying on our couch, Tim is on the BOOK OF FACES (said in deep ominous voice), and we are about to go to the session in Diepenbeek. :)

I just wanted to remind everyone that there is absolutely nothing separating us between ourselves and our slalom superheroes except a lot of hard work and practice.

Stay motivated!!!

xoxoxo
meg

The "Can't"Column and the "Can"Column

Hello fellow slalomers. Just a quick check-in because the weather has been, and currently still is, G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S, and since this is Belgium, I do best to take advantage of it.

On a personal note, school in Brussels has been really enjoyable lately, and I've been adventuring out and exploring the city bit by bit as I have the chance. The city is incredibly dynamic, more so than most places I have been, filled with so many interesting people and places. It seems like most of the people I go to school with ended up in Brussels by accident, which is neat because I ended up in Belgium also quite by accident, and so it's a common thread between many of us, even though our backgrounds are all incredibly different. In one classroom with fourteen people, for example, I think we represent twelve different countries. Talking with a classmate at a house party Friday night, I asked him if he thought our school was a good representation of the population in Brussels, and he replied, "The thing about Brussels is that there is no typical profile." And based on what I've experienced, I am inclined to agree.

This multiculturalism pleases me very deeply; I learn something new about another culture almost every day. Skating has also helped me learn a lot about the world, surprisingly or not. Since beginning slalom, this is actually one of the aspects of my personality that has broadened the most. Traveling to different places to skate is great because you get to spend time with lots of amazing people, and then your experiences become deeply meaningful in a way that touring around and only doing typical tourist things will never deliver.

So, onto slalom practice, because without practice, there is no progress. :)

In a previous post, I mentioned how I used to practice hard instead of practicing smart. Well, in the interest of efficiency, I have done my best to adopt the latter habit. So I'd like to write about that as often as I can. One of my favorite, most effective habits that I'd like to share is believing in your ability to do something. It might sound like perfectly common sense, but I think people often put up mental blocks about certain tricks and therefore avoid working on them. For example, someone might practice heel wheeling quite readily, but not toe wheeling, because he or she perceives it as much harder and a trick he or she doesn't feel ready to do yet. While it can be true that the person is not yet ready for a particular trick (and please trust yourself, above all), sometimes this person simply needs a bit more confidence to make the leap from admiring someone else doing a beautiful slalom trick to doing the trick himself.

One example of this I can give you from my own experience is something that actually happened in yoga. One of the things I love most about yoga is that it is completely non-competitive. Everyone is inwardly focused in the class, which is in such contrast to my experiences in ballet class growing up. But anyway, there is one particular asana that we do towards the beginning of every class that I always had a lot of trouble doing equally well on both sides. Since I had never looked at anyone else's positioning in the class, I assumed that was probably normal and that everyone was much better on one side than the other. One day I set up my mat towards the back of the class, and I peeked at everyone in the during the exercise. To my surprise, everyone else could do it really well on both sides! I instantly pushed myself a bit harder and discovered that I could indeed reach further and do it better. So, the block was all in my mind, not my body. This lesson has since served me well in slalom.

So what I suggest is that you start taking the things in the "can't"column and put them in the "can"column. This is the mental list of tricks that you think of yourself as not being able to do and being able to do, respectively. And while there may be circumstantial evidence that you cannot do a certain trick and that you can do another, there is actually no physical proof. The truth is that you simply have not yet managed to do the tricks in your "can't"column.

So, the first thing you need to do is stop thinking that way. Don't think, "I can't do toe wheeling." Instead, think, "I haven't managed to do it yet." This opens up your mind to the possibility that you in fact, can, do toe wheeling, and that it's something you need to stumble upon and then subsequently perfect. After all, the first step towards success is believing you can achieve it.

When you have managed to somewhat succeed at a trick, there is the danger that you will know you are capable of it, but that it is not yet ready, and so you avoid doing it in freestyle. These are the tricks that are in between the "can't"column and the "can"column. Many slalomers have a slew of tricks that they are still working on in private, but that aren't ready for doing out in public, in competition or just showing off in the park. And it is true that you will have tricks that are not yet ready for competition, but that's not to say that you shouldn't do them in your freestyle runs. In fact, you need to do these tricks as much as possible in your fun freestyle in the park.

A couple reasons for doing this:

1) It gets you in the mindset that you do that trick now.
2) In your freestyle runs, you will be relaxed and having fun, and therefore are more likely to succeed at the trick.
3) Extra practice. :)

Of course, there is no substitute for controlled, slow technical practice on a slalom trick. But let's face it, that's not fun for everybody. By now you know that I love my controlled, slow technical practice, but I'm not going to blame you if you don't. Through trying a trick in your freestyle even though you don't think it's ready, it will also inspire you to focus on practicing that trick more so that it fits better into your slalom runs, and also so you don't look completely spastic doing it. :)

I have one more related tip to give you today. This came to me originally from Tim in a specific instance, but I think it's generally applicable to your slalom tricks.

The original situation was that Tim was helping me with my (flat) shift. Shift is a trick where the skater travels through the cones on one foot, changing direction as he or she goes between front and back using the air leg as a counterweight. You can see examples of it in men's battle finals everywhere performed on one toe or heel, especially as a last trick, but for some reason I am unable to find a great example. I'll post one another time, I guess.

Anyway, I was having trouble actually traveling down the line of cones, and Tim pointed down the line and said, "You have to really want to go that way."And of course, he was right. I had been practicing without keeping the overall goal of the trick in mind, which is to travel down the line of the cones. Once I had that in mind, my practice went much better.

Once again, it's perfectly logical, but I think sometimes we can get bogged down in all the details of a challenging move and end up forgetting the big picture. So when you're trying to turn your screws but end up getting stuck around one cone, remember that your objective is to move to the next one. When you are doing a footgun, your objective is to get as low to the ground as possible (without actually sitting on it).

These are all seemingly subtle changes to the way you think about your skating, but they will help you with your biases about your abilities or perceived lack thereof.

Okay, well I ended up writing more than I had originally anticipated, but there are still hours of sunshine left and I hope you're lucky enough to have the same weather.

As always, thanks for reading!
xoxoxo
meg

Older Slalom Skaters

Sometimes I get asked the question of how old is too old to begin slaloming. The answer is, of course, NEVER. Anyone in reasonable shape with the desire to go skating can learn how to slalom. Anyone with doubts, of course, should ask a doctor, but there is absolutely no age limit to the sport.

In fact, in my experience, older skaters often turn out to be talented, as well as easy to teach. This is, of course, awesome.

I think this comes because a lot of people have always wanted to learn to skate, but they only get the time when they are a little older and their kids, if they have them, are grown up. When they finally do start, they are focused and ready to learn. As a result, they improve very quickly, and it's remarkable to see.

Anyone who wants to learn to slalom but feels like they might be "too old," I would encourage to abandon that sort of thinking and just do it. It's bad enough that the stereotype of ageism exists, and it's even worse when we start imposing this upon ourselves! Think about it...if everyone just tried to fit into the little boxes that stereotypes dictate we should, the world would be a very boring place full of extremely boring people.

Slalomers, fortunately, are hardly ever boring. :)

"Too old" and "Not flexible enough" are two of the reasons for NOT slaloming that I often hear. They are both invalid on their own. You don't have to be young or flexible to become a good slalom skater. You just have to really want it, and then go skating...often.

Speaking of which, I'm off to skate.
Happy skating, everybody!
xoxoxo
meg

On Falling (Down)

It's because of a self-imposed ban on skating today that I am here to blog, which is thanks to a nasty fall. It was bad enough that I had to stop my practice entirely. Granted, there was a brief moment where I hesitated and said, "Hm, well maybe I can just do things that don't hurt, like SITTING TRICKS!" but then the voice of reason stepped in and told me not to be ridiculous, because EVERYTHING hurt. While I was trying to decide whether or not I should continue practice, I skated off to the side and Googled muscular and skeletal anatomy for awhile to see exactly which parts of my body I had offended. I had slammed down hard enough on one side of my bum that the pain echoed continuously, but after resting for a few minutes on the ground, I concluded that the damage was strictly muscular, and likely fleeting. In so many words, I just plain busted my ass.

So then I packed it up, pulled off the skates, and braced myself for the 15 minute bike ride home which turned out to be rather longer, due to taking it easy. I also took the opportunity to run a couple of errands, since I had stopped skating early and the stores were still open. So then I found myself with a bicycle loaded up to the max with handsoap, peppermint tea, and a sizable potted plant (a red anthurium, if you're wondering), and THAT was the moment that the wind decided to turn violent and blow the spattering raindrops directly in my eyes. It was not, as you might have guessed, a pleasant journey, neither for me nor the plant. I did my best to shield the poor thing from the freezing gusts, but it had a considerably harder time of it than I did on the bike, even with my aforementioned busted ass.

But we made it home, the plant and I. The soreness really set in during dinner, and by the time I crawled into bed, I was quite worried that I might have done something quite terrible to myself without realizing it, because every time I accidentally engaged the affected muscles, sharp and intense pain was the result. This remained the case throughout the entire night, as every time I shifted position in my sleep, I was awakened by more of this pain. As you can imagine, I didn't exactly feel rested when I woke up this morning, due to repeatedly waking up with this feeling. At that point, the plant was definitely doing better than I was.

Now, almost 24 hours after the fall, the pain has thankfully subsided quite a bit, but the muscles are still quite sore. Honestly, I think I'm just used to falling well, and this is definitely one of my worst ones I've sustained, so I'm likely being a big baby about it.

The reason that I fell the way I did is because I skated into a cone in a way that it blocked my wheels entirely, and due to my body positioning at the time with crossed legs on two wheels, there was no adjustment I could make as I went down. I had been practicing toe-heel reverse cross compass (which looks like a backwards toe-heel screw) at the time, and it was going really well. So I was doing it with one of my more energetic set-ups, really trying to integrate the move into a run, instead of just doing a slow technical practice (which I had just finished). Then I overshot the entry, grabbed a cone with my right foot, and down I went, unable to uncross my legs or direct my energy in the fall to lessen the impact. The worst was that I felt the fall coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. What a horrible feeling! I bet that's a feeling I used to have more often as a less experienced skater (read: faller), but I just don't remember having it anymore.

Most of the time when I fall, I am able to redirect my energy along the ground, as opposed to into the ground. Rolling is a good example of that, if a bit dramatic for a fall in slalom, where we are usually not traveling fast enough to warrant multiple rolls along the ground to soften our impact with the ground. That being said, rolling is the ideal method. When I fall, I often think about the way people who do parkour tumble forward along the ground after they jump off something high.  You can read an excellent article by Eddy Matzger describing this way of falling here. He likens it to how you would want to jump off a high speed train, which is a really cool visual. :)

Slalom is very good for teaching you how to fall well, as you're simply recovering from *almost* falling the whole time you are doing it. Anyone who has ever learned from Naomi has had that lesson, and subsequently anyone who has ever learned from me. 99.9% of the time that I fall down it feels like I am still skating, except my wheels are no longer in contact with the ground, and I am often able to get up and continue in a fluid manner. Here is a nice piece by Carlesa Williams that describes this. What I also like about this is that she talks about using your naturally-padded areas (i.e. my aforementioned busted ass) to absorb impact, if you must.

So what about protective gear? Beginning skaters are advised to fall onto their pads on their hands and knees. See this article on Skatelog that recommends that you "try to SLIDE on your knee pads and wrist guards." This same list of recommendations turns up on various inline skating websites from skate schools, so my guess is that these are official ICP recommendations for falling while skating. These are excellent recommendations for people who are first learning how to skate, but they don't remain applicable for skaters who wish to specialize in something like slalom. In slalom we contort ourselves into so many positions where achieving the "hands and knees" fall is impossible. Also, many of us choose not to wear protective gear for various reasons and therefore the whole laundry list of falling techniques is moot. Above this, falling on hands and knees at this point, protective gear or no, would feel utterly and totally wrong to me and I would probably fall harder anyway, having learned to effectively fall otherwise.

So I think that in addition to these falling techniques, skaters should also learn, *as they are ready,* the rolling method of falling. It's a lot more adaptable to circumstance than a pad-slide type fall, and essential if a skater ever wants to skate without protective gear. I'm not advising people to skate without protective gear, but the reality is that some people are going to start leaving bits and pieces of it in their skate bag over time. To me, advising people only to fall on their pads is a bit like teaching abstinence in high school. It's a good idea in itself, sure, but the reality is that people will be better prepared to make good choices if they have a some knowledge on the alternatives.

Anyway, I've never taken a basic inline skating lesson, so I don't even know if people are taught multiple techniques. But I think it's great that there are a multitude of ideas out there when it comes to falling. Better that than just one. Everybody should be smart and choose what's right for them. And if you're learning how to skate, you BEST be wearing some protective gear.

When I was first teaching myself the screw from watching this 4WheelFreestyle tutorial and this Munobal trick video and also this one, I spent a lot of time falling on my left knee. In retrospect, my learning method was far from ideal. I could have saved myself a lot of time and headaches if I had just ASKED somebody how to do it, but at the time, I didn't KNOW any skaters who could do that move (sometimes I forget that my introduction to slalom, its skaters, and subsequent learning curve have been rapid). THAT was really awful, so I started wearing a knee pad on that knee because I KNEW I would be falling there, so why wouldn't I protect it? I probably saved myself from injury, even though at the time I was just practicing hard, not practicing smart.

For the record, I don't recommend slalom for total beginning skaters, in general. It can be much too frustrating for the skater who is trying to learn. It's like trying to learn how to dance without knowing how to walk yet. You don't have to be very good at walking when you start dancing (see: hilarious small children everywhere), but you're probably going to fall down a lot more than you would prefer and you'll struggle to keep up with the class. That being said, it depends on the individual and I have seen some amazing beginners who really "get" slalom from day one, but it's the exception, not the rule. A good time to start learning slalom is when you can skate forwards and backwards quite comfortably and can stop confidently without a heel brake. Otherwise, you might be wasting a lot of time working on basic skating techniques instead of on slalom itself, which isn't a bad thing, but then a regular skating lesson might be a better use of your time and money.

Well, it's really too bad that I can't be out there today, because yesterday was going SO well. Earlier in the week I had a really grueling, frustrating technical practice and I was just starting to see some of the rewards for that yesterday.

But anyway. Lessons learned?

1. Learn how to fall well. No, really. Do, because you're going to fall no matter what.
2. Take it a little easy if you hurt yourself, because if you don't rest up, you will hurt yourself even worse.
3. Meet people who can help you learn technical tricks, because it's kinda hard to do by yourself. :-/ You can always ask me if you need help meeting slalomers...we are generally friendly, helpful people. :)
4. A red anthurium is one tough plant.

That's it for today!
Happy falling, everybody, and thanks for reading!
xoxoxo
meg

London Slalom Workshop now open for registration: June 4th and 5th in Hyde Park

I'm coming to London.

Correction: WE'RE coming to London.

Tim and I will be leading a Skatefreestyle workshop TOGETHER in Hyde Park on Serpentine Road, and BOY ARE WE EXCITED! Teaching alone is rewarding, but teaching together is even better.

The dates / times are Saturday, June 4th 10 AM-3 PM and Sunday, June 5th, also 10 AM-3 PM.

What you will be getting...

• EIGHT hours of on-skates instruction, which allow us for one hour lunch breaks both days inside the scheduled time blocks. 
• The undivided attention of TWO professionally certified slalom instructors through ICP. I do believe we're the only certified couple in the world at this time. :)

We are capping registration at TWELVE students, which means that you will be getting lots of individual attention during the sessions. Depending on who signs up, we will either split the workshop into two groups and alternate working with each group, run the class as one entity, or some combination of the two.

And lucky you, we aren't charging double because there are two of us. Because, well, that would just be mean, and expensive, and we are excited about teaching. The price for the workshop is 75 GBP. Making a 35 GBP deposit through Paypal is required to reserve a space, which you can now do from the "Add to Cart" button right here on this blog. The remainder of the price is payable (in cash) on the first day of the workshop.

For all sign-ups and questions, please drop me a line at megan [at] skatefreestyle [dot] com. I really hope to hear from you. It's going to be such a fun, informative weekend.

Ok, well I still have loads to write, but this post has got to stick to being a workshop announcement.
Keep practicing everybody, and have fun!

xoxoxo
meg