A few days after I started wheeling around the apartment, I discovered the #rollerskating community on Instagram and all the relevant hashtags, I frantically jumped around trying to soak in ALL THE CONTENT. Frankly, it was a tad overwhelming and hard to know what to exactly focus on. I followed all these people who seemed to blossom instantaneously within 30-60 days of rollerskating, and I wondered, “Oh my gosh, what if I can’t keep up?”
My sessions on days 6 and 7 were a little scattered, as I tried to practice all the different things Nicole had covered in her 5-part lesson while furiously combing through Dirty Deborah’s lessons alongside all the other things people seemed to be learning on Instagram. Crazy legs? Dribbling? Strutting? Zero? Dip?
After diddling around for a couple days, I decided to focus on the fundamentals of forwards and backwards skating, while drilling transitions, spins, and the occasional shoot the duck.
Backward Bubbles
Doing backwards bubbles was harder than anticipated. I realized quickly that my core strength, balance and posture, need a lot of work! As you can see in the clip below, I was leaning forward too much making it harder to bring my thighs back together. I also realized I have really weak thighs and glutes, and my left side was definitely weaker than my right side. It’s gotten better since I’ve been practicing bubbles. While I’d like to think it’s because my legs are getting stronger, I also wonder if it’s because I swapped in new skates that had looser trucks (my Impalas were very stiff and stable, but hard to maneuver).
Here was my inspiration
Here was my reality
Forward pushing
I actually really liked the mini-drill that Nicole introduced in her 3rd lesson (around the 9:30 min mark) to try pushing forward in a circle and getting a feel for that outside edge. It would eventually be a nice segue into doing forward crossovers and figure 8s. It took a few practice rounds over a couple of days, but I eventually was able to advance to doing crossovers by Day 11.
Here is my inspiration
Here was my reality on Day 6
Backward skating
I tried to advance from bubbles and stepping to pushing backwards, modeling after Dirty Deb’s drill from this clip (around the 8:00 min mark). My first attempt was a massive fail. My legs were so tired, perhaps unaccustomed to all the work I was demanding from them! I did exactly the opposite of what Dirty Deb told me to do. I lifted my leg instead of pushing it, and my standing leg was not at all knock-kneed and pigeon-toed. I also was all out of sorts in terms of my stance because I was tired and wasn’t aware of what I was doing. I was also scared (still am) to put my weight on the standing leg and lean into the outside edge of my standing foot.
Here was my inspiration
Here was my reality
I revisited this exercise from the perspective of a different tutorial by Danielle Lockwood (a professional skater and instructor, @rollerskillz on IG). Something about it clicked–maybe it’s that she had an interim exercise before you lift the foot when pushing.
Two Foot Spins
I was scared when Nicole introduced the two foot spin in her last class of her 5-part series (5:44). It took a while for me to get a better handle of making c curves with my feet–one forward and one backward concurrently. It took watching Nicole’s tutorial and also another IG skater (@momonrollers) to break down c curves at the beginner level. I did manage to squeeze in some spins, but they are still shaky for me. My focus still is on mastering backward skating.
Here’s the tutorial from @momonrollers that helped me break it down.
And here I am pulling it off with beginner’s luck. I even got a little flavor of that heel-toe thing that they talk about when you spin!