Training Fresh Meat in Stockholm

Me teaching  the Shoetown Slayers to hit with their hips (sorry, I have no picture of the STRD fresh meat)

I love running Fresh Meat practices - you can see by the minute how much everyone improve. So as most of you know by now, me and Loony moved to Stockholm and joined Stockholm Rollerderby, and yesterday we got the pleasure to coach the future stars of Stockholm.

Yesterday we tought our freshmeats how to hit - hip hits of course - since that is the most used and according to ME and Loony the most effective hit. We started very basic with just moving the hips, and bumping into each other, just for them to learn the mechanics of the hits and then slowly moving up towards a good clean hip-hit. It was exciting to see how little corrections can take you a loooong way, and it is so much fun to see how far all those girls has gotten compared to just a month ago.

I am a big fan of basics, and in derby lot's and lot's of times I run into leagues that try to rush past the basics, so they can learn something fancy, but hte fancy will come when the basics are there. So I will continue to run cross-over, partner and hip-hit drills over and over again, both for my freash meats and my more advanced skaters - because we all need it... waht doesn't kill you, will make you stronger... and most of all it will make you pass minimum skills and then it will make you a better derby player and it will put a smile on your face.

Another thing I'm really happy about that we decided on in Stockholm is that we have 30 minutes off-skate before OR after each skate session, I can feel us all getting faster and more explosive... one day we will ALL be like Beater from Montreal (dreamy eyes)... and I think the Freashies had a good time doing lateral jumps and planks with me yesterday... because I felt it in my quads today! But not to forget - off-skate training keep your injuries down... get stronger... and stronger and then we can all take hits better and just keep on going and going and going...