Blitzkrieg Deluxe » blitzkrieg

SEMPER SKATE !

blitzkrieg deluxe — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:37:47 +0000

CAUTION : LONG BADLY STRUCTURED POST AHEAD.

So initially I was actually planning on writing a post after every training session until our yellow star test. I now realize this was a tad ambitious so I figure I’ll do a training summery every 3 or 4 weeks to cover any new stuff we’ve done and then post about other derby related happenings. So here’s a run down of all the stuff we’ve been doing over the last few weeks :)

I had my first SHED training session, quite exciting and bloody cold. I finally got to experience first hand the notorious Dandenong training ground. I had been told in the past that the floor was slippery as hell, well that has certainly changed, I couldn’t plow stop to save my life! One thing was still holding true however, the closeness of the the track to the wall. I almost met intimately with said wall a number of times during the night.

We basically went through the yellow star test requirements (which I’ll hopefully be sitting on the 31st of this month *cold sweats* ) This entailed:

60 second body bridge, 50 sit-ups and 20 push ups. Blergh I made the 60 second body bridge..just.. but I’m going to need to work on those push ups…

Endurance : 1 min @ 50% capacity, 2 min endurance working on form, 1 min break and then 5 min endurance with a warm down… I was feeling pretty tired after this. I think I performed about as well as I did for white star but I need a clicker to count my laps because my head always loses track and starts looping thinking music.

Wide weaves and falls. I think I almost have the weaves down going in either direction.

Squat skating : 2 mins of on/off squatting according to whistle blows and then 1 min full squat while skating, 1 min break and then another 1 min of skating in full squat. This as I’m sure you can imagine was the definition of pain.

Next up was my favourite game: satan’s mattress. I nearly died….apparently this is on the test and we have to do it for 2 mins… dear god no ! or should that be dear satan no !?

After drinking a litre of water it was time for some weaving pace-lines. I’ve come to enjoy weaving pacelines, they used to terrify me. I always worried about knocking people over of getting in someone else’s way. I find myself much more comfortable now and able to use speed control when I never really could before. Even with a belly full of water making swoosh swoosh noises I still made it through without stacking.

The final drills of the night were the most fun. we were split into 2 groups taking it in turn to be a blocking pack and a jamming pack. as jammer’s we first had to make it through the pack by stepping through and the second time we had to try and make it through at speed. This was so much fun !! I like blocking but jamming is so cool. I really don’t know if I’ll ever get to be a proper jammer, I need better fitness, a leaner booty and a little more confidence but right now I’m loving these drills.

Lesson of the evening, get a smaller mouth-guard ! I was chewed up pretty bad this week for again not having my mouth-guard in properly.. my fault completely..pretty sure i’ll be vigilant from now on, even if I am choking on my own drool.

*PAUSE*

See just after I wrote this up we had another training session with a buttload more new stuff..so I started writing that one up…and then there was another training session and I started to write that one up and then…I’m sure you see where I’m going here…too much jibber jabber !

In summery, the training sessions up to now have been alot different to boot camp and they are a hell of alot more fun. We’ve learnt so much that I can’t distinguish the individual sessions but a run down on some of the stuff we we have done up until now is:

making and breaking walls, surge blocking. weaving pacelines, blocking pacelines, baton passing, transition stop races. The most fun so far would have to be the endless jammer drills where we have 2 packs, one pack blocks and one pack filters through jamming. So fun and so scary.

When we’re not covering so much new stuff all at once I’ll break it down a little more but right now my head is swimming with new drills..and dreams of what kind of player I’ll end up being.

Besides the training on Tuesday’s I’ve been helping with more NSO jobs. blocker penalty timing! I get to sit in a chair, wield 2 stop watches and wait for people to rack up the penalties and then yell at them to go back and play. With great power comes great responsibility ! Unfortunately I only seem to get one or 2 people to time per scrimmage session..Bring back the biff ladies !

IN OTHER NEWS : OH MAH GAWD I got new skates. BIG GREEN ONES. The wife has named them snot wheels and who am I to argue with her, she totes wears the pants. I decided to just go with rebels again because I’ve been really happy with mine. They are getting a bit ratty which is why I wanted a new pair but overall I’ve never had so much as a blister from them so i don’t see why I would want another boot…I may however get an aluminium plate at some stage in the future. Big shoutout to wayne at derbyskates.com.au and J-F for helping me out. I got a really good deal on the skates as well as the bearings and wrist guards and I got them all within a week and a half *feint*

So I’ve finally had a chance to sit still and write a blog entry… expect more soon, hopefully not as stupidly long. The yellow star test is in two weeks so I’m once again soiling myself…oh and i’m nervous too :) I will be starting my push-up and sit-up routine at home tomorrow I swears ! *hurrrrrrr*

OH OH MOST IMPORTANTLY The first ever SSRD public bout is on the 28th. CLICK HERE for more information and score yourself some tickets ! There is also a promo video here . It’s going to be an awesome night and I get to time the blocker penalties for reals *gasp* Hope to see you there !

Phew epic post. If i could give you a strawberry freddo frog for making it this far I would!

xx BeeDee (lol…just thought I would try that out…fail)

IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SKATE

blitzkrieg deluxe — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:09:40 +0000

videos

She finally did it, she finally got her arse to a proper white star training session. Now I don’t feel quite as guilty claiming to be a derby girl. Still I have a lot of attendance to make up if I want to qualify to sit my next test. In my defence a bad bout of tonsillitis and birthdays did seem like pretty good excuses at the time.

Anyhoos…

FIRST TRAINING SESSION

Before we were even allowed to get on the rink, we new white stars had to first pass the basic written rules test. I was fairly nervous about this during the week as I had still not sat down and read all the rules. I was just hoping to get by with what i’ve learnt along the way in the last 12 months. Luckily for me it turns out I knew more than I thought. Not sure on what my mark was but i was just happy to get out on the track.

It was fairly intimidating at first, not that I was made to feel that way by anyone of coarse, I just was a little overcome by the feeling of being a little noob in a big pond of total awesomeness.

The skating was amazing fun. It was so cool to not be doing to same old drills over and over and over again. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be but I think that’s mainly down to everyone was super friendly and helpful.

So here’s the 411 on what we did.

1.PACE LINES

From the back of the pack jog (HUH?!?) up the inside line to the front. I was actually a little scared of this but doing little steppy steppys wasn’t so bad, until I got yelled at for not having my mouth guard in. SAFETY FAIL SHAME !
Weaving from the back of the pack to the front between each person.
Weaving and faking from the back of the back to the front between each person, I took this is a combo of the first two so I kinda did a little jog before I weaved and then just after. not sure if I was doing it right or not but I had my mouth guard in this time. A minor win!

By the end of this I was pretty buggered. the line was so long it took ages to get to the front.

2.MAKING WALLS
We were paired up with a more experienced skater (<3 hipi) and were told about the basics of making a wall to stop other players getting through the pack. lessons learned include :

Skate low and wide and take up as much room as possible.
Try to close any gaps
Watch behind to make sure you know where the jammer is coming from.
Don’t push back with your arms to stop a player coming through.

3. WATERFALLS
2 people became a group of 3 and we worked on keeping a wall, while rotating players around making sure the gaps were covered at all times.

4. BLOCKING AND JAMMING
3 people together, 1 inside blocker, 1 patrolling blocker and 1 jammer. The aim was for the 2 blockers to stop the jammer getting past.

The inside blocker guarded the inside line with their life.
The patrolling blocker moved around while calling the jammer’s position while also trying to block.
The jammer just tried to get past.

We did this a few times making sure everyone got a crack at each position. I’ve decided i don’t mind inside blocking and the jamming was heaps fun but I’ll probably change my mind about that when theres more than a pack of 2 to deal with.

5. MAKING AND BREAKING WALLS
Skating in 2 teams with packs of 4. (purple and red) we took turns in trying to make walls and break walls. This was fairly nerve wreaking.
As we are only baby white stars, we’re not allowed to make big contact moves so I found it a little confusing as to what were were allowed to do.

That was the last drill for the whiteys for the night. I love the fact that when I played RTCW online, new players had white names, anyone with a white name was considered a noob or a “whitey” because they were so new they couldn’t work out how to change the colour of their name, or play with any skill. It does however feel much cooler calling myself a whitey now even if we are not allowed to scrimmage until we hit yellow star.

So the whiteys did we did a quick warm-down skate, a stretch and got to sit around and watch the higher level skaters do their scrimmage, a worthy compromise. I am seriously equal parts excited and terrified at the prospect of being able to scrim eventually.

I got to try my hand at penalty tracking which I’ve never done before. This was pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to do some NSO activities. Big thanks to Andrew for being so patient every time a purple penalty was called. Pretty sure he would have been sick of me asking “what did he say?” “is this right?” “what was that?”.

NOTE FOR NEXT WEEK: obtain hearing aid so I can hear the coaches and refs and remember to buy my purple and red singlets for team drills. Much love to Bonnie for the sexy loaner for the night <3.

Despite from my truancy on the weekend training front I have still made it to the previous 2 Tuesday sessions. The first was the info night but last weeks was much more fun, It was the SSRD first public bout !! Well semi public, it was for friends and family only but it was still awesome to watch. I was running the merch stand with Megsy for the first half with an army of junior derby queens in the making. It was good volly job here because we could still see all the action. It really got me pretty excited to think that maybe sometime in the next 12 months I’ll be out there as well.

Check out the video on the left of the girls in action and nurse pain grand-slamming it up :D

The first real public bout will be on AUGUST 28TH, more details to come but save the date !

NEXT : Friday night training. woo.

FRESH MEAT GEAR PROFILE

blitzkrieg deluxe — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:26:29 +0000

So in an attempt to find something derby related to write about i thought i might share my first set of gear with you.

now this is in no way an advertisement for the brands i use, i’m just trying to show what i use at the moment and from my own experience and talking to other girls it seems pretty much standard for freshies starting out.

basically to start training for derby on the most basic level you need the following

quad skates
helmet
knee (decent)/elbow pads
wrist guards
mouth guard
striped knee high socks (not really but it’s a plus ^_^)
water water water

from left to right : 1) puma street skates crica 2000 2) sure grip rebels 3) s-one cromag (for fat heads) 4) protec wrist guards 5) 187 knee pages 6) no-name elbowpads

1) puma skates these babies were bought in 2000 when i had every intention on rolling around the streets of melbourne in my time off work. after about 5 mins on them and a near spectacular fall i was scared off them for the next 9 years which they spent in my various bedrooms since.. well until june 2009. after researching roller derby for a while i convinced a friend to come out with me to the local rink (caribbean rollerama 4 lyfe !!) for a test run. it was fun but alot of hard work, i was pretty uneasy and decided that i was just going to bite the bullet and invest in a decent pair of skates to practice with especially seeing as the wheel nuts stick out too far and are not allowed to be used in derby. this brings us to…

2) sure grip rebels the first time i picked these sexy little girls up i knew the difference between them and the old pumas was massive. i tossed the pumas aside and got down to the rink as quickly as possible. moving around in the rebels was effortless compared the to pumas. The sure grips have given me no aches, no blisters and no foot monsters, that is not to say they won’t after more strenuous work outs but i’m very happy with them.

but skates are not just about the boot. the wheels i have are sure grip fugitives (62mm 92-95A pink - 62mm is the size of the wheel, and 92-95A is the hardness, basically the harder the wheel the faster) they are pretty much middle ground in terms of grippyness and hardness. i thought this was the best way to go due to not knowing what the surface was going to be like everywhere. the bearings are the standard sure-grip speedy ABEC 7’s compared to ABEC 1’s (the lowest grade available) that i had in my pumas… i will upgrade to the ultra pricey ceramic bearings later down the track but what i have at the moment seem perfect for anyone starting out. if you want to skate outside alot you will want some cheaper bearings and softer wheels on standby so u don’t go arse over tit at the mere sight of a pebble or twig in the way. i don’t have a set myself so i will refrain from commenting further.

suregrip rebels seem to be very popular with skaters starting out, they are reasonably priced which is good. it’s probably not a good idea to spend too much more on your first pair until you work out where u stand in the world of derby. another popular boot with the girls i’ve seen around is the riedell r3’s or the riedell vandals i’ve heard alot of good things about these and are keen to try some on… plus the vandals have uber sexy white stripes down the side ^_^.

australian shops are quite expensive for skates that are imported . i personally bought mine from sin city skates and including the shipping they were still considerably cheaper then over here. now thats not to say this hasn’t changed in the last few months but make sure u shop around. there’s a good chance you could get a better skate setup overseas for the same price as a lesser skate in oz.

but enough about these so called “derby skates”. i’m pretty sure that the fisher price bad boys are what we all started out on. The sounds of awesome (read:cheap) plastic grinding on footpaths or deserted streets, the children’s screams (myself included) at the many grazed knees, sprained ankles and bruises that resulted still ring fondly in my ears. i eagerly await the day when there is a local derby league where “my first skates” are the main requirement. oh the things (injuries) i could do (to myself) on these puppies.

3) s-one cromag helmet now i’ll be honest. i wasn’t given much choice in the way of helmets. the first helmet i bought was a protec but it didn’t fit. however it seems like a good helmet, well priced and popular with derby girls. now after shopping around i found the xxxl cromag and ordered one from the states. fits like a glove surprisingly and i have no complaints.the only thing left to do with it is sticker it up.

4) protec wrist guards a must even though you are not supposed to be landing with your hands first at all. if i had been wearing these babies when i was 14 i would be minus one fractured wrist.

5) 187 knee pads so good! basically with all the knee falling you will need to be doing you really need a good pair of knee pads. these were recommended by so many people. the protecs up to this point were not as good but i think they’ve just changed the design to match the 187 type. basically you need a big set of pad thats going to allow you to fall on them over and over and over again without hurting your knee in the process. the 187’s are nice and big, very comfy, easy to drop onto and slide on and they also have a removable/replaceable thingy.. err u know what i mean…the hard bit.

6) no-name elbow guards it’s been my experience so far that elbow pads are needed but not as important as knee pads for fresh meat training. thus i am still using the bare minimum (read:cheap) pads until i get into the league at which point i will upgrade. it’s good to get used to wearing the pads and having a feel for them being there but when your starting out save your money and put them into your knee pads or some ice packs ^_^.

7) mouth guard it’s required but each to their own on which brand/type. i like my dr.shock gel mouth guard.. well i don’t like it, it makes me look like an idiot and i can’t talk when i wear it but it’s comfortable enough. most mouth guards you can get at pharmacy or sports stores.

if i get some new gear in the future i’ll try and give it a bit of a review on here. even though i won’t be skating for a while i just want to buy more stuff, more wheels, new bearings, tools, more striped socks..it’s a good thing i had my credit limit lowered.