Drop and give me twenty maggot

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago I was going to start with a personal trainer in the form of Suzie who is also my cousin's girlfriend. Last week we had our first session at the gym. She started off with taking measurements and my current weight. I love horror movies but I knew these measurements were going to scare me more than any horror movie I've ever watched. They suck big time and no I won't be posting them but I know where I stand now so all I can do now is try to improve those results. Suzie put me through various cardio exercises to see where I am. I was sweating like a pig by the end of it and felt like throwing up but Suzie didn't even raise a sweat! I've also got to keep a food diary which has already had an effect on what I eat because I know Suzie will be reading it so I think twice about eating the take away food I'm accustomed to. She's also set me my first short term goal. I need to lose 4kg's in 6 weeks, can I do it? We shall see. I already like Suzie as a trainer, she won't take bullshit or excuses which is just what I need. This has a flow on effect for roller derby because it'll help me shift the extra weight and get my body stronger so that I can handle the rigours of derby.

While I'm loving my new found positive, ain't no fear holding me back attitude with roller derby, I did get a reality check at training on Friday night. I ain't going to lie I was secretly hoping this new attitude was going to make picking up things I struggled with before a bit easier but the truth is it doesn't. Case in point when all the new and old freshies had to go off with the more experienced skates to work on single knee falls. I favour going down on my right knee, you can tell with my left knee pad and toe guard, they're hardly marked. When I tried going down on my left knee I kept landing too heavily on it or would end up falling on both knees. We also worked on skating between cones. While my wheels are grippy which makes it a bit more difficult, having a huge arse worked to my advantage because using it to full effect by swinging it around helped getting around the cones easier. Later on we lined up in groups of four and we would have to push or pull the rest of the group around the track. I enjoyed that and it gave my legs a good workout.

Saturday I headed off to Skatel armed with my ipod. I loved it. I only lasted an hour because my legs were sore from training the night before but it was great because I got to block out the rest of the world for a while, all I had to worry about was dodging people and little kids skating the wrong way. All I really did was skate and worked on balancing on one skate at a time, it paid off though because while practising the hydrant move we do at training I managed to skate around the whole bend while balancing on my right foot, not once but numerous times :) Balancing on my left foot, not so good so I need to work on that.

Before training on Sunday arvo a few of us met up to go bowling. It was pretty fun and I quickly discovered that Poz and I share something in common, we're both extremely competitive :) Her, Ness and I were in one lane. Poz won the first one, I still claim she cheated because she was drinking Red Bull while were playing, that's got to be performance enhancing right? Ness won the second one quietly while Poz and I were busy psyching each other out. I lost count of how many times Poz and I said fuck while we were playing when we stuffed up hehe. As for training, personally it was a good and shit one for me. It started off well, to prove that it wasn't the Skatel effect that got me to skate on one foot around the bend, I tried it at training and most times that I attempted it I managed to do it. Balancing on my left foot is still crap. I also noticed that my left skate automatically veers left when I try to balance on it. It was great seeing Amba back :) While we were skating around during warm up Cherry cut in front of me and of course I reacted. I got around her on the inside and hit her with my right shoulder. It was a pissy little hit, nothing to write home about but I was pleased as punch because it's the first time I've hit someone with my right shoulder while on skates. That night was also the first time I got up using my right toe stop. First time I needed Cherry's help but I did it by myself the next time. It then went down hill when we started doing t-stops. I still suck at them, very rarely can I fully stop. I'm better when I have my left leg trailing, when it's trying to stop on my right leg I'm completely shithouse at it. When I do it my trailing leg almost gets me to a full stop but then it'll lift up slightly and I have to put it back down so I don't overbalance, I don't know why so I hardly ever stop properly. I practised it so many times that night, going up and down the court and I was pissed off with myself because I wasn't getting it. Bede and Katie were great they came over to help the freshies out with snowploughs and t-stops.

While we were working on our t-stops the more experienced skaters were on the other court practising more advanced drills relating to scrimmage and pack work. How I wish I was there with them, every week there's part of me that wants to try and sneak into one of the lines and hope no one notices that I shouldn't be there. The stupid thing is before my last injury I got a taste of hitting practise and carves at both training and Skatel with Cherry and I got more comfortable with that than the basic stuff I still can't do like crossovers, single knee falls on both knees, t-stops etc etc. The things that I was too scared to try before which I was crap at have now come back to bite me on the arse. There's more things that I can't do than I can for the Corporal test that it really feels like I'm starting roller derby for the first time. Roller derby and I have a love/hate relationship when I learn something new especially something that I've been trying to do for ages I'm happy as Larry, when I continue to struggle with something I get really shitty and frustrated with myself and I feel like punching the wall.

The major difference this time is that instead of running away from the things I struggle with, I'm actually working on them so that I can eventually do it. It just means that I'll probably have an angry expression on my face at training while swearing to myself, don't mind me :P I've also asked one of my favourite skaters for advice on how to improve and I was chuffed that she took the time to help me out. She's given me a list of suggestions for both on and off skates which I'll be implementing. There's also some extra off skate training I'll be implementing myself to give myself every chance of passing my Corporal test come October.