Another excellent training session with The Dead yesterday.
We didn’t do indurance this week, instead practising skating clockwise. Then we moved on to positional blocking, working in pairs. I was working with Richard. It was the first time I’ve skated with him. The blocker had to control the speed and hold back the jammer. Very tempted, as the jammer, to skip around the blocker, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise.
Next (from memory) was a fun game which had one person start as one ‘team’ and everyone else as blockers, though not assisting each other. The single skater had to get through the pack and then select another skater and try to hold them back for 5 seconds. Once this was done successfully that skater became part of the team. The pair then selected another victim. So it continued until the situation was reversed, leaving all but one skater trying to block him.
Then my favourite bit – hitting practice. I was paired with Matt. We took it in turns to hit each other across the track and off. I felt that this was a really useful exercise for me. I’ve never been one for contact sports (why am I playing derby you might ask – I don’t know) so hitting/crashing/pushing other people is not something that I’m terribly good at. In this one on one situation I didn’t have to worry about game play/strategy or opposing players trying to hit me. Nice and simple. Really very tiring too, and I imagine my shoulders/arms will have some lovely bruises in the next few days.
Then another exercise that suited me very well. Again working in pairs we put down a diamond of cones around the other player. We then had to skate around/in and out of the cones/player whilst facing the player, who was stood in the middle of cones, all of the time. The aim is to have awareness of where the cones are and what your feet are doing without having to look down at them. This was like playing in the park! I just needed my blades – quads don’t pivot so well :-)
Next up? Queen of the track. I didn’t last long at this. Rob got a good hit on me straight away. I fell and jarred my back, so I called it a day then, better safe than sorry. After five minutes I felt fine and it didn’t give me any pain all evening. It feels normal today, so no further damage done :-)
We finished of with a scrim, five-a-side. I did jam timing again. Carly and Gillie reffed – which is quite a feat with a group of competitive blokes – thank you, and well done!