This past weekend I travelled to Bremen, Germany to attend the first Freestyle Slalom Festival. It was a great event with a huge turnout. I’m sure it will become an annual freestyle spot now. The weekend was a great balance of competitions and just doing slalom with everyone when no official competitions were underway. Practicing with all the big names like Seba, Igor, JB, Phil and Nathan was worth the trip alone, never mind that I actually won the amateur battle! Here’s my write up of the weekend.

We did tons of skating over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A small group of skaters showed up Friday night including Seba and Igor, so our small group got to take advantage of some personal training time with the two of them. This totally rocked! Seba worked on heeling and toe-heel spinning with me, both of which I was able to put into my battle runs thanks to his help.

On saturday we skated for at least a few hours before any official events started which was great, because i got to meet tons of skaters, and so many great skaters showed me things i didn’t know yet. Overall this event had tons of unstructured time for skaters to do whatever they wanted, which really made it worth the trip. The “Rollersport Staddion” where it all took place is basically a perfectly smooth cement floor the size of three basketball courts at least. It was perfectly level too.

More »

This past weekend my friend Christophe generously offered to host a freestyle skate weekend inside an empty building he has access to. Evan, Denni, Christope, Rosicel, and I had a great time, skating for around 12 hours over saturday and sunday. Christophe’s wife and daughters joined us sunday as well.

Having Christophe, who is just getting into slalom and Evan who is starting to apply his own unique skating style to slalom really made the weekend much more fun than just Denni and myself. I think both Evan and Christophe are hooked on the cones (Christophe already bought two pairs of Sebas!) I ‘ve got tons of video to comb through and make a movie for the weekend (about 5 hours!) so i hope you enjoy the video when its done.

Denni and I are definitely getting better; our skating is more smooth and relaxed, and we each learned a few new things. The real star of the weekend, though, was Evan. Skating freestyle has been his past time for years, but until recently, he only made fun of Naomi for being into those silly cones. Now he’s applying the skills he’s built up over the years to the cones, and the result is unlike anything i’ve seen from either the asian or european slalom scenes. I suspect when people see his slalom skating they’ll start talking about it.

Another great freestyle weekend. Check out the videos:

Winter Warehouse Land
Shoot the Duck!

I recently started a new job. At this job they have a fitness center called HealthWorks. I started to go to this fitness center regularly at lunch time. The personal trainer there, Chris Re, asked me what sports I like to do. This is when I told him all about Freestyle Slalom. He was very interested in what this sport was and asked about what muscles I use. He was able to take what I did on skates and translate that into a training routine. The training routine included exercises mostly performed on VersaDisks. I had never seen one before this. From the fitness site I ordered them from:

“Incorporate with workouts for enhanced balance training. Build core strength by using one or two cushions for push-ups, lunges or squats. Enhance balance techniques by doing sitting, standing and lying exercises. Made of soft pliable PVC. VersaDiscâ„¢ has two textured surfaces that are useful in rehabilitation and massage therapy.”

I have been working out on these for a few months now and I have way more stability in my ankles when doing one foot/toe/heel tricks. They even strengthen the stability when doing the double toe pause or double heel pause to reverse direction. Quite a bit of the tricks in slalom require some smoothe movements in the core area as well which these disks strengthen as well.

My routine on these is as follows:

1. Standing: Stand on both feet, each foot on a disk for one minute.
2. Standing: Stand on one foot on a disk for 45 seconds. (repeat twice, once for each foot)
3. Squats: Stand on both feet, each foot on a disk. Do 10 squats.
4. Lunges: Stand on one foot on a disk. Bring your other foot behind you and inch it back pretty far, enough so you’re almost off balance. Hands on hips. Lower your torso down to the floor as if you’re going to kneel down on your back knee, but don’t actually touch down. Raise up. These are standing lunges. Do 10 standing lunges.
5. Pushups: Put hands (fists are easier) down on disks, one disk per hand (fist). Do as many pushups as possible.
6. Plank: This is an exercise not performed on the VersaDisk. Do the front plank for 30 seconds. Then do a side plank for 15 seconds. A side plank is where, from the normal plank, you rotate your body onto one elbow/forearm facing sideways. You must rotate your elbow on the floor so that your arm is pointing to the side now. Put your top arm on your hip and push your pelvis forward so it is not sticking out behind you. Go back to the regular plank for another 30 seconds. Go up on another side plank but on the other side now for another 15 seconds.
7. Repeat above steps 3 times.

You’re done! This should take about a half hour. This is the first workout routine the trainer has created for me. I will be asking him to either add to this or create a new one for me that will challenge me even more. I will post that routine when it becomes available.

When I started slalom skating with Jeremy, both of us bought new skates. I chose the Roces SKT 100 and he chose the Sebas. I think both are great skates. I have been skating in the SKT 100s for about 6 months now. Recently I went to Philadelphia to visit Jeremy and have a skate practice weekend. At the very end of the session on Sunday just before I headed home, Jeremy was comparing skates with someone and both of their skates had a hinge up on the boot for your ankle to be able to move forward and back. I was very surprised to see their skates bend like they did.I wondered why mine did not as they were the SKT 100 skates designed specifically for slalom as are the Seba skates. Even skates that are not designed for slalom but have the hinges bend the same way. I looked on my skates and found two bolts on the back of each skate that bolted the upper boot to the lower boot preventing the hinge from working like a hinge. I am not sure why Roces decided to do this. I removed the bolts pictured to the right, and now the hinges work like they are supposed to. I can not believe I have been skating on them for 6 months without the hinge. I think skating will be different now. (If only it would stop SNOWING.)

Update (7:10pm):
It did stop snowing finally. I went out front and just did some simple moves around the parking lot and oh man is it so much better. I have a feeling that the shoot the duck is going to be much easier. Possibly toes and heels easier too.

Update (Dec 9, 2006, 9:52pm):
From Bayside Blades online store rep, Jenny:

“The bolts are in place to make the cuff stiff and supportive so that it
remains very responsive. The FSK skate range is the same. It has hinged
cuffs but bolted in place at the back.

The FSKs were the best selling freestyle skates for last year so they must
be fixed for a goor reason!”

I really want to know what that goor reason is still!