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!

Me, Denni, Stacy and a few others are mentioned in Naomi’s latest freestyle article on inlineplanet.com. Woot!

We’ve started the US Freestyle Skating Association (USFSA) with a bunch of skaters from all over the country. Its for all kinds of freestyle skating, on and off cones.

We’re still working out our charter, etc, but the basic idea is to promote freestyle skating in the US. Drop on by our forums, and join the community!

One of our first events will be BattleUS, sometime in 2007!

Slalom - Slow
This is a playlist for the start (warm up part) or end (cool down) of a practice session.  My legs are super relaxed and move through the cones very easy and gentle at the beginning of a session so I thought it would be good to have a relaxed type playlist.  This playlist also calms me down at the start of a session if I’ve just come from a stressful situation (like work).

How to Save a Life               The Fray                               How To Save A Life
Waiting On the World to Change   John Mayer                             Single
Chasing Cars                     Snow Patrol                            Eyes Open
The Riddle (You & I)             Five For Fighting
Over My Head (Cable Car)         The Fray                               How to Save a Life
My Immortal                      Evanescence                            Fallen
Island in the Sun                Weezer                                 Weezer (Green Album)

Slalom - Speed
This list is for when I’m practicing moves that I know well.  I use this list to practice these moves in a super speed manner.  This is also where I practice putting in transitions randomly to different moves.  It tests how fast I can transition and also how spontaneous I can be with my runs.

London Bridge                    Fergie                                 Single
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree  KT Tunstall                            Eye to the Telescope
White & Nerdy                    "Weird Al" Yankovic                    Straight Outta Lynwood
Peanut Butter Jelly Time         Chip-Man & The Buckwheat Boyz          EP
Sugar, We're Goin Down           Fall Out Boy                           From Under the Cork Tree

Slalom - Moves
The “Moves” playlist is designed to make me want to look good while doing moves.  It motivates me to do a “bad ass” version of all the moves I know, emphasizing style.  This list is very good to use when wanting to work on how each move looks and where my arms are and what kind of beat the music has and how I can present the move so that it flows with the beat.

Promiscuous Girl                 Nelly Furtado                          Loose
Dirty Little Secret              The All-American Rejects               Move Along
Move Along                       The All-American Rejects               Move Along
London Bridge                    Fergie                                 Single
White & Nerdy                    "Weird Al" Yankovic                    Straight Outta Lynwood
Remember the Name                Fort Minor featuring Styles of Beyond  The Rising Tied
3 Rs                             Jack Johnson                           Curious George Soundtrack
Shake                            Ying Yang Twins                        U.S.A (United States of Atlanta)
Sugar, We're Goin Down           Fall Out Boy                           From Under the Cork Tree

Slalom - Control
These are songs that I use to help me learn control when doing moves.  The idea is to be motivated to do the moves slow and very controlled.  This is best when at the end of a practice session while I’m super tired.  Very good for working on technique.

Yea                              Usher featuring Ludacris
Snap Yo Fingers                  Lil Jon featuring E-40 & Sean Paul     Single
Run It                           Chris Brown Big Mike And Big Stress
Shake                            Ying Yang Twins                        U.S.A (United States of Atlanta)

  

I’ve had the best few days skating!  I learned a few new tricks: 

1. Front Italian 
2. Total Cross 
3. One foot backwards 

These few tricks I tried for the first time in the past few days and out of practicing the crazy over and over and over and over, all three of these seemed a bit natural (The first two still make me insanely dizzy). 

I’ve also discovered a trick that we talked about on here a bit which is the Greasy Italian.  It might go under another name but that’s what I’m callin it.  I still don’t have a video of it yet. 

There’s another one that I started doing but again, I’m not sure what it’s called.    It’s a varialtion of the backwards snake and backwards stroll.  I’ll have to up a video of that too. 

That makes five new things that I’ve started practicing since last week.  Very exciting!

I spent last weekend in the UK for the first annual BattleUk freestyle slalom competition. It was so much fun, and it boosted my passion for the sport of freestyle slalom. I made loads of new friends, got to skate with so many great skaters, and even learned a few things. I got 8th in the free jump which totally surprised me since I wasn’t planning on even doing it. Plus I got some more training time with Naomi, and got to meet Sebastien, whose videos on universkate.com are what inspired me to learn freestyle slalom in the first place. Oh, and I bought a suitcase full of slalom cones for my friends, since they aren’t available in the US.

Let me give you some background, since freestyle slalom is so new to the US. Traditionally, competitions have been run by the IFSA. In these competitions, judges watch all of the competitors perform their “routine” which is about 1.5 minutes. Then they try to rank them using a fairly complex system defined by the IFSA. I’ll not go into the details here, because you can find a number of heated debates about the IFSA rules elsewhere online.

In a Battle competition, which is not run by IFSA, you get placed into groups of 4 or 5 based on your qualification run. The qualification run is about a minute, and allows the judges to spread out the skill level of each group (preventing all the top skaters from being in one group). Once you’re in your battle groups, all four of you go out to the floor. You each take turns doing quick runs of about 30 seconds, doing a total of 4 runs each. This allows you to adapt based on what your opponents are doing, and it also allows you to be less conservative, since each run is scored separately from the others.

When I was younger, I was a competitive figure quad skater, and the figure skating world has a very similar tension that you can see in the slalom world: some feel that the judging system is too restrictive and limits creativity and expression. Using my figure skating competition experiences, I’d have to say that Battle style competitions create a strong sense of companionship and fun, while traditional competitions foster isolating the competitors from each other, and stress. Its not an uncommon thought to wish your opponent to mess up in a figure skating competition, but at BattleUk, I really wanted every one to do great, and I felt like they wanted me to as well. Being on the floor with my group while each of them skated really sucked me into wanting everyone to do well. Instead of sitting on the side by myself, I felt like I was with them, and this made me get excited when they did a cool trick.

During the event I was mostly hanging out with other skaters and everyone just just had a lot of fun. On saturday night we all went out for a city skate in Nottingham, which was a blast, and then killed the night at a local pub. Finally, back in London, Naomi, French JB and I went for a late night skate through London, where I skated on the Queens steps, and she was home, because the flag was up.

As you can tell, I totally loved it, and will be going to more competitions when I can. Next on my plate is organizing BattleUS, and improving my skills, so that I can win more than just the prize for coming the longest distance (Yes, I actually won that prize, which made me feel very welcome at the competition. I got a nice set of slalom wheels and a Robin Hood hat and bow & arrow). If you’re wondering where I placed, its hard to say, since I didn’t progress out of my initial group. I was very satisfied with my performance though, and it was exciting to be the first american to compete in any freestyle slalom competition!

Oh, and a huge thanks to AcidEdge (Jim), Mark and others for organizing and all the other people who contributed in anyway. I can’t thank you enough!

There are a couple videos of my battle group (Olivier, Max, Samy, and Me):
»Mine, thanks for holding the camera Luke! (mpg)
»Miles Video, from the other angle (wmv)

And here’s the video of the finals (Igor, Seba, Olivier, JB):
»From Universkate (mpg)
»From Miles (wmv)

I just spent 3 1/2 hours practicing for BattleUk. I’ve been nervous up till tonight, but i realized the best thing about going is that there will be tons of good skaters there who I can learn stuff from. Whatever happens in the battle is fine with me if i get to skate with all them!

So in order to do my best i’ve been practicing. Brian Lipko came out tonight for about 1 1/2 hours which made it easier for me to keep going. I finally got the front volte down pretty well today, and I’m starting to do runs without completely planning them out first, which is definitely good for the battle style competitions. I’ve been focusing on the 80cm cones almost exclusively now… hope that doesn’t hurt me this weekend.

Anyway, wish me luck! I’ve only got tomorrow night left to practice!

Just got back from practicing for a few hours. I wanted to spend the night working on the moves themselves, and tomorrow i’ll work on transitions between them. Tonight, i learned a couple new moves (spent some time on the universkate videos page first):

1) One Cone Stroll
2) Special

I tried to remember the front volte from seba’s video, but couldn’t figure it out… hmm sounds like a justification for an ipod video…

The Special is kind of cool. I didn’t realize this till after i started doing it right, but its just the X, but you’re only on your toes the hole time. Being so close to the X, its easy to transition into and out of from the X, and therefor all the other moves that I can link with X.

I also practiced my old moves (Crazy and Mabrouk) and all the moves Naomi showed me at the workshop:

More »

I just bought my ticket to London for the BattleUk freestyle slalom competition! It’ll be my first competition, and I’m psyched, and a bit nervous!

I have 1 month to get my stuff together and practice, will be sure to let you know how it goes.