Agility Workout

This home season I'm teaching Derby Lite about once a month, twice so far this season. I thought I was doing a plyos workout with them, but realized that it's actually an agility workout. But it's all connected, which is beautiful and totally why I love to teach.

1. Warm up

The warmup actually worked out the way I thought it would, which is always amazing and exciting:

Offskates, around the track, maybe a quarter or a half lap each:

* walk
* power walk
* power walk with a spring in your step
* run
* run and leap forward
* run and leap sideways
* run and leap forward
* run
* power walk with a spring in your step
* power walk
* walk

I almost don't want to talk through what happens at every step. In fact, I won't. Just do it, and come back. Then I'll talk.

Now repeat the above, still off skates, navel to spine, tailbone down, ankles and knees folded as low as you can without sacrificing your tuck. "Tuck" is short for navel to spine, tailbone down.

2. Skates on!

Now do it all again, nice and relaxed. Believe me when I say that you can do everything on skates that you can in shoes. Do it all on skates just the same as you did in shoes. Do it! Then come back, and we'll talk.

Finally, do it all again in a nice low tuck.

3. Agility 5

All of the above, if you haven't figured it out, was about changing speed with smooth forward momentum. Except for the sideways jump, which was just for fun. This next part is about changing speed with interrupted forward momentum. Which is to say, with stops and turns.

One minute each, in counterskate direction:

* swizzle
* slalom
* shuffle sideways
* plow stop
* hockey stop or hard slalom

Then do it all again skatewise. When I work in both directions, I always like to start in counterskate direction. It's like a little crisis of faith because you feel awkward and weird, but then you get to turn around and it's all easy and you feel like God.

I will break this all down in later posts. It's going to be over the course of weeks, so don't wait for me. Do it!

4. Pacelines

Then I put it all together in pacelines, weaving from back to front:

* run up and slalom across
* run up and step across

And a huge hit, which I stole from Dinah Party's advanced agility practice last week:

* run up and orbit around

Orbit means that you pass the skater in front, like a forward weave, and then you have to slow down to get behind and pass her in the back, like a backward weave. So it uses everything that we did previously, speeding up forward, changing direction sideways, and slowing down "backwards" (though you're not really going backwards, you're just going forward more slowly. Get it?)

5. Stretch

The ARC building is overbooked on Thursdays this winter, so I only had ninety minutes and we didn't stretch. Sorry, ladies! I hope you stretched at home!