Problem: So damn much to get stronger, get fitter, get better at skills, get better awareness, get better at playing this game versus only so many hours in a day.
Solution: Periodization. Also known as, you don't do it all at once.
You get that fitness is for life, right? As in, for the rest of your life. I mean, I guess some people get this and some people want to be hangry for ten weeks and lose twenty pounds, and then get back to laissez les bon temps rouler. And you think I'm going to tell you that way lies madness; but I say where there's madness, there's method.
Life is flux and tides, you can drown in it or you can harness it.
And also, derby is probably not for life but possibly for years. When I first tried out for derby, the average derby career was three years and out. Now six and seven and eight year careers are commonplace. You wanted to be amazing out of the gate and grab up your year of glory, just so you could say you were a derby girl? Well yeah, I really wanted to be the voice of my generation with a lyrical first novel that would get me off the hook from having to sit down write ever again.
But anyway, my plan is to play derby for as long as it's fun and then stay fit, somehow, after derby until, you know, death. So in other words, derby is a longterm plan in my lifetime fitness plan. Which is also kind of an example of periodization.
So first of all, why don't you just decide to be fit for life. This is like the opera about the bagel, there doesn't have to be drama about this if you just make the decision that you want your mind, your unique instance of life, your soul if you believe in that, to be carried around in a functional container that can get itself out of bed.
Now we have all the time in the world. Or well, we have all your time in the world. And my time. Let's not think too much about our own mortality, unless that sort of thing motivates you.
So you have your weekly fitness plan, and if you've been paying attention to what my lips have been saying, it's three key practices and two recovery practices per week, or if you're pushing yourself just a bit harder, four key and one recovery is still okay. I do three key practices, and right now they're 1) team practice, 2) scrimmage, and 3) SkateFit, and 1-2 recovery practices, which is 4) leading referee and/or 5) league practice. I need team practice and scrimmage to practice playing with my team, and SkateFit is for fitness. And that is all I have time to do. Which leaves me without something pretty significant, strength training, not to mention power training, and no, I do not think that you develop strength or power on skates, you develop it off skates and unleash it on.
You can try to shove it all in, and probably give yourself a breakdown. Or you can gear shift and level up into looking at your annual fitness plan. Right now I need to practice playing with my team because, by the way, we won our playoff game and are facing the Manic Attackers for the Ivy King Cup championship. Now is not the time to moodily lift heavy pieces of iron lost in my own thoughts. After the big game, though. Deal with separation anxiety as quickly as possible, and see how much fitter, faster, and stronger I can make myself in twelve weeks of postseason.
So you train in the moment, and for the moment, as smart and as hard as you can, knowing that there will be another moment that you layer over this moment, in fact, many layers of moments, and to tell the truth, I really never got why they call time the fourth dimension, but I think I just explained it to myself.
