Slalom Stories

I wonder if I'll ever get good at blogging. I know my topics are pretty niche in scope, but all the same, I'm a terrible web content creator.

I've been away for quite a few months, and in those months, I've vastly improved my skating. I still can't quite jump onto curbs as well as I can comfortably fall off them, but I'm getting there, one foot at a time.

I've hit a skill cap, however. All I'm really doing is skating down streets and going forwards. Crossovers are great, turns and obstacle navigation is pretty smooth, but there's only so far to go with just that. If skating was just a way for me to get around, I've pretty much mastered it.

But I want more, so I'm entering specific disciplines to hone my skills. Specifically: Slalom/Freestyle skating.

If you've managed to find this post, but don't already know what that is, I fancifully describe it as a very technical dance around a row of straight, evenly spaced cones. I say "technical", because it is VERY technical in its precision and practice, but to the untrained and unfamiliar onlooker it has hypnotic floating effect. The legs begin to blur and bend together as they weave intricate, complex, unpredictable, yet beautiful patterns back and forth, between and around the cones while the body effortlessly hovers over like it's magnetically attracted.

And that's what I've been learning over the last three weeks. I've been pillaging youtube (#pintoponyproductions) for inspiration and googling slalom guides day after day, searching for resources to guide my efforts.

Over the last two weeks I've got a regimen together. The basics?
Forward Parallel (Fish)
Forward Line (Snake)
Forward One Foot
Forward Crossover
Backwards everything

Yeah, still working on the last one. Actually, I've got all of the forward stuff down, though I'm still fenagling it all into a polished form, so there's always a reason to keep drilling. But I won't be able to move forward with my training until I learn how to skate backwards.

Slalom skating involves a lot of smooth weight rotations on outside edges.

As it is, I can barely skate backwards in a straight line, much less weave my feet parallel around a row of tightly spaced cones. So from now, my new primary regimen is backwards skating. I actually picked up backwards scissor turning while I was out today and was so smiley that a couple girls watching me in the distance started laughing.

Will have to learn to apply backwards scissors very thoroughly...

I'll go into the setup for slalom skating in some other post, because until now I've only covered flat wheel setups where all the sizes are the same. Once I get a gopro I can start making video content, too...

-sigh- Now I need to learn how to edit videos.