The wonderful hosts of the Back of the Pack Endurance podcast interviewed me last night about running, roller derby, aerial arts, my experiences as a first-time race director and my upcoming gig as a balloon art model. I come in around the 1 hour mark in this episode and they let me ramble and giggle to my heart’s content!
I had the privilege of guest-coaching an off-skates workout for my beloved Assassination City Roller Derby recently, and I wanted to make it available for anyone to do at home. This circuit takes 20-30 minutes, depending on how long your rest breaks are in between exercises. You can do this pretty much anywhere – it requires no equipment and you don’t need shoes.
Off skates with Pyro – 6/29/14
Basic balance: stand on one foot and slowly swing the other leg forward and back to center; out to the side and back in; and behind you and back to center. Repeat for 30 seconds on each side.
Hip abduction: stand on one leg, raising other knee to waist height. Abduct your hip so that you “open the gate”, with your knee pointing out to the side…you’re gonna look a bit like you’ve got a lil’ Captain in ya…then slowly adduct so your knee points forward again. Stay on the same foot and slowly repeat this open/close motion for 30 seconds.
Single leg toe touch: stand on left foot, right foot hovering off ground in front of you. Bending @ waist, reach with right hand to touch left foot; stand up straight to complete rep. Keeping a slow, steady pace, repeat for 30 sec, then switch sides. (note: you can add a dumbbell to your toe-touching hand when you’re ready to progress this exercise)
Single leg squat with contralateral toe touch – as you squat on your right leg, touch the outside of your left foot with your right hand before standing straight up to complete one rep. Repeat for 30 seconds on each side.
Single-leg curtsy squat with front leg swing: shallow single leg squat, free leg bent back behind – as you stand, straighten leg and swing it in front of body, then behind for the next squat – repeat for 30 sec each side.
Sharing this far and wide by request from my beloved Assassination City Roller Derby – I guest-coached recently with an off skates workout and kinesio taping demo and as promised, I’m sharing my go-to list of off skates exercises to customize your own cross training circuit. Please feel free to share this article in its entirety with your team, league, friends, etc.
Mix’n’match off-skates workout
by Pyro Maim Ya of Pynk Fitness
Skating is the bees’ knees, but it won’t provide you with all the training you need to excel at roller derby. If you want to increase your flexibility, improve your core strength and balance (which go hand in hand, bee-tee-dub) and increase your quickness and agility, then I highly recommend regular off-skates training sessions.
I run a weekly off-skates workout for my league and offer personal training sessions, so I’ve amassed a collection of options for a mix and match workout you can share with your team. Just pick 2-3 exercises from each category in the order they’re laid out here; run each exercise for 30-60 seconds each or 10-15 reps each depending on exercise and skill level. All of these exercises are adaptable and the variations can be used to challenge more advanced athletes.
(Don’t forget to start with…
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If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably a roller derby athlete and/or a runner with a broken leg. At least, that’s my hope. Wait, allow me to rephrase that! I don’t wish broken limbs on anybody – but if you’re already broken, then you’re likely searching the web for tales of other skaters or runners who have been bolted back together. You want to know what your future with your newly bionic leg looks like. You want to know if you’ll skate or run or jump rope again. You’re probably even wondering whether to throw out all your high heels. You have questions! I may have answers.
I found myself in similar circumstances in June of 2007, when my left tibia/fibula shattered in 11 places. You can read about it here. Long story short: I have 2 plates, 17 screws & a stabilizing rod in my left ankle/calf. Due to the severity of the damage to both bones, none of that jazz can ever come out. I know some folks who have had plates or screws removed later in life, but this is what I’m working with for the long haul.
My surgeon said that I’d probably always walk with a bit of a limp, that running was out of the question & that I certainly wouldn’t be able to play derby anymore. Looking back on it now, I think he was intentionally challenging me to prove him wrong. It worked. I played derby for 5 more years and have run two marathons, twenty-three half-marathons and around fifty shorter races since. I’ll never be a pogo stick champion and I’ll always be able to tell you when the weather’s about to get cold, but overall, I’m a better athlete now than I was before I was injured.
It’s been 8 years since my surgery, so I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp by now on what works and what doesn’t for recovery and beyond. Your mileage will vary, obviously, depending on your pain threshold and willingness to work beyond it. My observations:
While you’re still in your wheelchair or on crutches:
Seated: front and lateral arm raises, alternating hammer curls, single-arm concentration curls, overhead press, overhead tricep extension, bent over rows and bent over flyes
Lying on back on a yoga mat or bench: chest press, flyes, alternating rows, pullovers, isometric straight-arm holds
Stuff to expect during healing that is completely normal:
When you’re back on your feet (and you WILL be, I pinkie-swear):
Returning to skating:
Since my injury, I’ve seen many skaters come back faster than I did, and I am always impressed at those who can flip that switch in their brain again so quickly. You know – the one that takes us from mortal to human wrecking ball. If you’ve been broken, you know that switch doesn’t flip as easily anymore. That is completely okay. Let me repeat that. IT IS OKAY TO BE SCARED TO PLAY DERBY AGAIN. It is wise to have a certain degree of fear/caution, because it helps you protect yourself as you heal.
Hopefully, your orthopedic specialist understands enough about your sport to have given you a realistic timeframe on when you can return to derby. (I give bout tickets to all of my doctors/trainers/PTs so they can see exactly what we do). My surgeon prescribed a month of non-contact skating before letting me jump back into contact. I had been so impatient to get back to blocking, but I found that I needed another four months for my scars to heal before I could stomach getting kicked in them. I reffed until I found myself craving a solid hip check. My league was very cool about letting me jump back into drills at practice when I was ready.
Talk to your trainers (and your doc and PT) when you’re ready so everyone understands where you are physically and mentally. Honest communication keeps expectations reasonable on both sides of that equation.
Returning to contact:
Speaking of skates:
Your boot may not feel right anymore, and styles you coveted before may be wrong for you now. I thought Antiks would help support my ankle, but the high collar was excruciating. I had limited success with a Reidell 195, but the super-low ankles combined with my narrow heels made me curl my toes too much to try to grip, especially on crossovers (I jammed myself right out of my left skate once – so weird to adjust mid-crossover to having one sock foot). What eventually worked for me: Bonts. Oh, how I adore my Bonts. They’re like running shoes with wheels attached.
Speaking of shoes:
I had to rethink footwear after my surgery. Range of motion is limited in my ankle and every degree of angle change equates to more strain on my metal.
Not pictured: the Bondi B, which was my first pair & were worn to death before retiring
Returning to running:
As with skating, returning to running was a slow process for me. Single-leg balance exercises helped strengthen my atrophied muscles, but it took awhile to get used to the sensation of impact. For the first mile, I can tell you exactly where every screw is, particularly on cold mornings. An active warm-up routine (instead of static stretching) before you run helps tremendously. Build mileage slowly and ice after you run. Increasing my distance too quickly resulted in strained tendons around the outer plate (and that neuroma popped up around the time I increased my mileage, so take from that what you will).
Other adventures – what works for me:
What hurts a bit but I do anyway because I love it:
Yes, my Dark Angel is crooked. It was my first time! I was just happy to be able to invert into it!
Bottom line: You have to decide how much you’re comfortable hurting. If you’ve made it this far in your recovery, you’re probably pretty good at handling pain by now. Challenge your limits, but don’t beat yourself up if you move more slowly than you used to or can’t lift as much as before. You’re moving, and that’s pretty damn awesome.
Many thanks to you if you’ve made it through this ramble! Please feel free to ask me any questions about recovery/rehabilitation and whatnot. I’ll answer them in Life After ORIF Part II: Mom of Steel. I’ll also address some specific derby concerns, like re-learning to snowplow with limited range of motion. I’ll also talk about getting tattoos on top of scars/hardware, since that’s an adventure in itself.
I originally wrote this on my league forum as a post for the fresh meat group I was coaching at the time. I shared it on Facebook later for a rec league group I was training, and by request I’m sharing it here now in its original entirety. I hope it continues to inspire and motivate aspiring derby athletes.
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I’ve been meaning to put this out here for awhile – I posted it on my league board recently in a nutrition and fitness thread for my freshies. There aren’t a lot of old guard left who remember what my life was like when I first joined Assassination City & I don’t want anyone to ever assume that I’ve always been who and what I am, because it’s taken a lot of hard work to get here.
This will be really, really long, so bear with me. It’s only the 2nd time I’ve ever said it all out loud, and I talk a lot. Plus, I’m a narcissist who needs visual aids to fully illustrate the changes my body has gone through, so you get pics too.
I was small (unhealthily so, but that’s a confession for another time) until I hit my early 20s, then birth control (& later fertility meds – oh, the irony) + eating way too much crappy food + sitting at a desk all day reshaped me. I weighed about 155 when I finally became pregnant with Victoria – then I put on 63 pregnancy pounds. Yeah, that’s not a typo. I’m 5’4″ & I weighed 218lbs when I checked into the hospital. That’s over twice the size I was when I met V’s dad. Some of it was the swelling from pre-eclampsia, but most of it was the fact that I used pregnancy as an excuse to eat everything in sight (mostly processed garbage & greasy fast food) & I told myself that walking the dog was actually real exercise.
Here’s what I looked like pregnant (with my best friend Jackie O’NiceAss @ her baby shower):
Our kids were born two days apart.
And right after I had V (rare pic of natural haircolor):
V had severe GERD, which took a trip to the emergency rom and several specialists and procedures to diagnose. Sickly, unhappy new baby + scary new body and wild hormones did a number on my self-esteem, so I spent the first 4 months of V’s life in misery on so many levels. I didn’t realize at the time I had PPD, but I can see now how bad it really was.
When V was about 4 months old, Jackie O & I started talking about roller derby again. We’d heard about it for the first time @ the baby shower where the above pic of us was taken & we had made a pact that we would join after we had our babies. After researching local leagues, I attended a DDD bout one weekend and an ACRD bout the next. Dude, I was hooked within the first 2 jams. It was pure awesome. I contacted ACRD about 2 hours after their bout & joined within the next month (summer of ’06).
My skating background: rink rat as a kid + speed team when I realized that skating was faster than running (I’ve loved running since I learned how to do it). I hadn’t been on skates in 17 years, though. I went to a public session the day before my first practice and rented a pair of brownies. I was on the floor for 15 mins when a 12 year old asked me to teach her how to cross on the corners, so I guess it came back to me pretty fast. Muscle memory amazes me.
First practice: I lasted 45 minutes. I was so out of shape! I’d been walking every day & had progressed to light jogging again since I had V so I was probably down to 185 when I strapped on my skates. My bad knee hated me bc of all of the weight I was forcing down on it. I made it through the entirety of the next practice & every practice after that, & my body and mind began to transform.
In my first year of derby, I lost about 25 pounds…I didn’t do much else besides skate. I was eating less, but still eating like crap – my first home team, La Revolucion, used to get bourbon & pancakes @ Bandera after practice. Not exactly the best post-exercise nutrition. Still, I was a pretty decent jammer & I used my size to my advantage – but more importantly, a year of hanging out with a group of strong, beautiful, confident women who come in all shapes & sizes reshaped my self-image & helped me love myself again.
La Rev Py
I shattered my leg (11 breaks in the tibia/fibula) on June 6 of ’07 – had surgery June 11 (2 plates, 17 screws and one stabilizing rod), attended the pre-bout party on June 15, & went to the bout + separated from the Giant on June 17. It was a busy week. The Divorce Diet will make you drop weight fast, but I don’t recommend it – nor do I recommend crawling into a bottle of whiskey for a year, which is what I did. Weight fell off to the point that people were asking if I was doing coke. I think I was probably 112 @ my skinniest – West Texas flung me around the rink in July of ’08 (my first bout back as a skater) like a rag doll.
Scary Py.
** Around this time, I started practicing yoga + meditating every day. I needed to regain my balance in every sense of the word. Yoga changed a lot about my life for the better – I cannot say enough good things about practicing on a regular basis. I healed physically, mentally & spiritually through yoga. It made me more mindful of every bite I put in my mouth, every drink I took, every minute wasted in a bar or stuffing my face in front of the TV that could have been filled with something meaningful & productive. I also started keeping a journal, which made it easier to track whether I was stress-eating or forgetting to eat bc I’d drank too much. A journal shines so much light on what’s going on inside you, & that helps shape the outside. **
I sprained my right ankle in Dec ’08 but kept skating on it in pain ’til about Feb ’09. I do NOT recommend that – if you have an inversion sprain, get off your skates & heal. I opted for 3x per wk physical therapy bc I wanted to recover as quickly as possible. Physical therapy strengthened both ankles, plus it helped build some muscle in my legs (stability exercises are SO good for your entire lower body & core). It made me feel stronger, & I love feeling strong! I started running again & I bought a couple of circuit-training DVDs featuring HIIT (high intensity interval training, which is the quickest way to get in bad-ass shape). I highly recommend Jackie Warner’s DVDs – she will destroy you in a very short amount of time. The key is to understand that exercise is supposed to be uncomfortable to some degree – you have to sweat to burn fat & build muscle.
After a year of lifting @ home, Ripper talked me into joining her gym in May ’10 – I hired a personal trainer & fell in love with her job, so I started the NASM PFT program in July ’10 & started hitting the weights & Stairmaster hard. I graduate/become certified in April of ’11, but I’m already working with clients now based on my personal experience, my experience training/coaching in the league, & all of the obsessive reading I do about fitness, nutrition & life coaching.
So, to make a short story very, very long, this is why I now look like this:
I’m impressed if you made it through that long ramble. I feel a bit as if I’ve exposed my soft underbelly to you all, figuratively & literally. I work my ass off on the daily bc I know I am never finished – I’m never going to be a final product, I’m always a work in progress. We all are. I take my nutrition one day @ a time, focusing on eating clean 95% of the time & I don’t beat myself up if I eat a yummy fatty treat every now & then (although once I started eating clean, I stopped craving sugar and fat as much – I’m repulsed by fast food and most processed crap now). I break a sweat @ least once a day – cardio is good for the body, heart, mind, soul. Cardio is good working meditation for people who can’t hold still for long (like me). Lifting weights makes me feel powerful – that power carries over into life outside the gym and off the track. Lean muscle burns fat even when we’re asleep, so my body is a self-maintaining machine. I quit drinking on Nov 1, 2009 and I don’t miss it @ all. I realize I am an extreme case and your mileage may vary – I don’t expect anyone to quit drinking or enjoying an occasional piece of cake – I’m an all-or-nothing kind of gal, so it works for me.
Bottom line out of all of this, the one point to take home with you – derby can change your life in many positive & amazing ways, but it’s only the beginning of being truly fit & healthy. Think of derby as the gateway drug to lifetime fitness and health. Derby alone will not turn us into powerful lean machines – we have to put hard work in to get great results out of what we do every day. That daily hard work will show up on the track and in every other aspect of our lives.
Thank you for listening.
Reblogging an old article today…since I worked shoulders yesterday, I’m having a hard time lifting my arms long enough to type something original. 😉
Think shoulder injuries are no big deal in roller derby? Do enough damage and you’ll be off your skates, trust us. And unable to lift objects, carry bags on one side, sleep on one side, etc etc. From your favorite pink fitness buff, check out how to strengthen your rotator cuffs. You’re welcome for the amazing rhyme scheme.
Strengthening Weak Rotator Cuffs by Pyro Maim Ya of Pynk Fitness
I’ve had shoulder injuries on the brain lately – a couple of my derby sisters are in slings right now and my own shoulder is whispering its discontent over the heavier lifting I’ve been doing. I learned a bit about strengthening my rotator cuffs after a nasty run-in with a brick wall in OKC a few years ago, and in conjunction with my physical therapy, this knowledge made a big difference in how quickly I was able to return to full…
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I’m a big fan of timesaving, full-body workouts that can be done virtually anywhere with no equipment. Seriously, there are ZERO excuses to skip a workout with that kind of resume. My favorites include core work, cardio and plyometrics to keep me in top form for derby and running.
I call this a One-Exercise Workout, but it’s really a couple of exercises blended together into one super ass-kicker. Push through these as hard and as fast as you can while maintaining your form – make sure you’re landing lightly and if you feel a sudden or sharp pain, stop immediately. These are not for the faint of heart, so be ready to ache afterward – but the results are absolutely worth the burn. Plus, as soon as you’re done with the set, you’re done with your workout – simple, huh?
Cross-Climber Burpee:
Start position: standing straight, legs together, arms by sides, shoulders back.
Drop to a crouch, hands on the floor slightly in front of your feet.
Jump feet back to land in plank position.
Holding your plank, pick up right leg and twist lower body to tap right knee against left elbow. Return to center and repeat on left side, tapping left knee to right elbow.
Return to plank (if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, you can throw in a push-up at this point) and hop legs back into a crouch.
From here, you’re going to spring up into the air! Jump up as high as you can…arms outstretched over your head if you have the ceiling room, or clasped behind your head if your Hobbit house was built in the 1950s like mine. Imagine your legs as springs, propelling you to the ceiling.
Land lightly in a crouch – that’s one rep! Shoot those legs back out into a plank and hit it again!
As for sets, play around with what works for your timeframe. When I’m rushed for time, I like to do mine Tabata-style – 20 seconds of 100% effort as I do as many as I can as quickly as possible, followed by 10 seconds of rest and repeated 8 times. That’s a 4 minute workout that hits every muscle while increasing my endurance, boosting my metabolism and making my butt look fantastic in shiny shorts. You can’t beat that with a bat.
Gather ‘round, kids, and I shall tell you the tale of the PyroBot. Don’t worry, this book has pictures and the sentences are short. (Well, shorter, anyway. By the fifth revision, I remembered that verbosity is part of my charm – which is code for “F it, I am what I am.”)
Once upon a time (6 years ago on this day, to be precise), there was a skater named Pyro. In 10 blissful months with ACRD she’d skated off 60 pounds, become co-captain of her hometeam and was finally starting to feel like a productive member of her travel team. She still had a long way to go, but basically, everything was coming up Milhouse.
I’m either calling off the jam or doing the Funky Chicken. Hard to say.
Our hapless (but never helpless) heroine was jamming at practice when a low block shattered her left tibia/fibula in 11 places. She kept a brave face as they waited for the EMTs, reassuring teammates that she was doing just dandy (“I’m not in shock, I’m just pissed off!”) and cracking dirty jokes until the ambulance doors closed. Then the tears started. In that moment she realized she was going to miss more than just next week’s bout, and the reality of that hurt even more than the floppy leg.
Crash! There goes reality and PBR all over the floor.
Five looooong (seriously LONG) days later, Pyro became PyroBot. Dr. Clinton Bell did an impressive job of reassembling her, installing 2 plates, 17 screws and a stabilizing rod. He also did a great job of being cute as a button.
Metal detectors and MRI tubes are my sworn enemies.
Pyro spent the first month in a wheelchair. There wasn’t much to do in her wheelchair besides drink. So Pyro drank a lot.
It’s hard to tell if you’ve had too much to drink if you don’t have to walk a straight line.
Pyro’s entire life kind of imploded at this point, but she was lucky to have the support and love of good friends who were there for her through some rough patches.
Eileen Left’s other arm is in a sling, but she still pushed me around all night.
After another three months on crutches and a final month in a walking boot, Pyro was finally cleared for physical therapy. She was told she’d probably always walk with a limp and that she would never skate the same way she used to.
Then Pyro found yoga.
Outfit not recommended for bikram yoga.
Yoga restored her balance in every sense of the word. Her flexibility and strength returned. She became braver, calmer, and happier. She drank less. She smiled more. She laced up her skates when she was cleared, but pain and fear kept her from contact for 4 months. She didn’t want to quit, though. She became PyRef.
And she track managed for awesome teams.
Viva!
Oops, I’m trying to ref instead of coaching.
Then a funny thing happened – the fear faded and the pain became easier to tune out. Pyro started bumping skaters at practice instead of blowing her whistle. She skated for travel team again, soon becoming co-captain and eventually captain. She joined a hometeam – an amazing group who challenged her to work harder and become a better skater than she ever was before the injury. She even played co-ed derby, which she LOVED.
Pyro soon began to run again, and the last of that limp disappeared – along with the last of her drinking days. She entered as many 5Ks as she could, then set her sights higher. Pyro never ran farther than 8 miles at once before her injury, but after becoming Pyrobot she ran 2 half-marathons and a 15K within 4 months. Once she was able to use her legs again the way they were meant to be used, she never wanted to stop.
Spending so much time with physical therapists inspired Pyro to hire a personal trainer – then eventually become a trainer herself. She focused on corrective and rehabilitative exercise so she could help her friends heal from their injuries, too. She discovered that muscle not only provided a protective layer to help prevent injuries – it looked damn good too.
And that, my darlings, is how a girl who thought her world was ending turned it around into something far better than she could’ve ever imagined. It took time and hard work and it hurt a lot. But she came out on the other side stronger, wiser and with the understanding that every challenge is just an opportunity to prove her mettle. Now her mission is to help others see that no matter what they are going through, this too shall pass and life will be amazing again. It won’t happen overnight and you’ll have to work to make it happen, but it will happen.
Our rec league, Internal Affairs, accepts new skaters at the first 2 practices of every month. These intake practices usually focus on basic on-skates skills – stops, falls, crossovers and all of the other little details that make an athlete proficient on her skates.
The problem with this structure is that it takes some skaters several months to actually play the sport – and as anyone who’s played roller derby can attest, you spend your first year of contact figuring out what you’re doing besides just turning left and bouncing off of people. We spend so much time teaching people to pass their minimum skills assessments that we don’t always get to teach them actual gameplay ‘til much later.
Then there’s the fact that many new skaters haven’t built up their fast-twitch muscle fibers yet. Fast-twitch fiber is crucial for explosive, powerful movement, but it’s hard to develop those fibers on skates – your wheels don’t provide enough resistance with the ground to build the muscles you need to skate the way you want to.
So tonight, we did things a bit differently. I ran a full hour of cardio/endurance, plyometrics, agility, blocking/timing drills and scrimmage completely on foot. Then we geared up and rolled for real for the last 30 minutes.
My thoughts: it mostly went exactly as planned. I had to cut the skating time a bit because we spent so much time offskates (I originally promised only 30 minutes on foot), but we needed it. I watched lightbulbs come on over several heads as the stress of trying to figure out how to skate was removed and my girls could just concentrate on gameplay. Some of my freshest meat are the hardest hitters with the best timing when on foot! It was enlightening and I can’t wait to try it again.
Here is the workout in its entirety. Let me know if you have any questions or would like clarifications on any exercises or drills.
What you’ll need for this workout: a rink or other flat area to run across, preferably with a derby track already clearly marked; an agility ladder (if you don’t have one, you can use duct tape or chalk to make one on the floor/ground); shoes or socks you can run and hop in; jerseys and helmet covers.
Dynamic warm-up: neck/shoulder/arm circles, windmill toe touches, butt kicks, high knees, standing iron cross, inchworm/dogwalk series [toe touch, inchworm out to downward dog; alternate bending and straightening legs to stretch calves and hamstrings. Lift each leg and draw circles in both directions in the air before walking hands back in to toetouch, then slowly roll up, one vertebra at a time, ‘til you’re standing up straight].
Plyometrics and conditioning:
Side-step squats – step right and squat, back to neutral, then left and squat – repeat for 30 sec
Mohawk squats – legs wide, toes pointed out – down on a 2 count, up on 2 count for 30 sec
Crossover steps – (three lateral steps, then reverse direction by springing off outside foot) – start slowly, speed up – 30 sec
Speed skaters for 30 sec – mountain climbers for 30 sec
Agility ladder – one in, two in, two up one back, out in, ali shuffle (both sides)
Quick feet to burpee – jog down rink – quick feet to burpee – side shuffle back
Quick feet to burpee – skip down rink – quick feet to burpee – side shuffle opposite side back
WATER
Discussion and demonstration: legal blocking zones
Partner up for squat bumps – standing still, hip to hip – get low and pop up – 30 sec each side
Stagger partners so that one is behind and slightly to the side of the other – have partner in back step around partner in front, first gaining position, then using hip/booty to make contact – switch positions after a minute on each side
Blocking/timing drill: Snake line in center of track – person in back comes up outside and each person hipchecks them to outside – then hipcheck up inside – have them walking quickly with light feet (“scampering”)
Stop line – number off, grab jerseys and panties
Sock derby: 4-6 jams – play full 5 on 5, with penalties served by doing 10 push-ups, then rejoining pack – stop in between jams to answer questions, repeat rules, etc
WATER
Put on skates
Partner snake drill: skate in pairs through double line, focusing on matching speed and timing your cuts – use verbal communication and touch your partner’s hips or thighs to stay close.
Blocking/timing drill: single paceline on track – skater in back comes up outside and each skater in line hipchecks them to outside – then come up inside – do both sides twice. Focus on not cutting the track as a jammer and staying in-bounds as a blocker.
Truck and trailer demo: how to swing off your partner’s hips to block jammer
Partner up – practice swinging off each other’s hips, skating around derby track (choose a couple of jammers to dummy-jam through a few times, then pass the panties off to another pair)
Cooldown laps – opposite direction
Cooldown stretch
You can still find me on Hex Chromosome’s blog – watch for more derby-specific workouts and clean recipes!
Tired of having your knees feel like @$#& after practice or a game? Yes, better knee pads can help, but it isn’t the whole story. Let Pyro Maim Ya, personal trainer at Pynk Fitness, be your guide to being able to skate longer. Because quitting is for hosers. YOU HEAR THAT, KNEES?
Strengthening and protecting your knees
As I type this article, I’m icing my knee. It’s become a routine after practice or a run these days, although it took awhile for the habit to stick. In fact, it took several years for any of the advice I was given about my knees to stick. What can I say? I’m stubborn and they seemed just fine. My hope is that you’ll heed my words and take steps now to protect, strengthen and extend the life of your lovely knees so you won’t be purchasing full replacements long before you…
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Pynk Fitness - wellness for the alternative athlete 