Two by Two

Wednesday was my first practice back. It was okay; I felt a bit rusty and when we were practicing scrim situations I got goated a bit. Boo. But it was really nice to be back on skates after a month off and getting fat and lazy.

We did a drill that I really liked; it had enough different elements to make it fun and interesting, and it was quick and made me sweaty and tired, so that was also good. I can't remember what Smack called the drill, but since the basic premise involves a double pace line I'm going to call it Two by Two.

That said, when I think of "Two by Two" I think of one of the following:

Noah's Ark:

This is the cutest and most non-religious picture of Noah's ark I could find/

That song from the Book of Mormon:

Hands of blue

Those gloves always remind me of the security dudes
at US airports when you get patted down and stuff.

Yes, I am a geek. :P

Anyway, the drill is as follows. You set up a double pace line and just do laps of the track in pace line formation so each person has someone next to them. Then, when certain commands are yelled, you do things to/with your partner.

For example, if SWITCH is yelled, you basically switch places with your partner. But you're in a pace line, so there's an order you do this in. So the person on the inside moves forward, and then waterfalls to the outside while the outside partner steps to the inside:

1 is the starting move for Switch; yellow steps forward, blue moves into her spot.
Yellow then steps right and slows down so blue and yellow are both next to each other (as in (2)).

Then sometimes there'll be offensive/defensive things, like the following:

INSIDE LEAN (inside person leans on the outside skater until they are over the outside line)
OUTSIDE LEAN (outside person leans on the inside skater until they are over the inside line)

INSIDE HIP/SHOULDER CHECK (inside person checks the outside skater)
OUTSIDE HIP/SHOULDER CHECK (outside person leans on the inside skater)

In all these cases, remember that you're still in a pace line and moving relatively quickly, so if you get leaned out/checked you have to still hoof it back to keep your place in the pace line. And switching will also change whether you are the inside/outside person, so you have to really listen out and pay attention to that stuff.

Another thing that might get yelled out is PUSH/PULL. Basically the outside person pushes the inside person closer to the inside line, and then pulls them back into position (usually by their shirt or arm or something).

That could get confusing.

One final command that got called out was the pretty obvious WEAVE. You're in a pace line anyway, so that wasn't too bad. You bascially did the push/pull with your partner as you went through, so the inside partner would always be leading the pair when they were heading inside, and the outside partner would be leading the pair when they were heading to the outside.

Then, a variation on this was WEAVE WITH CHECKS. You still did the same weave with the push/pull as before, but the leading partner got to check the first person of the pair of people in the pace line that they passed:

Our pace line was pretty quick, and after a while it got a bit messy. Maybe a variation would be to have instructions controlling speed, like SPEED UP or SLOW DOWN or whatever. But overall it was a good drill, and we had a pretty cracking pace and all the footwork and checking and catching up meant that it was a good workout overall.