Aggressive jamming with Bambi and Shortstop

On Tuesday at training we had our first in a series of guest trainers from Canberra Roller Derby League who were going to come and teach us some new tricks. I almost didn’t go because of Ph.D. dramas, but I ended up going and I am so fucking glad I did.

Firstly, Bambi was a great coach; I think she’d give Pain from SCRD a run for her money. She was really good at explaining stuff and what the strategy was for doing things and how to apply it and also just some general stuff about learning in derby, which was useful since obviously she’d been where we were. Shorty didn’t really say much but gave people a lot of one-on-one pointers and did a lot of demo type stuff. She’s pretty damn funny though.

Warmup was dynamic stretching and then some endurance type stuff; we did 15 laps of the track anti-derby, then 30 squat jumps (on skates!) and then 30 “dead bugs” which seemed to be really similar to bicycles but you have the same arm and leg going instead of the opposite ones (see video). Then it was 10 laps derby direction, 20 squat jumps and dead bugs, then 5 laps and 10 squat jumps and dead bugs. Wheeeeeeee.

Our first drill we did was explosive something something. :P I can't remember the name. Basically, you paired up with someone and they put their toe stops down (or plow stop, or whatever) and you had to push them. Running on your toe stops for this was really useful, rather than just on your skates. I’d done some of this at SCRD, and I really like running on my toe stops, so yeah I was excited for this drill.

I was MUCH more excited when people paired off with others of roughly their size and I was the odd one left and got paired up with Shorty. Squee indeed. AND THEN I FOUND OUT SHE IS TALLER THAN ME. DAMMIT. Anyway, yeah so I did a bunch of laps of the track pushing her around, and then she had a go. My weak ankle (the right one) is mega dumb and doesn’t steer very well and I kept going in circles, which was kind of embarrassing. :( It worked much better when I was basically in plow stop position but on my toe stops so my feet were more pigeon toed, than straight. But yeah, I made her push pretty hard, and I have all the marks on my shoulders to prove it from where she was digging her hands into my shoulder meat :P

Then the variation after that was to push someone with your shoulder, so your pec was basically pushing theirs (and you had to keep your head out of the way so you weren’t going to headbutt the other person). I found this harder because when I run on toe stops I swing my arms a lot, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without punching Shorty in the crotch or something. But yeah, that was a fun drill. :D

A scrum start. White would usually be taking a knee right on the
line and black would be standing but as close to them as
possible without touching. (Also because of my craptastic
paint skills it looks like the outside white blocker is leaving
an opening for the white jammer or something. Yep.)

Next, we worked on using the toe stop push to get through a pack. Bambi said that teams were more likely to do scrum starts now (i.e. have everyone at the jammer line), so once the jammer is released they immediately have to get through the pack, usually if one team knee started at the jammer line. Usually in these cases the blockers would make a wall, such that you'd have all four blockers in a line across the track, covering both inside and outside lines at the same time.

We worked on several techniques for breaking walls. Walls can be made of seriously ANY number of blockers, so we practiced a bunch of different things. Basically, the key thing in all wall-breaking cases was to pick some spot--either between two blockers, or pushing one blocker out of the way to create a gap--and then go for it. We started with a wall of three (with a fourth one bracing) and trying to get a jammer to bust through. I found the running-on-toe-stops thing quite useful for pushing through blockers.

Then we did wall-busting in between two blockers. Importantly, in a game situation your blockers won't be completely stuck shoulder-to-hip together, but might be slightly spaced apart, so there is naturally a gap to get through. We tried a bunch of different things in a "jammer against two blockers" scenario:

• Shoulder charge: basically you use your shoulder like a battering ram and aim for the the back of the blockers' arms, or straight through the gap that is between them.
• Kidney punch: I like this one a lot! You keep your head down and use your shoulders to basically hit the blockers in their kidneys. Seriously. Be careful not to headbutt them or (as I did) get my head stuck in the gap between the blockers. 
• Shark attack: you start low and "pop up" between the blockers. I think you can use the back of your shoulders to push them out of the way.
• Stepping through: If there's a big enough gap between where the blockers have their feet, get down and step through it to get past them. This is hard to do quickly, but it's essential that you actually do it quickly, or else you get stuck. 

Here's Shorty doing the shark thingy at TGSS (although it might have started as a kidney punch):

Photo: Steve Craddock

You can also combine them: for example, you can start low and step through between blockers and then pop up in a shark attack. Or you can do the shoulder charge and when the gap comes up you step through. What's important is that you have the element of surprise. For the record, Rubi and I were the "demo people" for Shorty demonstrating surprise, which was hilarious because obviously we knew she was going to bust between us, but then when she actually did I think her charging into me actually propelled me like 3 metres or something, and I was screaming the whole time.

Finally, we did some juking. For this drill, we paired off and you had to get past your partner who was booty blocking you. There were a couple of things to pay attention to. Juking is a combination of speed and agility--I think Bambi said that Bonnie D. Stroir said that there's some sweet spot where your speed and agility meet, such that you're maximally agile while not plowing into the back of people (and getting called for back blocking). Basically, the idea is that you only juke as fast as you can skate while being agile.

Attempted juking diagram. Basically, the
jammer skates straight up to the PoNR and
then does the 3-step thingy to get around the
blocker (clearly not to scale.)

Bambi described something called the "point of no return" or something--basically you should only juke when the blocker can't see your feet. If they can see your feet, they are likely to know what you are going to do. So you should skate up to them as close as you can before busting out your juke moves. (This is also where the speed/agility thing is important; if you skate too close to them and can't stop, you back block them.) We practiced doing a three-step juke, basically you go left-right-left or right-left-right and then around the blocker. It also helped if you confused your blocker by making them look over both shoulders. Crossing seemed to be quite useful here, although not necessary (if you can also clumsily stomp to either side for the juke).

Another way you could juke is by basically fast feeting (feeting?? WTF) behind the blocker, and then getting past them because they don't know what your footwork is doing. Also, one thing to do is to get your foot in front of theirs and block them with your hip/shoulder. If your foot is in front of your opposing blocker's, when the block you they'll actually be pushing you forward. (I found this kind of hard to do without wheel clipping, but maybe I just need to work on that more.)

And then there was a bit of a strategy chat while we warmed down, and then we were done! It was seriously an awesome session; I probably learned more in those two hours than I have for a very long time. Also, I was a bit of a nerd and got RefDonald to take a picture of me with Shorty at the end. Yeah.

When we were taking this Shorty was like,
"Yeah you have to go Asian style". Heh.
(Also, photobomb by Bambi.)

The Yeast Infection Drill

Okay, first off, I have NO idea why it's called that. Seriously.

Now that that's out of the way, this is one of the funner drills we've done lately. It's pretty easy to understand: basically, you have two groups on the track of equal number. One group are blockers, and the other group are jammers. Yes, so you can have like 4-5+ jammers on the track at the same time. The aim for the jamming group is to get all their members out through the pack, and obviously the blocking group is to prevent that from happening. If you did a major, you had to reenter from the back of the pack and try getting through it again. Then after all the jammers were through, you swapped.

We had about 5 people in each group. We tried two variations of this drill: first, if you were jamming and made it out of the pack, that was all well and good and you were done, or you could go back into the pack and help other jammers through (but you didn't have to get through the pack again). The other version required ALL the jammers to get through the pack together, such that if you ate the baby (i.e. got reabsorbed by the pack) you had to try to get out again, and the drill wasn't over until all the jammers were clearly out together. That one was crazy hard because the blockers just kept speeding up to make sure the jammers couldn't pass and we ended up with the crazy 70-foot rule thing happening. I'd never seen it before but when everyone was so spread out it was seriously like WTF. But I think the non-eating-the-baby-version worked much better, in terms of organisation and pack structure.

We did this as a scrimmaging drill, but obviously if you're not cleared for hitting you can do this drill with positional blocking or something.Keeping the pack together was tricky. But this is a fast-paced drill, and lets you focus on offensive or defensive blocking. Helping out team members was also really important. But yeah! Mega fun drill, and one I'd like to do again.

Inevitable injuries

In case you didn't know about derby girl mentality, in my world:

Yes they are!

I was always a pretty accident-prone kid. I wasn't clumsy or anything and I don't think I bruise that easily, but I was always running around in the playground banging my shins into the monkey bars or falling over and getting scrapes or something like that. Once I fell on my head because I tried to swing off the monkey bars upside down and flip onto my feet, and of course I failed at that. My mother had a lot to put up with raising me, because pretty much every second day I would come home from school with some new cuts or bruises. But I was always really gung ho about pain and injury. Unless it was stupidly bad, I would keep going until I fell apart and/or had to go to hospital. One time I even got blisters all over the bottoms of my feet because I really wanted to play tag on the painted concrete tennis court we had at school, and I didn't have runners so I just took my school shoes off and ran in my socks, and my feet got all burned. I think I was six or seven years old. My mum had to pop the blisters on my feet that night when I got home.

Totally from punching.

Derby really brings out a similar attitude in me I think. I am usually not a pussbag or drama queen when it comes to injuries. Hell, I have a completely screwed up and cartilage-less knee because I was injured when I played hockey and still liked running so much I ground it all down. Stupid, I know. But anyway, I like getting new bruises sometimes because they are trophies of a sort. My league has an injury page where people can post of their pictures of bruises and cuts and whatever. There are some pretty impressive ones! I have permanent bruses on my knuckles from my wrist guards being a bit too long, but they aren't huge or anything, even if they are pretty original for where they are.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite pictures of my injuries:

In this picture:

Corked thigh, Recovering torn ligaments x2 and torn tendon, bruise from attempted baseball slide, Pulled groin muscle from plow stops, Gout/arthritis in my big toe knuckles, Blister scars from breaking my feet into my skates, bruise from a skate wheel to the shin, Ground down/no cartilage in my knee joint (prederby injury), Bruises from my gasket being too tight, Bruises from deflecting a soccer ball with my leg and a bruise from where I think I poked my leg and it bruised.

Other injuries aren't always that awesome. In the early days of training, we were doing speed laps and I fell over someone on my side and hurt my shoulder. At the time I thought it was just sore and whatever, and I continued on with doing laps. I think we had to smash out as many as we could in 5 minutes, so I kept doing that. All I got was a little bruise there though, so it didn't look so bad.

I tear my shoulder and all I get is this measly bruise?

But then I couldn't rotate my arms, like in a windmill. Actually, I couldn't even raise my arm anything really more than 60 degrees or something. It sucked. I went to the physio. The verdict: torn rotator cuff, and also torn bicep (where it joins my shoulder bones). Gah. It was awful. I couldn't do pushups or planks. In non-derby land, I also didn't have the strength in it to pull my seatbelt on in the car, or push a shopping cart. This was about 3-4 months ago maybe. My shoulder is still a bit sore, and definitely weaker than my other one. I can do pushups and planks and whatever else now, but even sleeping on it for too long is a bit painful. I know it's still recovering, but it still has time to go. I just really wanted to get back on skates. I didn't need to take time off skates, but I couldn't do a lot of the things we were doing at the time, like four point falls, or crawling through people's legs during stuck-in-the-mud. That sucked. But at least I could skate.

Then, two weeks ago, I was trying to whip Boudica and I fell backwards and smashed my head on the track. I thought I was fine, and I didn't feel like I needed to go to hospital then or anything. The moment my head hit the track, I kind of just saw these bright flashes and then I tried to get up (there's the 3 second rule, remember) and couldn't.

This is what stuff looked like when I was concussed

But at the time I could read stuff out loud without getting all garbled and confused, and my pupils were dialating or whatever. So it didn't seem that bad. I refused offers to be taken to hospital, and instead went to my office to do some work. I was reviewing a paper that I had written to send off to a journal, and I started getting really sleepy reading it. It was about 4pm. I thought maybe the paper was just mega boring or something and that was why I was getting tired. Then I decided to go home because I wasn't really being productive at work. I live five minutes away, but when I was driving I couldn't actually see the road. Like, my vision was all blurred and I had to concentrate really hard on the road in order to drive straight. That was super scary. I called my friend Chris and he drove to my house (since clearly I was in no condition to drive) and then he took me to hospital. The triage nurse was a derby fan, so that was awesome, and we had a pretty good talk. Haha. Apparently I had problems spelling things when I checked in, and I couldn't recall my phone number properly. But yeah, resting up and having some ibuprofen and everything seemed to work out okay. I am probably still mildly brain damaged or something though (which isn't that great for my non-derby life, since I need my brain to finish my Ph.D.)

Gratuitious ass shot, with Batman underpants!

On training at Tuesday we were scrimmaging, and it was fantastic. I love scrimmaging. I can usually get through the pack really quickly, and I also had my first proper turn being lead jammer! I made several passes before I called it, but it was awesome to be able to do that on my first jam. I also took a bunch of pretty hard hits and fell a few times and got some mighty ass bruises. The colours are just coming up as I write this. They're pretty awesome. And they match!

But anyway, back to scrimmaging. There I was, skating away and jamming my little heart out. Then, about four jams in, two people stacked in front of me. I tried to avoid them but fell. I stacked but not badly, so I was thinking I could get up and skate around them before they got up. But when I was getting up, I took two steps and rolled my ankle. Fucksauce. They had to blow four whistles. Seriously, I couldn't even lift up my leg to rotate it to see whether anything was broken. Two years ago I rolled my other ankle playing soccer, and tore two ligaments and a tendon, so I know how it feels, and it certainly felt pretty much the same when I tried to skate. I had to sit out for the rest of training on the sidelines, icing my ankle and sulking because I couldn't scrimmage. About ten jams later, I had been icing it for a while and I thought I'd test it out. I asked Sarge if I could go back on. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey Sarge, can I go back in and skate?

I did get a nice hand-meat bruise though.

Sarge: I don't know, can you?
Me: Sure I can! I want to skate.
Sarge: Okay, stand up then.
(I stand up)
Sarge: Stand on one leg.
(I stand on my munty leg)
Sarge: Move your weight around like you are doing a one-leg slalom.
(I do that, and try to look as if my leg isn't hurting like the dickens)
Sarge: Well, if you think you can do it, put your skates on.

I put my skates on. Then I take like two steps, and with the added weight of my skates on, pain is seriously shooting up from my ankles. It was awful, like I was gasping so much from the stabbingness in my ankles and up my legs that I couldn't even swear properly. Instead, I just had to sit back down, take my skates and helmet off, and then go and watch Sarge give everyone else a pep talk in the huddle. Lame. At least I could be useful as bench bitch, I guess. But there was seriously no way I could skate. In fact, there is seriously no way I can currently skate. This sucks.

And what is worse is there isn't even any bruising to show for it. Gah.

This is what my legs look like right now:

Stupid compression bandage. But lesson learned: I need to listen more to my body when it is screaming at me because I am putting it through a whole world of pain. Otherwise, I will just put myself into a situation when I'm going to get MORE injured, and that will mean MORE time off skates. And that is just too much sadface for me to handle.

This girl will self-destruct in 10… 9…

Derby girls (and boys) are often described as being somewhat crazy and hardcore to do roller derby in the first place. I don’t know if the claim is true or not, and I don’t want to really get into that whole side of it. But training with the yellow stars (while they’re doing their orange star tests) is definitely a step up from the whities. As much as I think it’s important to make early derby training as accessible and friendly as possible for people learning how to skate, there comes a point when you really just want to be able to do get into the tough and aggressive smashy side of things.

We did pace lines with (non contact) weaving, whips, booty blocking, pushes and the like. But my favourite drill by far is the obstacle avoidance one. Basically, one person skates around the track while a pack of 4 other skaters spontaneously fall in front of them. The pack skaters can fall however they like; they don’t have to fall small or in any of the ways that you’re actually taught. The person skating has to avoid crashing into or tripping over the fallen skaters, and can do this by stepping around them or falling and then getting up, or (my favourite) jumping over them.

This is what you are trying to avoid doing (with skates on)

Boudica and I didn’t get tested on this tonight, because we’re pretty much the newest yellows and we aren’t getting tested to the same degree for our orange stars as everyone else. But we got to be part of the packs that fell in front of people. Sometimes strategy was needed to try and fuck it up for the person who is avoiding obstacles; sometimes it was just a matter of getting in front of them and getting all in their grill (or legs, as it were). But yeah, I certainly didn’t think that throwing myself under the wheels of oncoming skaters would be as fantastic as it was. I ended up doing a lot of really big sprawls; maybe it’s because I’m pretty little anyway so I wanted to spread out more to increase the potential for fuck-uppery. A lot of what I did was a cross between a superman dive and a starfish. I did slide a lot as well, which was cool. And once the person had avoided you, you basically skate as fast as you can to get in front of them and try again. Bahaha. I did manage to trip Ravish, and after a moment of satisfaction doing that (because she’s an awesome skater), then it was right back up to throw myself under her wheels again.

This is how I sprawl.

It was stupidly fun. Given that you’re pretty much not padded where your vital organs are, I’m surprised that nobody ruptured a kidney or got some wheels in their spleen. I did get some skates VERY close to my head, and I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not skate helmets are really that good at preventing concussions. But I wasn’t kicked in the head or anything which was good. Hooray for not getting brain damage. And apart from a bruise on my sidebum(??) from constantly throwing my self on the ground in the same way, I didn’t get any real injuries.

I can’t wait until I get to do it again. And maybe this time, maybe I’ll get to avoid them so I can jump over people too. Yeah, maybe I do have a bit of a self-destructive streak.

Oh, and then after we got kicked out of the gym we decided to get our orange star fitness shit out of the way. This meant that a bunch of us did pushups and situps (5x10 of each) and planks (60 forward, 60 for each side) on either a hard concrete basketball court or a duck shit-covered wet patch of grass. Well, we are crazy and hardcore like that.

FUCK YEAH YELLOW STAR

So Boudica and I were supposed to go for our yellow stars on Sunday, with Pitts and possibly Jaxhammer as well. After training on Sunday, I booked the gym hall for an hour today so we could have a skate around and run through the test as a practice. I told Sarge about it on Tuesday, and he was like "oh cool I'm not doing anything on Thursday so I can come down and have a look and give you some pointers" which was super cool of him.

Check out my helmet. Also note WFTDA rules test on the floor.

Anyway, so we show up there and set up the track. And then we started going through the test. We did our 5-in-1 first, which is basically doing 5 laps in a minute to pass. I fucking stupidly played soccer yesterday and corked my left thigh and had a mega bruise on my right (just where the kneepad sat). So putting weight on my left leg was kind of shitballs. And of course there's a lot of that when you're crossing and it's your inside leg. But I managed to get the 5 in 1 done in 59 seconds. :P Boudica did it in 57! I am sure I could go faster but I was doing dumb shit like not counting my laps (and I thought I was done after 3... really?!?) and that sort of thing. I didn't feel like I was really in the groove for it, but oh well.

Oh, and one-leg slaloms. FUCKING CHRIST. Seriously, I did these okay last Sunday when I was casually practicing, and for some reason I think my nerves got the better of me. It seriously took me like TWENTY goes before Sarge suggested that I go into the slalom on the left side of the cone, so I go to the right between the first and second cones. And that totally makes sense because on my left leg I tend to drift to the right. Why the fuck didn't I think of that before?!?! Duh. But after he suggested it I got it in ONE go. Seriously I don't think I'm the right kind of smart for derby sometimes...

Then we had to do a coast and squat for one straight and a corner, and then a lap of squat and sticky skate. And some falls (baseball, 4-pointer, 180 degree one-knees).And OMG 60 second plank. Normally when we do it off skates I'm fine with it and can hold it for more than 60 seconds, but for some reason today on skates I felt like I was dying! But that worked out okay. As did the 40 sit ups and 40 pushups (which I managed to do properly, even on my munted rotator cuff).

But fuck yeah. I passed, and so did Boudica. It was awesome. I just felt really good about getting it, even if at some points I just squeaked through. I'm sure I could do the 5-in-1 better if I had another go, and also the one-leg slaloms.We aren't saying anything about it yet until Sarge officially announces it on Sunday, but yeah. Awesomesauce.

Of course, right after that, we were onto some orange star stuff! Hahaha like for serious. I really like the 5 jumps in a row, and we also practiced the 2m plow stop. God that shit is hard. But I can't wait to start doing it! And whips! And hits and all that stuff! Scrimmage time here we come!