Getting Lower

Shae and I went to Barber Park early this morning to get some skate time in. It was great, really. We didn't push ourselves all that hard but honestly I'm out of practice and she was sore. (Plus, the combo of sucky outdoor wheels and not mouthguard made me nervous as hell.) I love skating with Shae though because every time, she always manages to explain something in a new way to me in order to help me out.

One of my (many many many) problems is that I don't get low enough. I know this. Everyone tells me this. Even worse, I tell myself to get lower, bend my knees more and what happens? I lower my back at my waist and get thrown off-balance. ;lksdjf;sladfj Every. Fucking. Time! Or I feel like I'm getting low and bending my knees and it's pointed out to me that, no, I'm standing up very straight still.

It's the little things that help. Shae mentioned that if I can touch the top of my knee pads, that's the highest I should be at any point in time. I lowered myself in that position and thought "You have got to be fucking kidding me." That's as HIGH as I should be, meaning I should be lower than this if possible? NO WAY. But I tried it! Not perfectly, but I did try to use that as a guideline through much of our skating and... it helped. It helped a lot. I was feeling a little bit better skating, even on the shitty shitty wheels I was skating on. I didn't get my knee falls where I want them to be, but I did work on sticky skating and feel a little better on that. Obviously, I need to work on it more. I will probably always need to work on it more. I'm sure the girls from Team USA are still getting on themselves about getting lower when skating and perfecting certain skills. Hopefully the combination of Barber Park extra practice plus actual recruitment time will finally get my muscles to remember all these moves and get me placed on a team this go around.

(Also, I'm pretty sure if I was doing it right before, I wouldn't be sore from two hours of the lightest skating ever. Definitely need to work on my core, too. I couldn't get up without using my hands. Balls.)