Birthday Time!!

Today is my Derby Birthday.
One year ago today I finally got the guts to put my 80's skates in the car and drive down to Hagley Park netball courts.  I wandered through the netball girls trying to find a group of strangers on skates and finally found them putting layers of protective gear on.  Warbow gave up her pads and helmet for me (she's generous like that) so that I could join in with the others in some basic drills.
I could skate a little already (although it had been years since I'd done any skating) but I was so embarrassingly unfit that I had to stop often to catch my breath.  No one seemed to care about that though...they only encouraged me when I would join back in again.  We had birthday cake (it was Shiner's birthday) afterwards and Crash drunk her water out of a wine bottle because she couldn't find anything else to put it in at home.  And just like that I was hooked.
And changed.
Boy how I've changed.
People often ask me how Iain feels about the amount of time derby takes up.  He is an awesome and generous man who knows how important it has become to me (I need to constantly make sure I don't take that for granted and that my family still comes first).  He knows the difference it has made and, I hope, is enjoying the benefits of a wife who can cope a lot better with everyday life and with being a Mum.
366 days ago I was on the highest dose possible of my anti-depressant medication, and even that only kept it at bay most of the time.    Since my first child had been born 6 years earlier, I'd needed regular therapeutic massage to keep the tension headaches away.  I saw my massage therapist again last week when I treated myself to a leg massage (I thought I'd asked a lot of them over the last year and they were probably overdue for a little TLC).  She was blown away by the difference in me, she even said I had the legs of an athlete.....oh yes she did!!
366 days ago I had never been called Buzz,  had no idea how hard 25 in 5 would be to crack, didn't know what a low block was, had never known the joy of a league meeting.....
366 days ago I had no idea that I would feel so proud pulling on my own printed Allstars uniform last night for the first time. Or that I would be so determined to work hard enough to deserve it and keep wearing it.
But the thing that blows me away the most is that 366 days ago I had never even met Daroll, Hammer, Legs, Unit, Knox, Warbow, Terror, Shiner, Tease, Crash, Karnage, Dizzy, Aggro, Str8e, Bone, Slaughter, Spunky, Munter, Meanie, Fury, Tia, Hoff, Gigawatts, Burger, Slam and Baddy - my derby family that just keeps growing.  Each one of you have inspired me, in words and example and I can't imagine not having you all as a part of my life now.
So Thank You - you have all made my life richer.
And let's have another Awesome Derby Year!!!

Confidence Boosting 101.

It turns out there is a lot of stuff out there to read about sports psychology and how the mind affects the body's performance. I know, totally surprised right??
So the first thing I had to do was narrow down the aspect of my mental game that I most needed to work on first...which mind muscle was going to get the workout.  This was an easy decision for me - CONFIDENCE...it's by far my weakest point.
The psychology behind sports confidence is actually pretty solid and defined as two specific types of confidence.
The first is Trait Sports Confidence.  This is most easily described as confidence that is a personality trait of the athlete. These are the people who are so naturally confident in their ability that no matter how badly they perform nothing can sway them from this belief.  As long as they are careful not to veer off into arrogance, people with high trait confidence usually do well it sport, they refuse to give up and see themselves as able to achieve at the highest level.  
The bad news is that the research shows there is not much you can do to increase trait confidence....you either have it or you don't.  I don't think it's too wild a guess to say that many of us in the derby world don't have an abundant supply of trait sports confidence.  Many of you, like me, were the last to get picked in the school teams and are only now, as adults, appreciating the joy of being active and athletic.  The fact that I have shyed away from trying most sports in itself probably indicates that I have low trait sports confidence, I never believed I would or could be good at them.
So now for the good news - trait confidence is not the most important type of confidence when it comes to performing well in sport.
That job belongs to State Sports Confidence and there is plenty that you can do to beef up that muscle.   State confidence is your belief in your ability to perform in a particular given situation.  On the track, at the jammer line, against that massive hardhitting blocker it's your belief in how you can cope with that situation at that moment (state confidence) that matters, not whether you generally think you are the best thing on eight wheels (trait confidence).  The most obvious example of the difference between these two types of confidence is the classic star player who misses the deciding goal.  Even though they may have oodles of trait confidence they don't believe that they can make the all important shot for the team when it's all on the line.
So this is what I need to work on - a bit like a physio does, I have isolated and named the weak and problematic muscle....State Confidence.  I'm sure most of you could do with building up this muscle...even if it's only in one situation or circumstance that you find it wanting.
There is an abundance of exercises and theory on how to best build your state confidence but I'm going to start with positive self-talk.
Now I'm not into any airy-fairy stuff where you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are three times a day so this is how I'm going to break it down (just in case you want to give it a go as well)....

1.  List 5 thoughts or situations on the track that make me feel least confident.
Mine are: when I'm against a hard hitting blocker, when I'm on the jammer line, when I fall over alot, when I'm 'the goat', when the jammer skates right past me without me even attempting a hit.

2.  Come up 5 phrases to counter these confidence suckers.
Funny thing is as I look at my list of situations  I definitely already have a phrase for each of them, just not helpful ones - "I'm going to get injured"  "I'm so bad at jamming" "I must look useless falling over this much" "I can't get past"  "I didn't do my job, I've let the team down"...so it's time to find some replacements!
They need to be easy to remember, even in the middle of scrimmage, and they need to be believable.  No good telling myself that I can jam like Suzy Hotrod, I will just laugh myself out of the room.
"I can take big hits" "I can improve my jamming" "I recover so quickly!" "I can make holes" and my favourite borrowed from Lord of the Rings...."You shall not pass!"

3. Write my new ass-kicking statements on two pieces of card (preferably laminated to make it last longer) and attach one to my training bag.  Read them every time I get my gear in and out of my bag - so that's at least twice every training session and once a week when I clean my pads.....because us derby girls always do that weekly!  I will attach the other copy to my wallet or mirror (if I must!) or computer screen so that I see it several times a day.  Every time I see the cards I will read through them - out loud if I'm somewhere that won't be embarrassing - and I will say it like I mean it......until I do!

The good old fake it till you make it.  Heres hoping it works!!

I've lost my mojo......

and I'm really not sure how to get it back again.
I know why I've lost it.  A bad combination of things including 2 weeks school holidays (all you mums out there know how much mojo that can suck out of you) and a flu/cold that just won't go away.   Also, I think I've just started my first natural plateau in training.
So here I am tired, snuffly, and just a little unmotivated.  I had been warned about the plateaus - when suddenly you don't seem to be improving anymore despite doing the same amount of training you always have.  And I know that that's when you need to push it up a notch - train that little bit harder to push through.  Instead with the other things going on I have had to take it down a few notches and it is incredibly frustrating.
And rotten timing.
We have our next interleague scrimmage on Wednesday and after my mental game putting me in a spin last time I was determined to be in a better place mentally and physically for this next one.  Instead it will be marginal whether I'm actually well enough to scrimmage and if I am I will be taking it easy...not exactly the killer mental space I'd hoped for.
And the calendar is racing towards my first Allstars game in May...I was hoping to lift my game so much before then.  Now I'll be struggling to get back to where I was a fortnight ago.
But for now I need a plan.  A plan to get back my mojo as fast as possible.
Starting with getting better.  I need to eat and sleep well, take my vitamins, stretch lots and listen to my body.  If I can't handle training then I need to stop.  It's one thing to push yourself when you are well but when your body is fighting a bug it's just stupid.  It will not be the end of the world if I miss a week of training, I will miss far more if this flu lingers around for another month.
I can also use the time to work on my mental game.  I've been looking into sports psychology for a few weeks now and I"ve finally made my way through the trashy pages wanting to sell me something to find some really useful stuff.  I've realised that my first issue to deal with is self-confidence...I don't really have any and I rely on my team-mates confidence in me instead.  So I will be working that confidence muscle over the next few weeks to see if I can get it to start working properly.
Hopefully these steps will see me get my mojo back and start to push through that plateau quickly enough that I can still bring my best to the game in May. Any other tips???

Divide and Conquer (or tips for the 25)

Watching the new freshmeat last night trying to break the 25 laps in 5 minutes was a big old trip down memory lane.  

Even though it was only a few months back, it feels so long ago that I was desperately willing my legs to keep doing crossovers properly even though they had turned to jelly.  Collapsing at the end of the 25 laps, gasping for air, gutted that I hadn't made it again and no idea where I could possibly find the extra go to shave those last 15 seconds off.  I remember searching online for some tips, anything, that could help me get there.  Finding bits of advice here and there, listening to my coaches (yes it does help!!) and perserverance got me there in the end.  

I thought I'd pay it forward and put it all together for those dedicated and frustrated freshies coming through behind me. 

So here it is....my collection of tips (mostly learnt the hard way!) on how to break the 25 in 5.....

1.  Moving your feet faster will not make you skate faster!  It will just make you exhausted and more likely to fall over.  Long, strong strides...pushing down and through.  And big, deep crossovers. If you need to rest - glide the straights but always, ALWAYS skate the corners and do the crossovers.

2.  Skate the diamond.

 Hopefully you can see past my bad drawing skills - the green dots are where you have to do crossovers.

3.  Breathe. 

4.  Use your arms.  Moving my arms like a runner - cutting the air in front of me, really helped me with the rest of my skating form.  I think it mostly just gave me a rhythm and something easy to focus on.

5.  Grab a buddy.  One of the things I like about roller derby is that it's a team sport.  Where does it say in the skills testing rulebook that you have to tackle the 25 laps without help??  Find a sympathetic old meat and ask them to skate in front of you so that you can mimic their form around the track and know what kind of pace you need to aim for.

6.  Keep breathing.

7.  Break it down.  It occured to me after my 2nd failed attempt that I had to be able to skate 5 laps in a minute before I was ever going to conquer the 25 in 5.  So I tried it and sure enough it took me 1 minute and 5 seconds.  This made it clear that my form and technique weren't good enough yet - I needed to focus on that and get that right first.

8.  Be stubborn.  Honestly I think this was the one thing that helped me most in the end.  Just being good-old-fashioned-hard-headed about it.  I decided I would do it, no matter how many attempts it took.  I practiced every chance I could.  During warm up and cool down laps at training I was working on one of the points listed above.  Every time I was circling the track it was a chance to improve something that would help me get there.  I'm sure I drove the coaches crazy with my constant requests to time me doing this or that, or 'could I please have another go at the 25 while the oldmeat were taking their gear off and stretching??'  In retrospect I probably should have remembered occasionally that it wasn't all about me....but it did help me get there in the end!!

It was tough getting there but it was one of favourite derby moments so far....

Lying on the ground completely spent....smile so big it made my face hurt.....trying to high five from the floor when the others came over to congratulate me....knowing that I had finally done it.

Mental Toughness

It continues to amaze me how much of this game is about what's going on in my head.  I love how it pushes me to the edges of my self belief and stretches it further, constantly making it bigger and stronger.  
Last night we had our first interleague scrimmage.  It was my first time scrimmaging against non-friendlies and it threw me a little.  In our weekly league scrimmage I know the people on the other team and I like them. I know that they like me and want me to get better and improve my game.  That doesn't mean that they take it easy on me but the general vibe towards me is positive and supportive and this acts as a boost for my ever-faltering confidence in my derby abilities.  Well last night that rug was pulled out from under me and I didn't expect it.
Noone from the other team actually said anything negative to me and I'm sure that a great percentage of it all was in my head, but I felt the 'you're not very good' and 'this one's the weak link' vibes...which my internal dialogue then began to translate to 'how on earth did she manage to pass skills?' and 'man this girl shouldn't even be scrimmaging.'  Needless to say this affected my skating a little, and worst still, made me a more ineffective member of my team.  I don't want this to happen in the real world of derby bouting.  I will not let this happen in my first interleague bout.
So now it's time to strengthen those mental muscles and pull out some mind gym.
My first step was to go over the scrimmage in my mind and pick out what I did well.
And I was surprised at the resulting list.  I hit the jammer on my first run on the track (something I'm usually stoked to do once in a whole evening), I did a sweet truck and trailer to help our jammer through the pack, I hit the oppositions' jammer out of bounds a few times and I was even brave enough to put the jammer panty on once.  I didn't do so flash at jamming and ended up in the penalty box but when I got back on track I actually made it through the pack and the other jammer called it off before the two minutes were up so I can't have been looking that bad out there.
Imagine how well I could have done if I just believed in myself??
It was then that I had a lightbulb moment when I realised that I could have been the best skater out there and I still would have heard those negative voices inside.  
It's time to kick those to the curb and replace them with positive ones that help me achieve more and skate to the absolute best of my ability.
So I'm off to google sports psychology and hit the library for some good books on the subject.  I'll let you know what gems I discover......

Love this picture by Elektraqtion on her blog.

Blocker's Remorse

I landed my first really good hit last night in a jammer drill.  

It's the first time ever that I have felt the full force of my body slam into someone in action.  
The first time I have not taken myself out in the process.  
The first time I have heard that 'thud' behind me as I continued skating.  
I think I want to hear it again! and again....and again....
This is very strange for me.  I have mentioned before that I have never been an aggressive person, ever. 
Not physically, socially, emotionally...I'm even useless at pulling the old passive aggressive out.  
But there was something addictive about that hit last night.  
Something about being able to harness the power of my body against someone elses.  
Something satisfying about finding my aggression and using it.  
The catch is that I hurt the other skater, we took all took a knee while first aid checked her out.  
But, and here is the really strange part for me......I didn't feel bad about it.  
I'm still a little confused about this.  Bleeding hearted me, who used to cry watching starving Africans on the television when I was a kid, didn't feel any guilt about her injury.  
I knew it was a good legal hit.  I even felt slightly proud.  
She was fine, by the way, and the reality is any injury would have been more about how she fell rather than how I had hit her.
But my total lack of remorse surprised me and I'm not even sure if it would have been any different if she had been badly hurt.  
Sure, I would have felt bad for her, like I do when anyone gets injured, but I wouldn't have felt guilty about it.  
How had this happened?  And was it a good thing?  
I know it will probably make me a better derby player but am I still a good person?  
Is this the first step towards me becoming a heartless bee-arch in all the other areas of my life?  
I had no idea how ingrained the notion that I had to be nice to everyone was for me.  
I am astonished that landing this hit has made me question my very moral fibre. 
It's the little girl in me that feels worried about this newfound aggression, and no Mum and Dad, I'm not blaming your parenting, I just think it was always my inherent nature.  
Don't rock the boat, keep the peace, make everyone happy and they will be pleased with me.  
But everyone wasn't always pleased with me and it didn't make everyone happy.  
It didn't make me happy.
So listen up, little Buzz, grown-up Buzz (aka booty blocking badass) has a few things to tell you....
Aggressiveness is okay, good even, empowering.
It is only a bad thing when it comes out of a place of hate. 
Just check your place of hate regularly and make sure it's dealt to.  
It is okay to be power-full.   Power-full women are awesome and you can be one....you are one.
You will be a better wife, mum, friend, blocker, jammer, world-changer if you embrace your aggression.
Be aggressive about the things that matter. Like raising your children, looking after our planet, loving your husband, caring for your friends, ending poverty and injustice.....and of course........holding the inside line.

"My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. 

Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose."                                                                                                                  Bette Davis 

Eating an elephant

So I'm officially on the Otautahi Allstars Training Squad!  
But again, like so many other things in derby, my joy was quickly followed by a reality check.  
Being on the squad doesn't mean you get picked to bout. And to get picked to bout you must meet a list of requirements, including 5 hours off skates exercise per week.  

Bummer.  
I have trouble fitting in the three on-skates trainings we need to do.  
I have tried to go to the gym but Erin refuses (as in screams so loud the entire gym can hear her) to stay in the childcare so that rules that option out.
I'd tried the exercise DVDs too but it only takes 10 minutes of Erin climbing on me for that to get beyond a joke.
My only choice was to start thinking creatively.  How could I fit 5 hours of exercise into my life of stay-at-home-mum-ness without derby taking any more time away from my family than it already does...
I already do 10 minutes of ankle strengthening and achilles stretches morning and night (Physios orders) so that adds up to 2 hours and 20 minutes already. Nearly half way there!
I did the housework super-speed yesterday - so that I broke a sweat.  I hate housework anyway so it's a good way to get it done quickly and I could easily chalk up an hour and a half doing that every week. 
And this last exercise is my favourite...Erin loves dancing so I can dance with her for 15 minutes each week day - this doesn't sound much like exercise but trust me, dancing while holding a happy, jiggly 15kg weight is not easy! 
So the grand total is 5 hours and 5 minutes.  Throw in the occasional brisk walk with the pram for a bit of variety and it'll be sweet.
I love it when a goal seems too big to achieve and then you shrink it down with a bit of thinking outside the box!

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.