Today I headed to the gym with Bliss Star to get our weights on and build the buff!
A huge part of roller derby is the fact that you really need to be cross-training your body for all over strength. We spend practically all of our derby training sessions on skates – practicing drills, agility and strategies.
The responsibility has to fall on the individual to work on our physical fitness, especially our core and upper body strength outside of training hours.
Dubbs from Sioux City Roller Dames wrote a good article about Cross-training, stating: “Cross-training improves fitness, reduces possibility for injury, it will strengthen your heart, bones, and joints, creates a total body work-out, reduces body fat, but more importantly it conditions different muscle groups and helps develop muscles that are not often used in your regular routine.”
This is something that I haven’t focussed on much in the past – but is something I really want to get motivated to work on now. It helps finding someone that wants to work on these things too, especially to drag your ass off the couch on these cold days!!
Bonnie D’Stroir has started a new Facebook page celebrating these ‘Shiny Happy Faces‘ moments after you’ve flogged your guts out at the gym. A positive encouragement for a job well done and for us all to be proud of how shiny and happy we feel after our workout!
Shiny Happy Faces
Today we worked on a lot of upper body strength training using free weights and some set weight machines, with some core work at the end. I think I’d like to also start swimming again and mixing up the week with a Pilates or Yoga class for flexibility too. That, combined with 3 training sessions a week, I’m sure to be Superwoman in no time!
What cross-training do you do? Do you like to mix things up a bit, or have a set routine that you follow weekly? I’m interested to hear how other people work on their fitness outside of derby.
I cycle commute to work which does good things for aerobic fitness and legs but I badly need something for the upper body. I’ve been contemplating going to the Fairfield boathouse and playing with their kayaks.
That would be a fantastic upper body workout Forth!
I find it really hard to motivate myself to work out just for the sake of working out. That’s why I’m trying to get a small team together for next year’s Tough Mudder. Have you heard of it? It’s like a 18km obstacle course designed by British Special Forces (proceeds go to Legacy). There’s things like ice water you have to wade through, electric shocks you have to get past, walls to climb. It’s hardcore
You wouldn’t be working out “just for the sake” of working out – it’s ALL beneficial cross training for derby
And Yes, I have heard about Tough Mudder. They had it here in Melbourne for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Quite a few derby girls for all leagues went in it. One of our girls even completed though she was recovering from Whooping cough! (they breed em tough over here!!)