What Roller Skating Skills to Practice This Month - June 2024

Hello and happy June. Ah, it is my favorite month. It is my birthday month, which means I am almost 32 years old. Very exciting. And this is by far my favorite month because I love summer. I love the heat. Baseball is in full swing and it means that we are so much closer to my next favorite month, December, which is still a ways away, but we're just that much closer. So everything is good. I am so excited for the summer. I'm so excited for all of the skating that we are going to do. And for this month, I'm going to walk you through what I recommend practicing and working on, just like every month. I build out a practice schedule for you. And all of the videos that I talk about can be found within the memberships on my website, that nicolefiori.com or with a membership on my YouTube channel. I also offer the foundations course on my website. That is an A to Z roadmap of everything I recommend. Every skater knows, and it perfectly guides you into everything you will want to learn on skates, no matter what discipline, what style it is, your foundation, the membership has hundreds of videos to take you anywhere you want to go on skates, drills, skills, choreography. It has it all. I also offer private lessons online and in person. And if there are still tickets available to our monthly workshop in person, snag a I hold a workshop once a month in person and it is always such a great time. All right, let's get into what I recommend practicing this month. Last month, I shortened our practice a little bit so that we could really, really focus in on a few very specific things. And I got a lot of great feedback on that. So we are going to be doing the same thing this month, of course, all new things, but the same structure as last month, week one, we are going to start off skates this week with our Neil stand up video. Now I hate falling, but we have to be realistic. It does happen in skating and in life and learning to get up safely from the ground, building that strength is extremely important in skating and in general life. So skating is a full body workout. We use every single part of our body and getting up from the ground also uses every single part of our body. So we're going to practice this over and over on both feet, but this is part of the mind body soul section, this workout video. So it is 10 minutes or less. All of those workout videos are less than 10 minutes. So they are perfect to sprinkle in throughout the day and throughout the week. So start this week with the Neil standup video. Our main skill this week is sidewalk skating. I have been skating outside a lot recently, and especially during this time of year, I absolutely love skating outside, but skating outside can be very tricky. Even if you do not like skating outside, if you're skating inside, we use this technique of staggering our feet in order to make sure we are as safe as possible. If we hit something on the ground, if you have your feet staggered in this position, you will be so much safer. And that is what we are really focusing on in this sidewalk skating video. I also have a boardwalk skating video. I know a lot of people love skating at the beach, but honestly, boardwalks can be kind of sketchy. So we have to really develop this technique and make it muscle memory for our body to just get into this position and maintain the position. That is honestly harder than getting into the position, maintaining that muscle. To hold the position is very, very important. Now our practice this week is what do I do with my arms or what do I do with my hands? This is a question that I get a lot. So I made a skills video on it. Our arms are very important for our stability. Now, as you progress in your skating and you become more of an intermediate skater, you may find that you are using your arms to guide you into your movement. I start from the bottom and build my way up. Then something switches when you're in more of an intermediate state where you can actually work your way down and your arms will guide your feet. So what to do with your hands? I know it sounds kind of like a silly question, especially when we focus so much on our feet and on our legs, but our arms are extremely important. We can't leave those behind. So check out that video. Okay. Onto week two, we have brand new choreography to Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. If you follow me on social media, you probably know I am obsessed with this song. I am constantly singing it. I skate to it all the time. I love it so much. I also love coffee and love espresso. So it's very on brand. This choreography, I am very proud of it. It is so fun to do. It flows so nicely and it is the perfect amount of challenging. It doesn't have a ton of skills that you need to learn beforehand. So it's really great for every skill level. The beginner intermediate flows directly into the advanced. So if you learn the full choreography, you have a full routine. The beginner intermediate does use our core a lot to stabilize us and holds for brief moments, one foot balance. So we also have that and a cross in front, but those are really the main skills that are used in the beginner intermediate. So I highly recommend checking it out. And it is so much fun because of that stability. Our practice this week is abs. Now I usually put a skill here, but I'm putting a drill and this is off skates. But if you want to add extra weight to just about any exercise, go ahead and keep your skates on it. They are literally a weight at the bottom of your feet. So it just makes things more challenging. Our abs are extremely important and it's not all about pretty muscle and making ourselves look good. It's about holding ourselves up and holding ourselves together. Our core is extremely important in skating. So I want you to check out this abs video. It is pretty muscle and it is useful muscle week three. We are going to start with drills six, which is our hip strength. Now I'm talking about our stabilization, our core, all of that, we cannot forget about our hips. When we are skating, we use our free legs a lot to balance, to add some style and our hips are very important in that step. Now I have started running recently and I have noticed that my left hip and the muscle all around that is not nearly as strong as my right hip. So this is just a reminder to do all of these workouts, all of these skills on both sides. I know I say that all the time and I need to listen to it more often because my right free leg lifts up a lot because in artistic skating, we go around to the left. So my right leg and around my right hip is extremely strong, but we rarely lift our left side. And I am just now realizing this as I'm starting to run. So hip strength, very important. I will be doing this drills video a lot this month with you to make sure that my hip strength is improving. All right. Our skill this week is the corkscrew spin. This is one of my favorite skills. It is a spin, but it is realistically a deep outer forward edge. So a corkscrew spin can be used in a lot of different things. It can be used in dance moves. Like say you want to go from a downtown, you want to take a moment and get into crazy legs. You can do a corkscrew in the middle of it. You can use it to turn around really quickly. It is a really, really good skill to have in your back pocket. And like I said, it is simply a deep outer forward edge. Now, when we spin in any spin, we want to make sure our full body is working together. So if you feel one part of your body getting ahead of the other, you will really notice it in the corkscrew spin because like a corkscrew, everything needs to turn together. So if you feel anything pulling, take a step back, make sure your technique is correct, and make sure you're moving every single part of your body together. That is much easier said than done, but I believe we can do it. And our practice this week is our strong outer forward edges. So like I said, the corkscrew spin is simply a very strong outer forward edge. Now, this outer forward edge video is probably the most important video in all of my membership. We use our outer forward edges a lot when we're just pushing striding down a sidewalk or wherever you are in a skating rink, you are using your outer forward edges. So if you don't understand your edges quite yet, that is okay. This video will really help explain it. And I want to challenge you to use that hip strength to lift your free leg when you are doing these strong outer forward edges. Our last week, week four, we have our advanced choreography to Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. This choreography is more challenging than the beginner intermediate and does have quite a few more skills. Now, like I mentioned, the beginner intermediate flows directly into the advanced. There is like not even a beat in between. The beginner intermediate ends, you go directly into the advanced. Now, when this happens, if you're not quite ready for the advanced, it's totally okay. You can pick up the beginner intermediate again to really practice it and do it twice in a row. But if you want to go into the advanced, I do highly recommend checking that out no matter what skill level you are, because you would be surprised at what you can actually do and what I can kind of trick you into doing within choreography. That's the beautiful thing about choreography. It is such good practice, and it's like my secret power to make you progress quickly. So check this out no matter what skill level you are. Our advanced, I'm going to read it off of my notes. Our advanced uses a sort of inner forward three turn, one foot balance, hip strength, a cross and back, a cross in front, toe manuals, a corkscrew spin, and a pivot. I go all the way down for the pivot, which that's kind of foreshadowing into what we are going to work on in the next few months. We have a few new pivots coming up, but all of those skills can be done for all levels. You just have to ease your way into it. So if you want to make the song a little bit slower, do a different song, take a few moves out that you're not quite ready for, play with it, make it your own. And I hope you enjoy that. Like I said, I'm very proud of this choreography. It is so much fun to do. And our practice this week is the outer forward loop. So we did a corkscrew spin. We did strong outer forward edges. Now I want you to really use your strength and time how deep you can get those edges. A loop, there are loops on the ground and there is a jump loop. This is not the jump. This is the one that you draw a loop on the ground with your skate. So you go into it and you come out of it on a more shallow outer forward edge, but in the middle of the outer forward loop, you have to deepen that edge. And you have to use that hip strength to bring your free leg through. So check this video out. The outer forward loop is a very important skill in artistic skating. And it is very fun to do on camera. I actually do it a lot when I'm just flowing out on the basketball court and stuff like that. I love the way that it, like you can ease your way into it and then you can bring the free leg around really quick. It is just one of the most beautiful skills I think you can do. The Bauer is probably still my favorite and most beautiful, but the outer forward loop is it's up there. So please check that out. Like I said, all of these videos can be found within the membership on that nicolefiori.com or with a membership on YouTube. And I am here to help. So please let me know if you have any questions or if you need any extra help, and I hope you have a great month. Bye.