Categories:
My skating news
Website redesign
You've probably noticed that I've redesigned my website. It took a while, but the original design was only intended to be temporary whilst I worked out how my site was going to grow. Everything, hopefully, that was on the site before is still here, although it may have moved around a bit.
I like the new layout and hope that it'll stay, at least in some form close to how it is now. I appreciate any feedback, so contact me if you think there's something that could be done better.
London Freewheel
What a great day that was! On the 21st September a few skaters went and joined the thousands of cyclists as we were given, pretty much, free access to some of London: The Sky Sports London Freewheel. Whilst we were supposed to all meet up at The Wellington Arch, in the middle of Hyde Park Corner roundabout, for about 1pm, it seems that there was a bit of a communication break down! Several groups of skaters were out on the course early, some left with us, some didn't go all the way round, but everyone seems to have had a pretty good day.
There were some wonderful opportunities to really skate, especially along the full length of Embankment, but the highlight for me was shooting through the tunnel under Blackfriars bridge on the return leg: three of us went through almost flat out, passing the cyclists and, apparently, setting off the speed limit warning sign (we're pretty sure that was because of the number of moving objects in the tunnel not our speed as we weren't near 30mph)!
A big thanks to everyone who organised this event. It's nice to see that there is a public and, to some extent, political effort to increase the number of cyclists (and hopefully skaters too). My advice to the organisers of next years event: can we have a proper loop, rather than a return journey along the same path?
Students Area
The students area of my website has been updated to include notes on the Street Skater course I'm going to be running along with some added content on various skills.
If you're a student of mine you can use your login to find out if the accessible skills have been updated and, if your not, you can find out what you're missing by visiting the public page to see what's up there. If you want to gain access to the students area you need to arrange a private lesson with me or attend one of my group courses.
Teaching Times Change
Well it looks like the evenings are finally drawing in on us! Unfortunately this means that teaching people to skate becomes a real problem: not being able to see what you are doing makes it really difficult for me to provide you with advice. So, I'm afraid that this means the available teaching times for private lessons are going to have to be changed to take account of this.
| Day | Location | Times |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Brighton | 11am-6pm |
| Tuesday | London/Brighton | 12pm-6pm |
| Wednesday | London/Brighton | 12pm-6pm |
| Thursday | London/Brighton | 12pm-6pm |
| Friday | Brighton | 2pm-6pm |
| Saturday | London/Brighton | 11am-6pm |
| Sunday | London | 11am-5pm |
Skating Events
Santa Skate
It looks like the date for the best skate of the year has been picked: the Santa Skate 2008 will be on the 13th December.
If there is one reason to learn to skate it's this one. I've skated this for the last two years and I can honestly say that it's one of the highlights of the street skating year: several hundred Santa's skating through London continues to surprise and delight the Christmas shoppers.
Proceeds from the purchase of the costumes (my advice: bring a proper belt as the ones that come with the outfits have been known to break) goes directly into the running the LondonSkate. Although people have turned up in their own outfits, or without an outfit at all, please do try to support your street skates by buying a Santa costume.
If you want to do this skate but are worried about your skills, or have never skated before, then take a look at my Santa Skate course which will give you everything you need. I might even throw in mince pies if I can find any.
Stuff seen on the WWW
I've been wandering around the WWW looking for interesting skating articles and videos; so here's the best I've seen in recent weeks. Note that I am not responsible for the content of external third party websites or videos; some music and commentary found in such videos may contain language of an offensive nature.
If you have seen anything you think is interesting, contact me and I'll consider putting it into future newsletters.
The Double Push
There's a speed skating technique that people talk about called the "Double Push". In normal skating you set your skate down straight ahead and then it is pushed out to the side. With the double push your skate goes in the opposite direction first, then shoots back underneath you and out. For instance, the right skate gets set down, then does a small push to the left, before being pushed out to your right side. The video below gives a wonderful view of this technique:
For anyone thinking of attempting this technique I'd advise you to get your stride 3 perfected first, otherwise you'll probably be generating more effort than speed. But get it right, and you do feel significantly quicker.
AIL 2008 World Championships
Amateur inline skaters tearing it up around Woodward West. Best keep an eye out for the section 2:00-2:30 minutes in because there are some pretty impressive tricks. For those of you making videos this is a good example of how to do it: interesting angles, long cuts, and a music track that really works.
Found via rollernews.com.
Stephane Alfano in Barcelona
This is one of the most impressive aggressive skating videos I've seen recently, especially for the back flip over the fence at the start and the grind down the spiral wall at the end. Awesome!
Found via rollernews.com.
The Rarest Of Aggressive Skaters
This video is of something you don't see that often: a woman aggressive skater. Inline skating, in itself, isn't the sole domain of men (check out Naomi Grigg, who's one of the worlds top slalom skaters) but it seems fairly unusual to see women in aggressive skating. Her name is Chynna Welerstall and, to be honest, she's got skillz (apparently that's how all the cool kids spell it nowadays!).
Found via rollernews.com.
Other instructors
In November Naomi Grigg is running a 4-day slalom workshop as a test of some of her ideas. It's fully booked but I was lucky enough to get onto the course so there'll be a write up for the December newsletter. I know she's planning to make this into a full workshop at some point so, hopefully, I'll be able to let you know when that happens and the write up may be of use to some of you.
