Boston women's flat track roller derby. Founded 2005. A proud member of the WFTDA.

Fun fact: trying to jam in a two minute drill is pretty effing exhausting. So is practicing knee falls on the whistle, blocking, and most everything else involved in derby. Your heart rate gets up there. If you don’t start derby with a fair amount of cardiovascular fitness, you will most likely need aerobic cross-training to help you keep pushing through three-hour practices and sprint after runaway jammers.

Aerobic exercise includes running, walking, hiking, swimming, biking, rowing, ellipticizing, jazzercising, Zumba-ing, running Harvard Stadium until you want to vom… Basically, anything that gets your heart rate to a place where you can’t speak a ten-word sentence without having to catch your breath.

You may be thinking, “Okay, I’ve got this!” Women tend to be (though not always, obviously) more comfortable with cardio than other forms of training. Most of us have been on an elliptical or treadmill at some point in our lives, even if we’re not avid gym-goers. But cardiovascular training for a sport is a bit different from a jog through the park or lolling on your favorite machine while you watch an episode of Dr. Who on your iPad.

Choose your weapon

First, it’s important to consider what type of cardiovascular training you’re doing. Especially when you get into multiple derby practices per week, you have to be careful not to overtax the muscles you’ll use while skating, or further muscle imbalances that can lead to injury. Here are some things to consider when choosing your cross-training method:

Running – Everybody knows how to run, right? And it’s pretty similar to sprinting after somebody during a scrimmage. Makes sense that running would be a good option for cross training for derby, right? Not so fast—not all running is created equal, and some may hinder your skating. Think of it this way: The front of your legs (the quadriceps), the muscles that flex your hip, and calves all get a lot of work while skating. Interestingly, these muscles are also used a lot when you’re running on a treadmill, because your body is trying to lift your legs up to keep up with the moving belt; conversely, if you run outside, you tend to use more of the opposing muscle groups (like your butt) to help propel yourself forward. More butt action = happier derby playing. Your best bet? Run outside, particularly with some hills along the way (which give you even more posterior chain involvement). If you do have to run inside (hey, it’s been effing cold out lately—I don’t blame you)—make sure to jack up the incline to at least 2% (if not more) to better simulate outdoor running and keep your legs healthy for skating. (Okay, so I wrote this paragraph, and then the next morning,  was released, explaining that a biomechanics research found a lot of what we thought about treadmill running is wrong. So take everything with a grain of salt. Except for the stuff about hills.  Run on hills. They’re good for your butt.)

Biking – A great low-impact option for improving your cardiovascular fitness; like running, going outside is probably better for your body than staying inside. Biking does have a tendency of tightening up the hip flexors, so be wary if that’s a problem spot for you normally. That said, a good spin class is a great option for getting your interval training on (more about interval training in a second).

Elliptical – Another low-impact option if your body’s not too fond of running. Just keep in mind that unlike a treadmill, which forces you to maintain a certain pace, it’s easy to start slacking off as your body gets tired on the elliptical. Pay attention to your strides or repetitions per minute and try to keep up a consistent pace. Also, even if the machine tells you that you’ve been burning a zillion calories, don’t believe it: the numbers are very skewed. Judge how hard you’re working by how you feel—if you can only say a few words at a time without catching your breath, than you’re working hard. If it’s easy to carry a conversation with your derby wife on the next machine over, you’re probably not burning 1000 calories per hour.

Stepmill – Or better yet, stadiums. A lot of our league members will run up and down the stairs of the Harvard stadium. Nothing gets your heart pumping and your butt muscles firing like running up and down stairs. No matter how in shape you are, running up stairs will challenge you.

Plyometrics and such – One of the best ways to get your heart working is to do a bunch of different quick movements that get your heart rate up—things like jumping rope, hopping on one foot, squats at a very fast pace, swinging kettlebells, etc. String a bunch of fast-paced exercises together, and you’ll end up with the best possible cardio workout for your body: one that takes you through various movement patterns and speeds that keep your body guessing.

And then what?

Once you figure out what kind of aerobic training appeals to you, you’ll want to figure out a plan of action that will benefit you most. There are a few approaches to cardiovascular training, each with different purposes.

Choose the method of cardiovascular training based on what you need help with in derby– If you’re struggling to make it through your red tape practices without a lot of breaks on the sidelines, then working on your overall endurance will help the most. In that case, you’ll aim to do steady, moderate-intensity exercise of your choice a couple days outside of derby practice, building up from twenty to thirty minutes of training towards an hour or so. Just try to keep your heart rate up to a level where it’s difficult to speak more than a sentence without catching your breath.

If you’re fine getting through the duration of practice, but can’t catch up with the opposing jammer when she’s skating away from the pack, you may want to try some high intensity interval training (HIIT): sprint/jump/what-have-you as hard as you can for thirty seconds to a minute, recover for twice that time, then repeat for a total of ten or twenty minutes. (Note that interval training actually helps with increasing overall endurance as well, but if you can’t maintain moderate-intensity activity for a half hour, then HIIT may not be the best option to start.)

Finally, consider how much training you should be doing. Your practices will definitely help with your cardiovascular fitness, so plan accordingly. If you’re going to one day of practice, you probably want to have at least two days of cardiovascular training. If you’re going to two practices, you could probably have anywhere between one to four, three practices would merit between one and three days of training, and so on.

Some folks will do both practice and cardio on the same day; while there’s nothing wrong with this method of training, it’s taxing on the body and isn’t something you jump into immediately. You want to make sure you slowly build up your quantity of exercise over time—a good rule of thumb is only increase your work load by about 10% per week on average. Thus, if this week you did two two-hour practices and then two 45-minute cardio sessions (a total of 330 minutes), you could safely add another half hour session in the following week. Always listen to how your body feels: if you’re extremely fatigued, have a hard time sleeping (or sleep all the time), find your appetite has changed, etc, then it’s time to take some rest.

But wait! There’s more! Next time we’ll talk about agility training and the nuances of training that bridge the gap from girl-who-kind-of-likes-to-skate to athlete.

Last time on Diary of a Redliner, we talked about cross-training– specifically strength-training– with the help of a shirtless dude. Today marks the second segment in this once-in-a-while series, in which we talk about how to make sure your appendages move in the directions they’re supposed to.  Hooray for flexibility training!

What is flexibility?  A lot of times we talk about it simply as “stretching.”  When you’re not flexible, you might call yourself, “tight.”  Over in fitness-professional-land, we talk about flexibility in terms of “joint range of motion” and “muscle elasticity.”  The terms sound about like what they mean– joint range of motion has to do with how well your joints move in the directions they’re supposed to, and muscle elasticity means how much a muscle can stretch through it’s full range of motion.  The two can be related (ie, an inelastic muscle can prevent a joint from moving properly), but they can occur independently as well (for instance, a joint may also be impeded because one of the muscles around it doesn’t work hard enough to move the joint properly.)

You’re going to run into a couple different flexibility issues as you skate more.  First, you’ll notice that you may not have the joint range of motion to perform certain moves, like mohawks (skating sideways, with your feet turned out) or even the basic skater stance, because certain muscles are always shortened/inelastic (read: tight), thereby pulling your body out of proper alignment and messing with your skating mojo. In this situation, you’ll want to work on stretching the problem muscles for thirty seconds at least three times a week (and after practice) to help them fully lengthen.

Second, you’ll notice that certain muscles get tighter because of skating, and need to be stretched regularly to correct the imbalance. For instance, your right butt and hip muscles will get tight from pushing to the side with the right foot, and will need to be stretched to keep your pelvis from getting misaligned and, therefore, keep lower back and knees happy.

Below I’ve illustrated a few stretches that are necessary for every skaters’ cross-training repertoire.  I’ve highlighted the areas where you should feel the stretch in red.

The Stretches Every Derby Girl Should Do:

Hip flexor stretch - Get into a half-kneeling position.  Squeeze the butt of the back leg to push that hip forward– you should feel it along the front of the hip.  Deepen the stretch by reaching up with the arm on that same side.

Quadriceps stretch - Pull one heel up behind you. Keep your knee from floating away to the side of your body and squeeze your butt to keep your hips extended.  You should feel this in the front of your thigh.

Piriformis stretch – Lie on the ground.  Cross one ankle over the opposite knee.  Pull the bottom leg to your chest.  You should feel this in the butt of the top leg.

Hamstring stretch - You probably know a bunch of ways to stretch the back of your leg.  The best way to really isolate it is to actually bring your knee of the leg you’re trying to stretch towards your chest with the leg bent; then attempt to straighten the leg out. Unfolding the leg this way (rather than pulling the leg up from the ground while it’s straight) will help keep you from using your lower back to cheat the stretch– even if you don’t get the leg entirely straight, it’ll get a deeper stretch for the muscle.  If you can’t reach your leg with your hands, then you can use a strap or rope to help pull on your leg.

Calf stretches – Stand in a stagger stance near a wall.  Shift your weight into the front leg, while pressing the heel of your back leg down. 

Chest stretch – Go up to a corner and place your arm on the wall, so both your elbow and shoulder are bent at a 90 degree angle.  Walk forward and turn away from the extended arm. You should feel the stretch in the chest, particularly near the shoulder.

Trapezius stretch – With your face forward, gently pull your head to the side.  Imagine you’re holding a heavy suitcase with the opposite arm.  You’ll feel this in the side of your neck.

Levator Scapula stretch - Similar to the trap stretch, just turn your head so you face the direction you’re pulling.  You’ll feel the stretch more along the back of your neck. Heaven.

You may have heard at this point that holding stretches before a workout is useless or even harmful. Let me clarify: That’s sort of true.  Holding a muscle in a stretched position, called “static stretching,” causes the muscle to relax and reduces the amount of work it can do for about an hour after the stretch.  Thus, it’s probably not the best idea to stretch your quadriceps along the front of your thigh and then try to go do a bunch of squats, which use the quadriceps to drive the movement.

That said, sometimes a muscle is way too short and working too hard, which throws off the exercise—in a squat, that might be the hip flexors or the calf muscles.  Stretching the muscles that are overactive and starting off too short can actually help maintain better alignment for the movement because you want those muscles to be less powerful than they usually are.

Conversely, sometimes muscles are tight but shouldn’t be stretched—for instance, the muscles of the lower back will often activate to stabilize the hips and spine if the glutes and interior abdominal muscles aren’t working well enough.  In this case, you’ll find that no matter how much you stretch the muscle in question, it always stays tight and you can’t move the full range of motion that you should be able to.  This situation usually indicates that some other muscles need to be stronger; until they start working as hard as they need to, the other muscles will continue to overwork and stay tight.  Think that’s happening for you? Go back to my strength-training article and do the exercises I listed.

You Want Me to Do What With That Tennis Ball?

A lesser known form of flexibility training is self-myofascial release (SMR). When stretching, you release muscle tension by pulling on it until the muscle relaxes and lengthens.  With SMR, you apply pressure to the muscle until knots in the fascia (the saran-wrap-y tissue surrounding the muscle) release. Most often this type of work is done with giant foam rolls, but it can also be done with tennis balls, golf balls, god-awful knobbly things, etc.  Denser or deeper muscles often need smaller, harder objects (That’s what she said!), while more superficial muscles will need a softer implement.  In other words, you may find to really work on your butt, you may need to sit on a tennis ball, but for your calves, one of the foam rollers at your gym (or floating around the fort) will be fine. You apply pressure to the painful knots in your muscles for thirty to ninety seconds, when the tension usually releases. SMR is great for areas that are difficult to stretch or lengthen, like the IT Band along the side of the leg. SMR can be performed daily, and is actually great to do before you workout because it helps calm down overactive muscles.

Although I think SMR is fantastic for most people, I really recommend it if you’re someone who’s experiencing tight muscles when skating, but actually have full range of motion when at rest.  What’s that mean?  You may find that you can’t rotate your hip much when you’re skating, or you lean over a lot more than you should, but the second your skates are off and you go to stretch, you have to seriously contort yourself, do splits, or perform other yogic feats to feel any sort of stretch in the muscle.  In that case, your muscle may be long enough, but overactive— SMR will be more helpful in getting the muscle to calm the [expletive deleted] down.

Once you find a foam roller (available at most sporting goods’ stores, as well as the weird little massaging chair store below the gym where I work and, of course, the interwebs), here are some ways to make it useful.

Calf rolling – Sit on the ground.  Put your calves on the foam roller.  You can add pressure by crossing one leg over the other or lifting the rest of your body off the ground (or, if you enjoy pain, both).

IT Band - The IT band is a web of fascia that runs from your hip to your knee along the side of your leg.  You lie sideways on the foam roller, the bottom leg straight. Then loop the top leg over it, so the foot is on the ground.  Lift the bottom foot of the ground.  If you want to add pressure, stack your legs.  You’ll usually feel knots around the hip area, mid-thigh, and near the knee.

Piriformis - The piriformis is a finicky little muscle deep inside your butt.  The sciatic nerve runs through it, so when the piriformis is overactive, you can feel pain all down your leg and into your back.  To roll it, you sit on the foam roller, one ankle crossed over the other knee. Put the opposite hand on the top knee. Tip towards the hip of the top leg.

Quadriceps – Lie face down.  Roll on the front of your thighs, with your feet off the ground.  You can cross one leg over the other to apply more pressure.  Usually you’ll feel knots in the middle of the thigh and by the knee.

Hip Flexor- Lie in a similar position as with the quads, but lift one knee up to the side.  The other leg will remain straight.  Roll along the top of the thigh, right below the hip bone (the ASIS joint, for you anatomy nerds).  Swipe the straight leg around like a windshield wiper to find other sore spots.

Adductors (inner thigh) - Still lying face-down, straddle the foam roller, with the roller at a slight angle so it’s perpendicular(ish) to the leg you’re rolling.  Yes, rolling your inner thigh looks inappropriate. How else do you expect to make friends at the gym? You’re welcome.

Remember, even if stretching and foam rolling seems like a waste of time, it’s not– it’s just as important as strength training in a derby player’s regimen.  Flexibility training helps prevent injury (always good) and helps you use your muscles  more effectively, so you become a better derby player.  And we all want to be better derby players, right?  (Unless you’re just reading this blog to look at my pretty stick figures.  I totally understand.)

Next time on Kat’s Really Long Monologues About Cross-Training: Get Your Ass Off the Elliptical and Do Some Useful Cardio.