Diary of a Redliner
Diary of a Redliner: Breathing hard isn’t just for the bedroom anymore.
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 … Continue reading
Diary of a Redliner: Why derby players should put a tennis ball in their butt
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! Continue reading
Diary of a Redliner: There’s more to life than skating.
At some point, every young derby player has to take off her skates. You may convince your roommates to let you practice turning toe stops in the kitchen, or your employer that you’ll be much more efficient travelling between cubicles on eight wheels, or to get your significant other to let you wear them to bed (he likes to keep his feet outside of the covers anyway! What’s it matter to him?) But no, really. You do need to take them off. You have to cross train. Continue reading
Diary of a Redliner: Eat well. Play well.
For the first couple months of the red line program, after practice I would get dinner with a couple of my teammates, then go home and fall asleep promptly at 6pm. Occasionally I would try to keep myself up to a more reasonable hour (like 8pm), but I’d usually spend the time staring at food blogs in a zombie-like stupor, unable to move from the giant armchair in the corner of my bedroom. I’d sleep for roughly twelve hours, and the next day would progress as normal.
Then, inevitably, sometime mid-afternoon the day after practice, I would become overwhelmingly ravenous. As in, that-pound-tub-of-Trader-Joe’s-peanut-butter-cups-is-totally-a-single-serving-right? level of hungry.
The pattern was unmistakable.
See, a gal can get through a typical workout—a run around the reservoir or an hour of strength-training—without worrying about much besides hydration. Since I’ve never had major fitness goals beyond general improvement of strength and endurance, I’ve never had to get too complicated with my eating habits. I’d make sure I ate within a couple hours before my workout for the day, and then the next time I ate would be whenever I got hungry again.
While that method was enough to get me through an hour of working out, or even the occasional two-hour workout, it clearly wasn’t passing muster for the three-hour skate-stravaganza that was red line practice. I chatted with my coworker, a registered dietician, and then rooted around the internet to figure out what the latest information on exercise nutrition suggested, which I will now present to you, dear readers, so there isn’t a dearth of peanut butter cups because a bunch of new skaters have swarmed Trader Joe’s. (And don’t try to tell me Reese’s are the same.) Continue reading
Diary of a Redliner: Break it down!
You can learn a lot of new skills in three hours. No, let me rephrase: You can cover a lot of new skills in three hours. Every Training and Rec Team practice includes loads of new information. I know, that … Continue reading
