Derby Burpee

Alternative names: sonsabitches
Objective: endurance and balance
Typical length of drill: 3 sets for two minutes each. 10 second break between sets
Materials needed: Full derby gear and whistle for the leader
Skill level required: Pass the fresh meat/level 1 test. There will be some falling, hopping and jumping.

Description: Inside referee's are really the only people that skate the full 60 minutes of a bout. The jam ref's really need to be in tip top shape in order to keep up with the jammers. There's nothing worse than a jam ref getting winded and lagging behind, thus missing out on points and penalties. This drill is a re-work of the classic burpee excercise. If you don't know what they are check out this video:



Make a circle. Put yourself in the middle. Start off in derby stance and start picking up your feet, alternating between left and right. Sort of like running in place. Get those knees high. When you blow the whistle everyone does a double knee fall then goes down into a four point (knees and elbows). Then immediately get to your feet and start running in place again. You can take it to the next level with a short jump when you get to your feet. Blow the whistle at random intervals. This really gets your heart rate up. See if you can go for two minutes. See if you can go longer. Take a short break and get back into it.

Additional notes: If you (as the leader) want to do this drill too then yell "down". I tell the group that the one that does it the best during the second time gets to come to the middle and lead the third. Make sure they're landing on all four wheels. It doesn't take much to twist an ankle or worse.

Guest blogging: Brawl-n-Order

All Derby Drills is excited to present our next guest blogger: Brawl-n-Order, Head Coach of State College Area Roller Derby (S.C.A.R. Derby):



Brawl-n-Order

"I've always tried to keep myself busy playing sports.  Soccer primarily.  From little league, as a teenager in Germany, a university team, to playing on the weekends, soccer has been the constant.  I've played under a lot of coaches and have taken something from each one of them  From drill sergeants to math teachers, they've all contributed something to my coaching "style".  As the legs grow older and the gut grows bigger I've picked up some other less "intense" sports.  I've been playing racquetball competitively for 10 years now, travelling to tournaments and coaching new players.  I'll do a 5K race every now and then just to prove I can still do it without the help of an ambulance.  And then there's derby.

I can't say I've been a hardcore skater for a long time as some other bloggers here.  Sure I skated when I was a kid.  Everyone did.  I've done the skateboard thing (which lasted a whole 6 months).  Hell I even bought a pair of knock off Roller Blades when they were popular in the mid nineties.  But they were very uncomfortable so that didn't last long.

Fast forward to 2010.  A friend and I were drinking beer one night and we started to talk about Roller Derby.  We found out there was a league in nearby Harrisburg and we made plans to go.  I started to watch some videos of their bouts on YouTube.  Now, being as long in the tooth as I am, I had some preconceived notions about what Derby actually is.  I remember watching it on TV and it was a no-holds-barred free for all of big haired ladies knocking the snot out of each other.  What I found out was totally different.  Where's the banked track?  Rules?  There are rules?  What happened to all the big hits?

A short time later two co-workers found a Craig's List ad about starting a derby league in the area and asked if I could give them a ride to the rink.  No problem.  Maybe I'd get a few free beers out of the deal.  Five people showed up to that first meeting, us three and a married couple.  They asked if I wanted to be a ref.  No problem I said.  They asked if I could skate.  Wait, what?  Ref's have to skate?

That first practice I remember strapping on a pair of quads for the first time since 1986 at the Colorado Springs Skate City.  Or was it 1990 at the Rollaway in Dallas?  Anywho, it had been a VERY long time, but I didn't have as hard a time as I thought I would, and before I knew it I was falling, t-stopping, and baseball sliding with the best of them.

Over the past year and some odd months the league has grown to about 40 skaters.  I've coached the fresh meat, stepped in and coached the "vet's" when the head coach needed me, and tried to cobble together a top notch ref crew.  Recently I've decided to focus primarily on the ref aspect.  Drilling, studying, studying, and drilling.  I believe derby ref's should be the same as hockey ref's in that they should be the best skaters out there.  One thing I've noticed since becoming head ref is there is a significant lack of ref specific drills online.  I've used some from All Derby Drills, Zebra Huddle, and the Yahoo Group, but the bulk of them we've made up.  I want to share these with other leagues and sprinkle some endurance drills in.  Nothing worse than a ref sucking wind trying to keep up with the derbiers he's officiating."

Over the next few weeks Brawl-n-Order will be posting referee drills so invest in your referees and help them become great at their jobs so that you in turn can become great skaters!

Where's the Pack? II

Alternative names: Drop It

Objective: This drill teaches pack definition skills and identifying whether skaters are in or out of play.

Typical length of drill: 10 mins at a time

Materials needed: A regulation-sized track.  Cones, ideally wide and flat ones, you can also use paper plates in two different colors if you have, representing the players.  Tape measure.  Volunteers.
Skill level required: None

Description: A group of people (up to 10) skate on the track in a more or less tight pack formation.  Each one is holding one or more cones (representing the players).  On a whistle everyone drops their cone(s) to the the floor.  Now step off the track and look at the cones.  Pick out one or two participants and let them define the pack.  Pick another one and ask, Who is not in the pack, but still in play?  Who is out of play?  And so on.  Use the tape measure to check.  If a cone lands upside down you can go "What if that player is down?"

Advanced version: Add two cones in a third colour representing the jammers.

Additional notes: This drill was submitted to A.D.D. by Riff Reff of the Stuttgart Valley Rollergirlz but he does not take the credit for it, he states that he has learned this drill from multiple different people.  I like it!

Human Shield Obstacle Course

Alternative names: --

Objective: Team-building; Warm-up; Explosive energy; Agility; Fun

Typical length of drill: 10-15 mins

Materials needed: A full track or just four cones to mark the inside track line; minimum 11 participating skaters

Skill level required: None

Description: In this drill your skaters will make an obstacle course around the track for each other using their bodies.  I'm going to describe how the drill was originally set up by its creator, and then it is up to you to change it so that it suits YOUR needs.  You will need 10 people to volunteer to be the obstacles at the start of the drill, once everyone has gone through the course once you switch the obstacle -persons so that everyone gets to do it at least one time.  Here are the obstacle positions:

• 2 people balled up on the ground as turtles: You will jump over them
• 2 people standing next to each other in a wide stance, making a wall with a narrow space in the middle: You will squeeze your way through the space
• 3 people in a row with legs spread apart widely: You will crawl through the tunnel shaped by their legs
• 1 person standing really close to the inside line: You will jump/leap along the inside line to get by her/him (AND stay in bounds)
• 1 person standing at the end of the course waiting to chase you: You will run away from her/him as fast as you can, until you reach the goal line
• 1 person at the goal line to be the buddy who cheers you on the whole time and high-fives you when you cross it.  After high-fiving the buddy you stay and become the buddy for the next person going through the obstacle course.

Illustration of the set-up. Click to view larger.

This is a team-building activity and a self-esteem booster so the cheerleading buddy at the end is a totally necessary part of the course.  It also teaches the skaters how to be supportive of each other, and even helps some of them to come out of their shells.

CherryF jumps over the turtles

Coco crawls through the tunnel after she's squozen her way through the wall

When we do this with our league, many of our skaters choose to wear their knee pads while going through the course because they get so into it that when they dive (literally) into the tunnel they risk injuring themselves.  People really run through this course :)

Tigre (L) begins to chase Dyna (R) right after she has hopped over Kata (center)

Even though our version here is pretty condensed (only covers half the track) you could totally spread the people out around the track more, and really make your skaters weave around a lot, and force them to use their agility -- in the photos you might notice that the tunnel is located close to the outside line while the wall and the inside blocker are located close to the inside line.  This adds a little bit more challenge to it.  I also like to imagine a huge league doing this with like 50 skaters, all spread out in crazy ways around the track, making like this really intricate obstacle course that involve motions too, like lots of squats and the person going through the course has to wait for a certain moment in the motion to pass/jump/crawl around/behind/under the obstacle.  Perhaps we should create video game -like levels of this drill with increasing difficulty and obstacles in each level.....?

Additional notes: This drill was dreamed up by Team Finland's 2011 assistant coach, Tigre Force (pictured above).  By dreamed up I literally mean that she saw it in front of her as she was going to sleep on a warm July evening in 2011.  Tigre Force will do some guest blogging for us very soon and post other awesome drills that she's into.  She's also got a great little blog of her own called Travelling In the Name of Derby where you can read all about her derby excursions and coaching/skating experiences.

100 Laps

In honor of the 100th (!) drill posted on All Derby Drills, we are skating 100 laps together.

Alternative names: 5 km skate-a-thon

Objective: To build up endurance

Typical length of drill: 20 mins

Materials needed: A WFTDA regulation-size track (or a taped down track that's as close to the measurements as possible, but know that the distance skated might not be accurate in that case)

Skill level required: None

Description: The name says it all: Skate 100 laps.  It sounds like a lot but it's really not, and the skaters will feel proud of themselves after this drill for having been able to complete so many laps.  In this drill, all the skaters skate 100 laps around the track, at their own pace.  The skaters are all in charge of counting their own laps, and once they have finished they take a couple of slow cool down laps and then move to the inside of the track to cheer on their teammates.  IMO the best way to do this is to skate 4 x 25 laps, with a short, 30 second water break in between each set of 25 laps.  This helps skaters stay on track with the counting and keeps them hydrated, plus it gives them achievable goals throughout the drill ("I can totally make it to 25 laps, that's no problem" -- makes it easier mentally to complete the challenge).

If the skaters "skate the diamond" or "the perfect circle" while doing this drill (as in, edging the inside track boundary on the turns and going out to brush the outside track boundary in the middle of the straightway) they will have skated 5.07 km (or 3.15 miles) by the time they finish their 100th lap.

To avoid injury, you may want to have skaters change direction after 50 laps, or run the rest of your practice in the opposite direction.

Additional notes: This is my favorite endurance drill at the moment.  It's so nice to just skate and to focus on just one thing for a change, and when we did this recently we had a stereo playing some fun music to skate to and zone out to.  It was challenging and relaxing at the same time.  A skater even thanked me for this drill after we finished.

I came up with the thought of doing a 100-lap skateathon for a regular practice drill after hearing that a teammate of mine skated 30 km this summer outdoors.  My first thought was "Holy crap! That's crazy awesome!" and then I started to wonder how many km we actually cover in two hours of practice, and how we could probably use an extended skate drill to get skaters on our league to realize that 30 km is an achievable goal (and then we could ALL be crazy awesome).  We all know how to sprint for minimum 25 laps to do well in time trials, so why shouldn't we be able to skate 100 laps in 20 minutes at a normal skating pace?  Thus the 100 Laps -drill was born.  And I've since found out that many leagues have a habit of skating 60-70 laps just for warm-ups so hell, 100 laps is a piece of cake :) and it's a good building block towards being able to skate 30 km in one sitting.

Bus Ride

Alternative names: Finnish Bus Ride

Objective: Conditioning, staying focused, speed control, skating in a low derby stance

Typical length of drill: 10-15 mins

Materials needed: A full track or just a few cones to mark the inside track line, + four cones to use as bus stops

Skill level required: None

Description: Start by setting up your four bus stops on the outside of the track – one cone at each apex and one cone at the very middle of every straightaway.  The skaters split into four equal groups and each group stands at a bus stop when the drill begins.  The coach begins as the bus driver (and it's up to you if you want to stick to one bus driver the whole time or switch it up and have a few of the skaters act as bus drivers too) and the drill starts when the bus driver begins skating around the track.  Naturally, s/he is “sitting” in her/his “chair” as s/he is driving the bus around the track.  The skaters at the bus stops can now start hailing the bus by sticking their arm out.  When the bus driver stops the bus in front of a bus stop the skaters who are at that bus stop can choose to get on the bus or to wait a little bit longer (in this drill the skaters themselves get to decide for how long they will be sitting on the bus).  When the skaters get on the bus they “take a seat” (meaning, they get into the 90° angle squat position, as if actually sitting in a chair) behind the bus driver, two people always next to each other so that there is a double line behind the driver.  Once the passengers are on the bus the bus begins driving.  Everyone on the bus follows the bus driver, whatever she does.  If she comes to another bus stop where other passengers want to get on, the whole bus has to slow down and come to a stop.  If the bus driver speeds up, the whole bus has to speed up.  If the bus driver has to navigate through multiple lanes of traffic, the whole bus has to do so.  The bus driver is in charge and gets to decide what obstacles the bus encounters and at what times, her/his job is to call them out to the rest of the passengers so that they know what to do.  Here are suggestions for the many different things that the bus can do during the bus ride:

• Driving through a tunnel – Everyone squats really really super low so as not to hit the ceiling of the tunnel
• Debris in the road – Everyone jumps over the debris
• Pedestrians or road kill – The bus has to weave around the pedestrians or the road kill
• Local roads – The bus goes really slowly
• Highway – The bus speeds up and goes really fast
• A tree in the middle of the road – Everyone splits up so as to make room for the tree to go through the middle of the bus and then everyone immediately comes together again
• A group of children crossing the street – Everyone weaves around like mad making sure not to hit any of the children in the middle of the road
• Red light / Green light – When the light turns red the bus comes to a halt.  When the light goes green again the bus takes off.

If passengers wish to get off the bus because they feel they can't “stay seated” any longer, they say the word “Pling!” nice and loud so that the bus driver hears them, and then the bus pulls over at the next stop.  At this point anyone who wishes to exit the bus may do so.  I like to tell skaters before doing this drill that when they start feeling like they want to get off the bus because they can't squat any longer, they should try to push themselves to one more bus stop and THEN press the button so that they get that extra benefit of pushing themselves just a little bit further.



An illustrated example of the Bus Ride -drill.  Click the image to view it larger.


I usually end with 5 laps of highway at which time no one is allowed to get on or off the bus (I mean really, how often do you see bus stops on the highway?) so I warn the skaters that it's about to come up in case they want to get back on the bus before it's too late.

If you are lucky and have an off-skates assistant, you can ask this person to throw or place cones (or other things) onto the track in the path of the bus so that all the skaters have concrete obstacles to weave around.  If you have multiple off-skates people at practice you can ask them to be physical pedestrians or road kill or school children for the bus to navigate around.

Additional notes:  I came up with this drill in the spring when I wanted to have a fun drill that felt like a game but also gave our thigh muscles a good workout while at the same time forcing us to practice skating nice and low.  I've done this a few times with a few different groups and it has always been well received.  Because it's a short-ish drill (very effective even if you do it for only 10 minutes) it's also a really great filler – you can plug it in to any small spaces that you may have leftover in your practice schedule.  I like to do this at the end of practice because it's a fun way to end the day, but I've also been known to start practice with this (after regular warm-ups) to get everyone to squat low from the very beginning.  This is a good drill to help skaters who skate too upright.

Feel free to suggest your own fun bus obstacles in the comments -section below!  I know you've got some :)

Two-Point Touch

Alternative names: --

Objective: To practice touching each other as much as possible; to practice effective blocking while going slow; to practice using each others' bodies and senses on the track; to practice team-blocking; to practice communication
Typical length of drill: 15 mins
Materials needed: A WFTDA regulation-size track (or a taped down track that's as close to the measurements as possible)

Skill level required: None, though some skaters may want to use contact in this drill

Description: In this drill skaters will go in groups of three onto the track and work together to block one opponent.  Start by getting all of your skaters into four lines.  Three of the lines are for blockers, and the last line is for the opponent.  The first skater from each blocker line will get onto the track and form a tight-knit group of blockers, and the first skater from the opponent line will start just slightly behind the blockers and try to get by them.  The blockers have one lap in which to work hard to block the opponent and really slow her down.  When the lap is complete they get back into line, making sure that they practice team-blocking 3 out of 4 times, and that they act as the opponent 1 out of 4 times (hence the four lines).  The main idea of this drill is that while they are blocking they should be constantly touching -- a minimum of two points of each blockers' body needs to always be touching another skater.  That could mean you touching someone with both hands, someone else touching you with both hands, or one person touching you with one hand while you touch someone else with your other hand.  Either way, two points on your body should always be touching another blocker.  The blockers are also to use each other, use each others' bodies, and use each others' senses.  That could mean pushing your body off another skater (while remaining in contact with them), holding on to another skater's hips and acting as the group booty while said person is acting as the eyes forward, pushing a teammate's body into the way of the opponent (while still remaining in contact with them, of course) -- basically you use each other and thus all together become one super-human (or super-blocker, really).  While touching each other and using each others' bodies, verbal communication is key.  The blockers should be constantly telling each other where the opponent is and what direction they are going in.  When skaters practice using both verbal and physical communication at the same time like this, it really improves their teamwork and team-blocking skills.

An illustration of the Two-Point Touch drill.  Click the image to view it larger.

I like to tell all the skaters before we begin that this is a blocker drill, NOT a jammer drill, that when you act as the opponent make it challenging for your teammates but not impossible.  Everyone should be learning how to team-block and get an opportunity to practice this skill thoroughly.

Then, after we've done this for about 5-10 mins and I see that everyone is getting it and is doing a good job, I tell the skaters that when they play the part of the opponent they should go all out and really make the blockers work for it.  Since you will encounter amazing opponents in your inter-league games it is imperative that you use practice-time to actually practice playing against people who give you a good run for your money.




Photo by Sean Murphy

 

Photo by Sean Murphy


Here Team Finland is using this drill in actual game-play against Team Sweden, successfully holding back the Swedish jammer.  Notice how all four blockers are touching a teammate with at least two points of their bodies (including a boob hold in the first picture, tehee).

Additional notes: This is by far my favorite drill at the moment.  I came up with this after seeing the London Rollergirls play against the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls in London a few months ago.  I noticed how extremely effective RMRG was at keeping the LRG jammer or goat behind them by getting into a tight group of three + blockers who just constantly were touching and grabbing and pulling and using each other.  I have always been taught and known the importance of touching in derby, but RMRG's display of touching was really what drove home the point for me.  I can honestly say that after the first time we did this drill we immediately saw improvement in the next scrimmage/pre-gaming drill.  And after having done this (and variations of it) a few times now, our teamwork has progressed tremendously.  Though this drill highlights team-blocking while going slowly, the skills learned apply to fast derby as well, and what we learned going slowly in this drill has helped our fast game a great deal too.

Finally I would also like to suggest that after completing this drill (or after you've completing a few rounds of it) you ask everyone how they felt when they were playing the part of the opponent.  Was it frustrating?  What parts of the body did they have to use to try to get by?  Leagues who do not practice a lot of team-blocking will be surprised by how effective constant touching, grabbing and pulling is, and how much more difficult it becomes to get through the pack when the opponents are really good at team-blocking.  I also like to ask my blockers how they felt doing this, what they felt as they were going through this drill.  It really can be an eye-opener for some.