Freestyle Skater (RSS)
Naomi’s Workshop Rocked!
Dennis, Phila-Jeff & I did Naomi’s workshop this weekend, and it was great! I’m very happy that we were able to organize it on such short notice. Over the two days, I got the basics down for tons of tricks. Before I could just do Crazy and Mabrouk, but now I have learned Volte, Italian, Nelson, Crazy Sun, X, Wiper and the cool Sweep move from Naomi’s video as well as the front stroll, back stroll, barrel roll and a handful of freestyle (non-slalom) moves that I don’t know the names of (one was the grapevine, but Evan had already taught me that). Better still, Naomi taught us some good tricks for mixing moves together, using either Crazy or Mabrouk as a “soup base” to throw other moves into. That way you always know what you’ll do before and after a move, which takes a lot of the mental block out of doing a real freestyle run.
I do them all pretty slowly, but I have the basic technique down, so all I need to do is practice. This is good because I was starting to get bored practicing only the crazy and mabrouk. I think the Sweep and the Volte are my favorite moves.
So as a teacher, Naomi does an excellent job (just be ready for some deprecating humor directed at you). She breaks the move down to its most basic part, and has you practice that over and over. It seems at first to not be important, but before she comes back to you, you’ll have partially discovered the next step, and she only has to correct you instead of show you from scratch what to do next.
I’ve had many good slalomers try to “teach” me moves (and forget about trying to learn from just videos), but I’ve always found it hard to wrap my head around what was going on. Naomi takes complicated freestyle moves and makes them simple.
Naomi also brought her friend Stacy from seattle. Stacy basically learned all this stuff at Naomi’s workshop last year, and has been practicing them, so she was useful to have around to show me moves when Naomi was busy, and also to give me hope to get better in just a year (in time for the North American Freestyle Battle!)
Mad props to Denni & Jeff for doing this workshop with me, and thanks so much to Naomi & Stacy for coming down. Also thanks to all the local philadelphia skaters whom we joined (with Naomi & Stacy) for two city skates. And special thanks to those of you who came by the workshop on sunday to check it out, especially Christophe’s daughter, who drew a cute little portrait of Naomi.
While this is certainly a very positive review of Naomi’s workshops (if you’re learning slalom, I’d say its a required experience), I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that Naomi was also a really cool person. I had the chance to hang out with her wednesday and thursday while she was visiting Evan and the Union Square Crew. I’m looking forward to putting the New York/SanFran Free Style Battle’s for next year.
Naomi’s Web Site: www.skatefreestyle.com