Archive for the ‘New Trick’ Category
Dec 12, 2006
This past weekend I travelled to Bremen, Germany to attend the first Freestyle Slalom Festival. It was a great event with a huge turnout. I’m sure it will become an annual freestyle spot now. The weekend was a great balance of competitions and just doing slalom with everyone when no official competitions were underway. Practicing with all the big names like Seba, Igor, JB, Phil and Nathan was worth the trip alone, never mind that I actually won the amateur battle! Here’s my write up of the weekend.
We did tons of skating over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A small group of skaters showed up Friday night including Seba and Igor, so our small group got to take advantage of some personal training time with the two of them. This totally rocked! Seba worked on heeling and toe-heel spinning with me, both of which I was able to put into my battle runs thanks to his help.
On saturday we skated for at least a few hours before any official events started which was great, because i got to meet tons of skaters, and so many great skaters showed me things i didn’t know yet. Overall this event had tons of unstructured time for skaters to do whatever they wanted, which really made it worth the trip. The “Rollersport Staddion” where it all took place is basically a perfectly smooth cement floor the size of three basketball courts at least. It was perfectly level too.
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Oct 3, 2006
I just spent 3 1/2 hours practicing for BattleUk. I’ve been nervous up till tonight, but i realized the best thing about going is that there will be tons of good skaters there who I can learn stuff from. Whatever happens in the battle is fine with me if i get to skate with all them!
So in order to do my best i’ve been practicing. Brian Lipko came out tonight for about 1 1/2 hours which made it easier for me to keep going. I finally got the front volte down pretty well today, and I’m starting to do runs without completely planning them out first, which is definitely good for the battle style competitions. I’ve been focusing on the 80cm cones almost exclusively now… hope that doesn’t hurt me this weekend.
Anyway, wish me luck! I’ve only got tomorrow night left to practice!
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Sep 4, 2006
Just got back from practicing for a few hours. I wanted to spend the night working on the moves themselves, and tomorrow i’ll work on transitions between them. Tonight, i learned a couple new moves (spent some time on the universkate videos page first):
1) One Cone Stroll
2) Special
I tried to remember the front volte from seba’s video, but couldn’t figure it out… hmm sounds like a justification for an ipod video…
The Special is kind of cool. I didn’t realize this till after i started doing it right, but its just the X, but you’re only on your toes the hole time. Being so close to the X, its easy to transition into and out of from the X, and therefor all the other moves that I can link with X.
I also practiced my old moves (Crazy and Mabrouk) and all the moves Naomi showed me at the workshop:
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Aug 13, 2006
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.
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Jul 30, 2006
Denni and I went to NYC this weekend for a quasi-organized saturday night skate with the Union Square Crew. I’d say it was the best group skate I’ve been on so far. First, Dominique and Marie from France showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. This gave us a good balance of slalom and non-slalom skaters. So, Denni and I took turns learning slalom tricks from our french guests, and non-slalom tricks from our new york friends.
The skate consisted of just the right ratio of skating through new york traffic, and then hanging out at good locations to do tricks or relax. And we did lots of relaxing, because it was still hot even at night.
I think a bunch of us are going to visit Dominique and Marie in france some time next summer.
We learned our first 50cm trick too! I guess its called the windshield wiper, or the “X” not sure which.
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Jun 28, 2006
I’ve spent a few minutes each day since last weekend, combing through all the footage of our session. Its actually a pretty boring job, but i think i’ve put together the best video I could have. Its much more interesting than the last ones i posted with the same trick over and over. This time I made one video for me and denni, and mixed it up according to the music. I didn’t bother putting multiple runs of the same thing in, so it should be more interesting for everyone to watch.
We’ve got three new tricks, as you can tell from Denni’s previous posts: the grapevine, the new thing we’re doing on the cones thats like a cross between grapevine and crazy, and toe-heel snakes. I think we should just focus on these until we can do them fast before learning more.
go on over to the videos section to watch, or go straight to the movie
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Jun 10, 2006
Lots of new stuff going on. First I got a new digital camcorder, so the movies aren’t crappy still camera avi’s. Second, I found a new location (thanks to Josh) that’s perfect! Its under i95 at front & washington ave (philadelphia) so it’s covered by the highway. The pavement is really smooth because cars can’t get to it (not sure why its even paved, but hey, no complaints). There’s even a slight slope at one part, which was fun to play on for a while, till i got sick of speeding up and knocking over all the cones.
Oh and third, I learned a new trick. I’ve been watching Naomi Grigg’s tutorial on ‘The Crazy’ like once a day until i memorized how it worked. Today I did it for the first time.
I’ve got a major hot spot on my foot. The Twister’s have this plastic power strap built in, but the place where it connects to the skate is right over a bone in my foot, and it kinda sticks into the skate more than it should. I think i’m going to get some wire at home depot tomorrow and attach it in a different way to avoid it rubbing my ankle.
Check out the videos, i trimmed and edited them in iMovie, so all the dead air of me skating around before and after each run is gone.
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