Workshop Weekend

Still a bit tired, caused by a 4-days-in-a-row-winter-session. Made me happy though.
The 4 days were a perfect combination of lessons, work, pleasure and fun. Thursdayevening I followed the regular lessons with afterwards the rollerdisco till about 12 o´clock. Friday and Saturday a few of us from the Quadsk8 demopool had to be present for workshops that took place from 6 pm till 11 pm. Quadsk8 had to facilitate the Rollerdisco-part on a gigantic party with 16.000 people. It was fun but also hard work, people were standing in line toborrow the rollerskates we provided to try out a jammin´session, where we stood in front so people could follow the steps.

Most of them were completely wiped out after they joined the 10 minutes of workshopjammin´, all sweaty and tired they took off their skates to let the next bunch of people try and do their thing. Mind you these were workshops with just some basicsteps. Imagine all of us, did about 7 of these Workshops an evening conducted by Quadsk8, spread out over a very short time (between 8 and 11 pm), 2 days in a row. With some more experienced jammin´done by ourselves, in between workshops.

On sunday a very merry dim-sum brunch with a lot of skaters in the hometown, just for fun, sort of celebrate the almost ending of this year´s season. Afterwards some actual rollerjammin´in Amsterdam to end this week. I myself tried some krumpin´dancin´on skates. Sk8krumpin´. D*mn that´s very hard to do, but I´ll try anyway. Rollerjammin´ is energetic and groovy, krumpin´ is explosive with very powerfull movements. It´s one violent adrenalinerush when you stick them together. I couldn´t hold on longer than 10 seconds, had to catch my breath again. Sure gonna try again tomorrow.

Toes hurting, body wiped out but spirit rising. Better feed myself with some nutritious goodies and catch some more hours of sleeping so I can handle the Thursday-Calypso tommorrow again without too much restraint :-)

NOT past the Basics

I skate less if you count the actual hours I have them on my feet. Been real busy spending my time on other things, also relating to rollerjammin' of course.
At this point I do not have very much to say or write about my rollerjammin' adventures itself. It turns out to be a never ceasing and continious repetition of surpassing the gravity and staying grounded at the same time, be conscious of the detail of even the smallest movement and the altogether total of the outlook simultaneously, keeping focused at centering and coherent balance. There are lot of new steps and techniques I have yet to learn, but they cannot be done in excellence without the proper basics. So working very hard on that side of it all, instead of constantly throwing myself persistently into all new things I can still learn.
Always thirsty for something new, but it just takes time to perfect these basics. I cannot bend the time that is expressed in days, months or even years. So I just bend time by focus, training, listening carefully to what is taught during the lessons and make it applicative to my way of executing. As was said during one of the Masterclasses: "There is not 1 right way for everybody to follow, you have to find your own way of doing things, as long as the result is the same and it feels good to you, that's okay too."

You cannot disregard the basics, it leads to nothing or sometimes to very ugly things that just don't look and feel right. If I look back at the beginning I came across some obstacles and just stepped over and even missed some essential understanding in order to obtain a quicker result, it does work, short-term, but gets you exhausted in the end. To keep on cultivating the basics, and NOT ONLY repeating, will get you to learn other stuff so much quicker.
But still the 'groovy' is something else, can't seem to grasp it, untill today it doesn't feel comfortable...

And now for something completely different. Had to giggle when I looked at some suprised, filled with no apprehension at all, faces when I had had my skates on all day at work. When they asked me why I had my skates on I answered: "Cause I have to, haven't felt them quite enough this last week". They probably think I'm quite sick in the head.