I did it!!!! Yesterday I finally taught my body how to accomplish the mohawk turn! (and stop, but the stop part is sorta easy for me). R helped me a LOT. In fact, it was her suggestion that triggered the brain process that enabled me to maneuver successfully into the turn! I will attempt to explain her suggestion in a later post with pictures, or, hopefully a video. Words are not sufficient.
For now, I am so jazzed to be able to perform the turn - I can barely sleep, even though I've only slept about 25 hours total this past week. I'm also working on being able to do it at higher speeds, but I think a moderate pace should be sufficient for tryouts.
Holy mackerel, look at this little girl skate:
Hi, can you tell me what she told you to help you get it? I have been working on this beast for 2 months now and just not getting it. I don't know how else to come at it. I know that a lot of it is just me trying to get out of my own way mentally, but I need to see if I can also try approaching it from a different perspective. Because I am skating on a banked track, I can't just put my foot down pointing in the opposit direction and slide into it by keeping it there as though I am about to try to skate sidways (as if I would even be there yet if I tried) because I will bust my ass, so it has to be steppy where I step into and out of it. The evaluatiors are also going to be looking to make sure that my feet step into and out of it. HELP!?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteHey! For some reason I never saw your comment until now. I am so sorry. Perhaps you finally got the mohawk turn by now? A lot of it is just practice, practice, practice. But just in case you didn't...
ReplyDeleteThe first thing with anything on skates is balance. Can you skate on one foot (either one, should be able to alternate though) around the entire track? Not in one go around because you probably wouldn't have enough speed to, but you know -- can you skate down a straight away? Can you skate around the turn? All on one foot? If so, that's huge. It means you'll be able to do anything in derby with a bit of practice.
Mohawk turns are just all about shifting your balance from both feet to one foot to your other foot and back to both feet. To start, try doing the mohawk without picking up your feet, if you know what I mean, until you get more comfortable.