People have asked me how to get good at roller derby (tbh never thought I would be someone to give answers to this question) so here are my key points and below the explanations:
1. Learn how to skate
2. Build some muscle/endurance
3. Learn the game
1. Learn how to skate
2. Build some muscle/endurance
3. Learn the game
1. Learn how to skate. Sounds obvious but it isn't. Unless you've had some actual skating background, passing your MST does not mean you can skate. Skating is very much technique that requires a lot of effort and tons of boring hours of skill training.
I never learned to skate when I started, just went off and played (that's how it was back then). Focusing on game play and fancy tricks does not really help you get better in the beginnning. You need to have a good foundation to build on.
To me a good foundation isn't really what MST requires. After MST you should focus on: improving your lateral movement to make it smooth and effortless, work on your skating stride to make it efficient and work on all the stops and t in different scenarios and different floors.
I wish someone would have told me this earlier than five years into roller derby. Changing your old habits after many years was hard and I still think my skating was one of my weakest points as a player.
2. Build some muscle and work on your endurance - do your off skate. Not saying everyone should go to the gym but they probably should :) Any strength training will do, no need to become a powerlifter or a crossfitter to be good at derby.
Bodyweight training, cross training, anything works, you just need to do it. Building up muscles will help you with everything in derby and it will make you stronger in general. Endurance is equally important: blockers need sligthly different endurance than jammers.
Blockers ctually might even need more longer lasting endurance than jammers do as they usually tend to go every other jam onto the track while jammers have more resting time between the intense bursts. Plan your endurance off skate to mimic ja game like situation.
3. Watch footage, learn the game. You need to understand the game to be good at it. You need to be able to understand the situations on track in milliseconds and actually even be ahead of the situations.
You need to understand patterns and how players move on the track to be able to adjust your game. Our game is mainly based on the pack definition and working with that is a key to all the strategies whether as a jammer or as a blocker.
This is hard to explain in brief but my point is that you need to watch footage from your own games and higher level teams and understand the strategies (good or bad) behind the gameplay.
