February 2023 Practice Schedule
The month of February is all about love. Not just the cliche type of love, but more importantly loving ourselves. Our choreography for the month is to “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus and yes, you can buy yourself flowers and take yourself dancing. It’s an absolutely fabulous idea, but maybe wait until February 15th to get the best deal on those flowers and heart shaped boxes of chocolate!
This month is all about making time for ourselves so that we can show up for our own lives better than ever. The ultimate goal is progress, not perfection and progress takes time. Time is precious and sometimes getting a workout in is terrifying. Although this schedule may be daunting, 1% better every day is the goal that I want us all to keep in mind. It’s not about meeting every workout, it’s about doing what you can in a way that helps empower you to love yourself, others, and your skating more each day.
Below is my recommended workout and practice schedule for February 2023.
Week 1: It’s all about heel-toe balance.
Drills 1 (2 days this week)
Heel-Toe Manuals: Watch and Review (focus on keeping your core tight to maintain stability)
Extra Credit:
Heel-Toe Spins (combine that balance with a tight core to rotate and spin)
Held Open 3 Turn (focus on lessening the pressure in your heel to “slide” the turn)
Heel-Toe balance is essential to skating. It’s not just a cool trick. Our heel-toe balance carries into our heel-toe spins, crazy legs, dribbles, and all one-foot turns from 3 turns to rockers. We will be working on heel-toe balance with our new Heel-Toe Manuals video. To make sure we are strengthening our bodies, we will also go over Drills 1. We will work on both of these in Tuesday’s live class.
Drills 1 focuses on overall strength and balance. It takes only 15 minutes to get through the video once. Go through this video 1-2 more times throughout the course of the week.
To enhance our heel-toe balance progress, check out the Heel-Toe Spin video. Spins can be a bit intimidating and that’s totally okay. The reality is that the heel-toe spin is a combination of tightening your core and holding a heel-toe manual. And if you want an extra push, review the Held Open 3 Turn video, which will challenge you to keep your weight a little more forward in your skate to “slide” a turn.
Where to find these videos:
Drills 1 - Drills & Workouts page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Heel-Toe Manual - Skills page (heel-toe section) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Heel-Toe Spin - Skills page (heel-toe or spins sections) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Held Open 3 Turn - Skills page (turns section) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Week 2: Love, Flowers, and Taking Yourself Dancing
Drills 15 (2 days this week)
Flowers: Learn Part 1 (“Confidence”. I want you to feel and believe it.)
Extra Credit:
Flow/Connecting Moves (fluidity in movement can be learned with a little practice)
Now it’s time to put those skills to work and dance it out. I know that we all have different views of dancing. Whether you feel that flowing through moves feels natural or forced, choreography is where I have always found the most growth in a skater. We aren’t all dancers and that is perfectly okay. The purpose of choreography is to string a few skills together (like footwork) to create muscle memory within our bodies. After practicing the heel-toe manuals in Week 1, try the first half of the Flowers Choreography. The beginner/intermediate choreography focuses on alternating heel-toe manuals and establishing poses to convey confidence to an audience and/or ourselves. The first step to true confidence on wheels and in life is with you. You have to believe it. The advanced choreography starts with a very fun heel-toe manual combo into a heel-toe spin. It’s quick, fun, and challenging, so practice that one more than a few times.
Drills 15 is a great way to help further your strength and endurance. Warm up before you put your skates on 1-2 times this week. This warm up became my go-to and saving grace throughout years of training. The first few times you go through it may be difficult. Remember, slow and steady wins the race.
Check out the Flow/Connecting Moves video. This video is so important to finding your body’s natural flow of movement, and that flow will become invaluable the more you dance.
Ps. Our normal Tuesday class falls on Valentine’s Day, so our live class will be held on Wednesday.
Where to find these videos:
Drills 15 - Drills & Workouts page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Flowers - Choreography page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, YouTube - Beg/Int/ Advanced]
Flow/Connecting Moves - Skills page (transitions, dance, or misc sections) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Week 3: The second best skill of 2020
Drills 3 (2 days this week)
Dribble/Slingshot: Watch and Review (it’s a better workout than the elliptical)
Extra Credit:
C-Step (keep your knees soft and add a bounce)
Crazy Legs (it uses everything we are going over this month)
Let’s put that toe balance to work and add in some edges. The Dribble/Slingshot was one of the most popular skills to come out of 2020, second only to the strut walk. I think that the best part of the dribble is that it can be done slowly or quickly and looks awesome either way. When you add the inner back edge to rotate side to side, it becomes the “slingshot”. It actually has many names…Dribble and slingshot Are the most popular.
Drills 3 focuses on our inner edge strength and is only 14 minutes long. Putting pressure into the ground and pressing on the inside edge is an essential skill in skating. Strength like this should be built up over time, so make sure to do this 1-2 times throughout the week.
The C-Step is a great next step from the dribble/slingshot. This skill will eventually feel very similar to the slingshot because it uses your inner back edges in the same way. Remember to keep your knees bent and soft. This will allow you to create a nice rhythm and get your weight over one foot at a time.
Another great skill to practice is Crazy Legs. Crazy legs combines just about everything we are working on throughout the month. The balance from the heel-toe manual, the flow we develop through dancing, the separation of one foot being fully on the ground and the other being balanced on the toes in the dribble, and the inner back edges from the c-step all come together for crazy legs. The strut walk may have been made popular in 2020, but crazy legs have been here forever.
Where to find these videos:
Drills 3 - Drills & Workouts page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Dribble/Slingshot - Skills page (dance section) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
C-Step - Skills page (edges or dance sections) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Crazy Legs - Skills page (dance section) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Week 4: Showing off is not a bad thing
Drills 3 (keep gaining that inner edge strength)
Flowers: Learn part 2 (carry that confidence into your everyday life)
Extra Credit:
Toe Manuals (keep your weight on your front truck/axis)
Time to finish and polish our choreography for the month! This week we will finish learning Flowers by Miley Cyrus. This choreography is all about raw confidence and, if your confidence is lacking, we’re gonna fake it ’til we make it. The second half of the choreography involves a dribble in the Beginner/Intermediate Choreography and an added rotation to make it a Slingshot in the Advanced Choreography. In my experience, choreography doesn’t feel natural until practiced a few times. I usually take a break from learning it on skates to practice it on feet. If you find yourself moving through the choreography while waiting in line at the store or at a red light, know you’re not alone. We don’t have to have skates on our feet to dance.
Let’s continue building your strength and endurance. go through Drills 3 1-2 times this week. That inner edge strength is essential for skating and the upcoming months.
We started the month out with the heel/toe manual. Now I want you to challenge yourself with the Toe Manuals video. This manual guides us into our toe spins. remember that your weight does not need to be further forward than your front axis and keep those knees bent! Toe Manuals are very fun to practice over and over again. Sometimes I try to skate around my house only on my toes.
Where to find these videos:
Drills 3 - Drills & Workouts page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
Flowers - Choreography page [Link: roll with me, on-demand, YouTube - Beg/Int/ Advanced]
Toe Manuals - Skills page (heel-toe section) [Link: roll with me, on-demand, youtube]
My goal is that as your skating gets stronger each month, you get stronger and more confident in yourself and your everyday life. What was your favorite part of this month? What was the hardest for you? What kept you going when you wanted to quit? Leave a comment! If you are practicing on instagram, please tag me and #quadsociety! I love to see and share your progress! Lastly, don’t forget about the wonderful community on the Discord. Everything is better with friends!
