Love Slalom but Getting Older?

You, who are a slalom enthusiast and currently in your mid thirties or and above, think you are not fit for slalom? You might be wrong!

If you really look around you, in parks, HDB estates& game courts, there are alot people who skate, but not slalom. To most of them, slalom is a difficult sports as you will fall easily... Especially those who have their own family, they can't afford to fall! While, they might be wrong!

That's when preventions have to come in! Here's some advices for you:

1. Wear full protective gears - elbow, knee pads, wrist guards. OK, that's very common, but it's really important for those who can't afford to get injured.
2. After you got your gears, you MUST LEARN HOW TO FALL SAFELY and practise on your mattress many many times. If you don't know how or, never learn or seen before, DO NOT think that it is easy and assume you know. PLEASE ASK FOR DEMO & LEARN FROM YOUR CURRENT COACHES!!! For your info, there's "skills" called basic and advance falls in inline skating. Safety fall is a MUST-LEARN for beginners.
3. Supplements are essential especially for those who are getting older. The basic requirement from skater who are doing slalom is to bend your knees for almost all the times when you are going through the cones except when resting it's optional. So that's when your knee joints need supplements to stay strong for the sports. It is advisable for you to take glucosamine AFTER CONSULTING YOUR DOCTORS.
4. If you have old injuries on any part of your legs or spines, I will advise you to consult a doctor on your injuries before you start inline slalom.
5. In order to learn the proper techniques for slalom, please get a slalom instructor to guide you. Be prepared that the coaching fees is not going to be like what you got when you started to learn your basic skating.

Slalom is a great sport where you can "maneuver & dance" through few lanes of cones. The goodness of it? Many! It improves your whole body flexibility & coordination. It helps to tone your body. If you practise slalom regularly, your tummy will be reduced!

During my lessons, a few exercises will be introduced for each move according to individual. I will usually plan the lessons according to your needs from the sports. You may request for a one-time lesson but let me tell you, you are going to need more than 10 lessons in order to learn all the basic moves!

Frankly speaking, even my best slalom student is still practising the basic moves!

If you have further enquiries on slalom courses, please contact me at slalom.angel(at)gmail.com. Please replace the "(at)" to "@".

Thank you for reading and wish you well :)

Start Slalom Now?

It's a long time since I update some tips for fellow skaters, surprisingly there are people who will read my articles!

A lot of kids are overwhelmed by the sports called Freestyle Slalom when I showed them what is it about. They are so enthusiastic that they want to do it immediately!

This is a big mistake!

Out there, there are people who claimed that it's needless to master your basic skating, and you can do slalom or whichever advance skating in a short period of time. Have you heard of that?

Anyway, would you like to have a coach who don't know how to skate to coach you?

OK. You are going to say you can do, but is it stable and nice?

Oh well, if you believe or not, till now I'm still trying to perfect my edging, crossover, turning and many other basic moves. Besides, I'm still doing exercises to improve strength after losing muscles under some circumstances.

So, it's time to go through all the basics you've learnt, if you want to start slaloming, or starting halfway but find it very difficult to continue.

Please practise those (basic) moves that you think you cannot make it.

I know it's boring, sometimes frustrating. You need much effort to stir the determination and perseverance in order to really master the moves.

People are like this. They want result to be fast. They had totally forgotten what is Slow and Steady. Do you still remember the fable: The Hare and The Tortoise? How did the Tortoise won the race?

Let me give you more tips about skating basics:

• Crossover improves edging, balancing.
• Parallel turn improves edging.
• Swizzle improves edging, flexibility.
• V-walk improves balancing.

In slalom, edging, balancing, footworks and body movements are all very important. Same for the rest of the skating disciplines.

Choosing Songs or Musics for FreeStyle Slalom

I was sort of getting slothy to update my blog because I wish to use all the time to plan routine. Not up yet, but hopefully by this coming weekends.

Here's a piece on choosing music or songs for FreeStyle Slalom. I will come up with the maintenance of skates later on.

I was watching a few videos just now, some people used cute songs, some used rock, some used acid jazz, I think J-Pop & K-Pop are also very popular, then I wonder why nobody seems to be using Chinese songs accept maybe a few. Did you notice that? I mean songs for freestyle slalom and most will prefer English songs too. The rest used songs created using musical instruments only. Anyway, that's for you to ponder too.

To me it's up to your preference, as long as it's nice and catchy and suit your speed plus movements. Sometimes I chose the song that's not suitable because I have no time to search for more songs.

This time, I'm using some OK-OK songs... Nothing interesting. Hee~ Not the Elmo Song, don't worry. Hahaha! Too cute for me.

I think the below one is nice and goes well with her movements.



Her movements are creative and choreographed with that song very well and I remember the first time when I watch her stuff, I was like, "WOW! SHE'S SO CUTE!!!" and can't get enough of it. Heard from my friends that the song was created 3-4 years ago. So let's start digging for songs & music!

You can search for music at www.4shared.com

Another one. She is one of the Number One for ladies FreeStyle Slalom, from Korea.



She used a very soothing music, because her movement is so smooth like liquid! I love her style a lot. Hopefully I can learn from her one day!


The next one is the incredible Number One little girl. Her skills are quite smooth so her movements go well with the classical / instrumental musics.



So how to get to identify your own style? Watch your own video frequently! I'm doing that quite frequently, because I'm still learning about my styles too.

Remember to try and listen for more songs while practising for your slalom!

Wearing Your Skates

Once you have got yourself a new pair of skates, remember to know how to wear them in the right ways and with care.

Some brief suggestions for wearing your skates:

1. Make sure that the laces are not tied and tight so to provide sufficient space for the tongues of the skates to be lifted up completely.
2. Try to wear your skates’ one leg by one leg.
3. Lift the tongue up and then fit your leg into the skate. This will prevent your liners from wearing out too fast.
4. Remember to hit your skates on the wheels below your heels so they will be pushed back and you won’t get pain easily on your toes while you are skating.
5. Press the tongue flat nicely against your feet top and tighten the laces.
6. Tie the laces and feel that the skates are snug fit against your feet.
7. For your safety, remember to buckle up your skates and laces should not be left tangling down. You are required to tug them under the buckles so when you buckled your skates, the laces will be secured underneath.
8. Do take note that tying the laces around the calves of the skates can save time and feel not so tight but control of the skates might be reduced. Depend on individuals; it works best for slalomers to have laces going through all the laces rings. I think sliders will prefer no lace for their skates. Righto?
9. Please remember to ensure that all the axles on your skates are been loosen and tighten back with the right sized Allen Key so to prevent them from being dead locked by the causes of rustiness due to humidity in Singapore.

Now you are ready to go! If you are still not so sure about how to wear your skates even after reading this article, please visit any skate shops and ask for assistance. They will be more than willing to help you. By the way, different skates have different buckling systems, so do ask for assistance regarding about this. And, some skates don't have laces...

If you are interested on which shop do I visit frequently, while, the answer is Hvper Sport. The reason behind is because our team Bosses run that shop, and I live near East Coast, plus most of my khakis who I skated with are always hanging out there. Don't worry, almost all the skaters there are very friendly ones. The bosses of Hvper Sport are skaters too!

Whether the shop provide good services and skates or not, while, I think it's up to you and other customers out there to comment about it.

So...

Where is Hvper Sport? Does it really sells skates?

Mm... It's in East Coast - Marine Cove... Mm... Besides 7Eleven... Mm... Near MacDonald's & below Tung Lok... Mm... Facing the sea... Mm... Still wondering whether it sells skates or not? Mm... I think there are more than thousands of people who have bought skates from that shop for the past 9 years.

As for maintenance, I shall write them after the holiday, will it be okay for you? Tomorrow is Public Holiday in Singapore and I'm going to skate for the whole day!

Introduction for Maintenance for Your Skates:

As a freestyle skater, I will still try to maintain my skates as good as I can because if I respect my skates, I believe they will respect me too. Hopefully they will forgive me for falling too much and having no intentions to disfigure them. Poor thing~

To Be Continued...

Skating Basics - Fall & Stand

Slalom Angel should write some tips on slalom, right? Maybe you are very anxious to read more about slalom skills instead of just watching videos. Before that, I shall write something about BASICS which are very important regardless of any sports any things you do.

To be frank, before you start off with any major discipline in skating, you must have started to train and grind on your basics very hard.

Everybody kept saying basics and basics again, but do you have any ideas on what basics are?

So, let's explore.

• When you are a child, before you learn to walk, what did you do first? Crawl.
• When you are a baby, before you learn to crawl, what did you do? Sit and roll.
• Before you came out into the world, what did you do? Kick your mum lor, and swim in her womb.

Basically for skating:

• Before you master any skating disciplines, you must choose one of the many skating disciplines and learn its or their basics.
• Before you choose a skating discipline and learn its basics, you must learn how to skate & stop.
• Before you learn how to skate & stop, you must learn how to stand and fall while in skates.

Standing requires alot of balancing and right postures. So while standing you may wonder why are you rolling back and not standing still? People are not rolling, because they used their legs to control the skates wheels and made them stuck against the ground - think frictions between wheels and concrete:

• Place one skates behind another and form a wider "V" shape.
• Lean forward, and bend your knees slightly. Try to relax your hands if you can. Please do not let your upper body bend down.

Falling requires guards and guts. Remember to fall on your front. Knees down first and next comes your wrists. Knees first because they have larger surface area and stronger. You can practise your fall on grass patch.

Next, you are ready to skate!

If you still find that standing while in a pair of skates is very dangerous and you still got the fear of falling, better grab your skates and guards to practise both! Please do not rush. Fall slowly and stand up slowly.

I think falling can be categorize under alot of stages, because I fell alot:

• Fall and lie on the floor then nap a wink to feel whether I'm ok or not.
• Slide, nearly fall and squat and do footgun. :P
• Fall and push the ground and back to sitting position.
• Fall and sit on the cones (just feel something cushioned my butt...)
• Spin, fall and squat spin and sit with my legs crossed.
• Trip on a gigantic fruit seed and fly like superman...
• Hit by some people who are speeding and fly off then sit down for few minutes.
• Hit by a bicycle and use all my strength to push it away and make the cyclist fall and I fell on my butt (plus act painful when it's not, to make the cyclist guilty for riding on the wrong track)

I think there are alot more falls that other pro-skaters experienced... Are you the pro? Feel free to discuss. Hee~

Choosing Skates

Understand alot of new skaters will tend to be confused by so many brands for inline skates to choose from: K2, RollerBlade, Micro, Roces, PowerSlide...

Then they will enter a shop which sells Inline skates and the first question most of them will ask:

• Which brand is the best selling one?
• Which skate is the cheapest one?

I think we have to clear the misconception between having a pair of skates to skate and having a suitable pair of skates to skate for health.

Why choose a brand which is the best selling one? Normally alot of consumers will follow trends so that's why they will ask that questiong.

Why choose the cheapest skates? Alot of skaters will claim that they just want to have a pair of skates so they can skate with their friends and they don't really know how to skate. So cheap skates save money. But cheap skates may do harm to your legs too, be it long term or short term.

Dear people,

if you really want to enjoy skating, the next time you enter any skate shops, you should ask:

• I'm looking for a pair of __________ skates, any recommendations? Somewhere around $____ and I prefer _______ in colour.
• (After being recommended) Do you have my size? I usually wear around UK/US______
• Do you have something wider / narrower?

Reminders / Suggestions:

• Most usable and lasting recreational skates may cost at least $250 and up to $700 so be reasonable.
• Freestyle skates will be at least $350 or more as they provide more supports.
• Speed skates and Fitness Skates can costs up to thousands.
• Some Inline Skate shops do offer promotions and discounts for certain skates.
• Please ensure that your skates are suitable for your legs. Size and Comfort for your legs matter the most.
• Colours does matter only if you are attending a Skating Fashion Show. Or if you skate to look beautiful along the park and best is to suit them with your clothes, like matching your pair of shoes with them.
• Learn the basic skating skills before you buy a pair of skates in order to be able to use the new skates for years.
• Do learn basic freestyle skates in a basic freestyle skates or recre-skates before going for advance skates.
• Last but not least, if you are still a beginners, do get a good pair of guards to protect your joints area - Knee, Wrist & Elbow(optional) and learn to fall!

Skates are for legs and sports, and can be a fashion item too. Remember to practise your basics before getting a pair of beautiful skates so you won't soil them easily.

Falling is a process in skating. If you want to become a better skater, remember to learn to fall, so you won't hurt so badly after that. I used to fall everytime without pain when I first started out with my K2 skates with all my guards on. When I started to advance my skating skills, I started to fall real BADLY. Till today, I still get bruises on my knees.

See, the more advance you go, the more bad falls you may have. So remember to wear your guards if you don't want any pain for your guts!

Take note that I never criticize about any brands, because your legs have to try every kind of skates then you will know which one is suitable. I can only give you some guides on the feeling of skates.

If you are an adult and not growing anymore,

• You should get a pair that is snug fitting and your toes still are able to wriggle abit only but not too much. Snug fitting is for controlling purposes.
• It's okay to feel the front end of the skates as long as your toes are not curling up.
• Do wear a pair of thin Cotton socks so your feet won't "swim" in your skates. Try not to wear spandex material socks so you are able to control your skates easily.
• Do take note that wearing a pair of skates is totally different from shoes. So you will feel more than normal tightness when you try to wear a pair of skates the first time.
• Do not worry about the tightness. As long as the width and the length of the skates wrapped around your leg snuggingly fit without pain and other extreme discomfort, you are in a right pair of skates.
• After some times of wearing, you will find that the fitting will get very comfortable after wear and tear. The liners of the skates will gradually compressed to become the shape of your feet.
• Do ask for assistance from the shop people if you want to try more skates to confirm the fitting.
• Unsuitable skates are those that cause pain and extreme discomfort once you put your feet into them.
• Skates that are too loose and too comfortable like shoes are not the best choice for new skates. They will only increase the chance of you injuring your ankle.

For kids:

• Something not extremely big for them, just a few cms of space infront of their toes will do. Understand their feet are still growing, but extreme big size may cause improper growth for the bones of their legs and their chance of injuring their ankles may increase.
• Some kids have to wear adult sizes, because their feet are too big for kids sizes. Most Kids Skates come in S, M & L, Girl or Boy.
• Kids who are allowed to skate must be at least 3 years because the younger they are the weaker their bones are.

Some skate shops available in Singapore:

• Hvper Sport @ Marine Cove, 1000 East Coast Parkway (facing the Sea besides 7Eleven)
• Hvper Sport @ Novena Velocity #03-36
• Skaters World @ Queensway Shopping Centre #03-43
• Roller Plus @ Woodgrove, Woodlands Ave 1
• SkateLine @ East Coast and other outlets
• SkateSports @ East Coast
• Inline Culture @ East Coast
• Urban Inline @ East Coast (Big Splash)

Anymore suggestions you can think of? Please write in the Tag Board provided. Thank you!

Serious Training

Some Tips For Serious Training:

1. Chit chat only after you have really finished training.


2. Try not to sit down in between trainings unless your legs are in painful state.


3. Should you need to sit, let your brains work for you – think about some part of the training that you are still not clear.


4. If you are unable to think much, look around you for other skaters who are doing their stuff. Maybe some of them might inspire you.


5. Listen to music with a closed up ear piece so you won’t be affected easily by the surrounding.


6. Try to go easy with the volume of your mp3 players so you still can concentrate properly with music on.


7. Try to have lighter meals to prevent feeling slothy.


8. Be sure to do stretching before and after trainings if this is what is required for you.


9. If you think stretching is crap, you can try applying Tiger Balm® to relax your muscles too.


10. Warm-up & cool down exercises before and after training, recre-skating will do.


11. Drink water whenever you feel thirsty so you won't get dehydrated. Best is every 10 mins of your training so you have got to prepare at least 1.5 litre of plain water before you train.

That's all from me! You are welcome to add in on the Chat box beside this entry. Enjoy your training!