SkateStrong Inline Skating / Rollerblading Workshop: Sunday, May 17th in Raleigh, NC

The workshop turned out really well, even better than I expected. The location was perfect! I chose the office park for a few reasons: 1) It's relatively new, and hardly any tenants in it... Not a huge deal on the weekend anyway, but helps. The asphalt was in really good shape too. 2) At least 4 or 5 parking decks right across the street, in case of rain. 3) Other suitable office parks nearby, just in case we get kicked out. So with the weather looking ominous for Sunday, I got up early and scoped out which parking deck would be best. A few years ago, when Barry Publow taught a workshop in Raleigh, we had to move to a parking deck, and the one we chose wasn't that great. But this time was different, I found an awesome deck -- smooth cement, relatively flat... And we could actually go in a whole, flat loop around it. So it was great for doing all the drills. So, despite the rain, we were able to do everything that we would have done outdoors. Everyone that showed up was great too... We started out with 6 people. Two didn't realize the workshop was an all-day event. So after lunch, we were down to 4 people. But we covered a lot of material before lunch, so I think the two that left early still got a lot out of it. We covered many of the "standard" workshop drills. Anyone that's been to Eddy's or Barry's workshops will have recognized many of them. We started out with dryland drills, then broke down classic technique into its component parts. After lunch, we finished up classic technique, then I filmed everyone skating. We had plenty of time left, so we did some underpush drills, and some other drills to help develop the double-push. There's not really enough time in a one-day workshop to cover everything needed to get to the double-push, but I wanted to at least give everyone an introduction to some of the things they'll see in an Eddy workshop, for example. We ended the day with some pack skating, covering information on how to move through the pack, how to rotate, and the differences between cooperative packs and competitive packs. Finally, we took off our skates and looked at the video from earlier. This was my first attempt at filming skaters, and it showed. :-) I was able to keep people in frame just long enough to do some video analysis though. I think video analysis is a great tool, and we were able to identify a few things for each skater to work on to improve their technique. So it was a great day... I had a blast teaching people that were obviously eager to learn, and I think they had fun as well. Most importantly, the workshop raised $370 for MS Society! So everyone should feel really good about that! Thanks for everyone that attended! I look forward to teaching the next one! - SM -