February 2024 Practice Schedule
This month is all about love! If you are not in love, I hope you do love someone, something, and definitely yourself. That’s most important! I, myself, happen to love roller skating, and that's what we're going to talk about. If you would like a membership to hundreds of videos: skills, choreography, drills, AND access to the mind | body | soul workouts and mindfulness, it is all available on ThatNicoleFiore.com or on my YouTube channel. Please check it out, along with the Foundations course. The Foundations course is made for everyone, whether you are just starting out on skates or if you have been skating for your entire life. There is everything in there - everything that I think everyone should know on skates. So, let's get into what we are working on this month! This month we have brand new choreography to “Love Potion No. 9”. This song is an older song and it sneaks up on you. It’s pretty fast! There are a lot of different skills that we are going to be working on throughout the choreography.
Each month I am hosting in-person workshops (along with a few more things coming up) and February’s workshop sold out before I even got the chance to post it on social media! Thank you!!! The newsletter is the best place for you to get all of the information for upcoming events and news. Sign up here!
And now let's get into what I recommend practicing this month.
Below is my recommended practice schedule for February 2024 and you can find links to each video at the bottom of each section. Everything that I suggest practicing is lined up with the skills we are working on. Weave those into your regular practice throughout the month.
To gain access to all of these videos and so much more, check out my Memberships here or on YouTube!
Please don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know if you would like further guidance. You can book in-person private lessons or online private lessons!
Week 1:
Drills 3 (inner edge strength)
The Zero
PRACTICE:
Backward Skating
Heel-Toe Manuals
Sidewalk Skating
Drills 3 & The Zero:
Drills 3 works on our inner edge strength. The drills include some rolling, so I do recommend doing this one on skates instead of off. We will be focusing on making sure our knees are in line with our toes in order to do a pure edge. I want you to really focus on pressing to the inside of your skate, onto the inner edge. We will be using our inner edges a lot in our upcoming skills this month, so I really want you to get to know them and get confident.
The Zero! The Zero is a really fun skill that is great for all skill levels. You don't need a ton of space in order to do it, just enough to roll backward from side to side. We will work on how to gain momentum as well as how to stop yourself after rolling. It is a great skill for everyone, and it is super fun to do!
Backward Skating, Heel-Toe Manuals, Sidewalk Skating:
For our practice this week, we will be doing backward skating, heel-toe manuals, and sidewalk skating! The zero can act as a kind of introduction to backward skating and then I want you to really get into it. Backward skating does not need to be scary. I promise!! If you are a little uncomfortable, put some toe stops in. Those toe stops are a nice safety net if you feel a little unstable from time to time. When you are skating backward, remember to stick your booty out a little bit. Not super far, but just enough to provide some balance in the back. Put your arms out to secure your balance side to side as well. We need all of our bases covered here. We can do this!
Now let’s do some heel-toe manuals. A heel-toe manual is balancing one foot on the heel wheels while the other foot balances on the toe wheels. You can do that standing still or rolling. It will also guide you into your heel-toe spin and so many other skills. Being able to hold a heel-toe manual and finding the perfect balance point for you is key. You don't have to go too far to the heel and you don't have to go too far to the toe. Play with what works for you and hold onto something if you need some extra support. Challenge yourself to hold it longer and longer each time you do it.
Lastly this week: Sidewalk skating. Now of course, if you don't live where you can skate outside currently (weather is a thing), please do this inside. You can still learn the techniques. I teach everything in my small studio because I prefer to learn and teach technique in a controlled environment before taking it outside or to a large surface with more speed. When we do skate outside, we need to have our feet staggered just in case we hit one of those pesky pebbles or any sort of debris. Be safe and focus not that balance!
Where to find these videos:
Drills 3: Drills & Workouts page [Link: Website, YouTube]
The Zero: Skills page (dance section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Backward Skating: Skills page (backward skating section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Heel-Toe Manuals: Skills page (heel-toe section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Sidewalk Skating: Skills page (miscellaneous section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Week 2:
Beginner/Intermediate Choreography — Love Potion No. 9 by The Searchers
PRACTICE:
Toe Pivots
Moonwalk
Dips
Beginner/Intermediate Choreography:
Onto week two! We are doing our Beginner/ Intermediate Choreography to Love Potion No. 9. There are a lot of different skills in this and we have skills videos for each skill within the choreography. Even though I place our Choreography on one week, I highly suggest playing with it all month long. Practice it a little bit each time put your skates on or when you feel like groovin’. I also want to encourage you to try both the Beginner/ Intermediate as well as the Advanced. I built the choreography to go back to back, so it is one complete routine when you learn the whole thing. The advanced has more advanced skills and the Beginner/ Intermediate has more beginner-friendly skills. So let's talk through what we have in the choreography and how this will affect our practice this week. In our choreography, we have a pivot, the zero, the moonwalk, and a two-foot spin. Oh! And an optional dip. That's a lot of skills packed into a little over four 8-counts. This is going to be fun!
Toe Pivots, Moonwalk, Dips:
For our practice this week, I want you to practice a few of those skills mentioned above: toe pivots, the moonwalk, and dips.
Let’s start with toe pivots. Even if you're not wearing a toe stop, you can do this. I personally prefer to wear my toe stops almost all the time, so I do this on a toe stop, but you don’t need to. The most important part of a pivot is aligning your toe stop and your knee with your toe. Then we can start to understand how to turn. Now this is not like a spin, so you don't necessarily need to worry about getting too dizzy. It's more about planting one foot and doing the other foot on an edge, an inner edge. So, back to our drills that we worked on in the week one, this all comes together. The pivot is a very fun skill when you get the hang of it. I use it all the time within choreography and within my general skating. If I want to stop and don't want to do a traditional stop, I will go into a pivot. I can also use it to go from forward to backwards. There are a lot of different uses for the pivot aside from it being in our choreography.
Now the moonwalk! An amazing thing about the moonwalk is that if you don't travel with it (aka. walk), maybe you don't have enough space or maybe you just didn't get enough speed, it turns into a dribble. So, it simply evolves into another skill. If you want to check out the dribble as well, there is a dribble/ slingshot skills video in the dance section as well.
Lastly, dips. Dips are extremely good practice for our outer back edges and they are fun! You will often see people do them at the rink with a body roll as a sexy move, but it's also really great practice. It's kind of that sneaky, hidden practice that I love because we can have a lot of fun doing it. Please remember that the foot doing the edge (the foot that you have most of your weight in) really presses to the outside of that skate. Rotating the body helps you because it allows you to stabilize a little more to each side. Have fun with that this week and think about those edges!
Where to find these videos:
Love Potion No. 9 Choreography (Beginner/Intermediate) - Choreography page [Link: Website, YouTube]
Toe Pivot: Skills page (toe stops section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Moonwalk: Skills page (dance section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Dips: Skills page (edges section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Week 3:
Drills 5 (freeleg control and core strength)
Heel-Toe Spin
PRACTICE:
Heel-Toe Manual
C-Step
Backward Cross Pulls
Drills 5 & Heel-Toe Spin:
Over halfway through the month! We will be doing Drills 5 as well as our heel-toe spin.
Drills five is on free leg control and core strength. Free leg control on skates is very important. Your free leg is the leg that is lifted up in the air. It may be helping you with balance while being stretched in back, to the side, or to the front. That is your free leg. It is the one that is free to move. Even though it is free to move, that free leg is not just flying around. We need to learn how to control it because once we lose control of that, we lose control of everything else. So we will be working on that control in this drills video. When we skate, we use our core to stabilize at all times. So we really have to build up that strength as well.
Now the heel-toe spin is simply a two-foot spin, popping to the heel and to the toe. When you do a two-foot spin with all of the wheels on the floor, you can't necessarily rotate a ton of times on the edges. You gain speed at the very beginning and that is pretty much what you have unless you want to pump the spin. What you can do to get more rotations is go to the heel and toe. We are going to take what we learned from practicing the heel-toe manual this month, where that balance point is, where it needs to be for you, and then add a rotation to it. Really make sure that you are focusing on controlling your spin, keeping everything in line the entire time. We will get into how to do that every time you spin in the skills video, building consistency. As always, I want to remind you to keep your core tight and rotate everything at the exact same time. Roller skating is a full-body sport. Everything has to work together in order to succeed.
Heel-Toe Manual, C-Step, Backward Cross Pulls:
The first thing I want you to practice this week is the heel-toe manual again. I want you to continue progressing with that, holding it longer and longer each time, and thinking about those balance points within your spin. Then I want you to move onto the c-step and our backward cross pulls.
The C-Step, unlike the dips, focuses on our inner back edges. Our dips worked on our outer back edges and now we will focus on the inner back edges. Even if you're not super comfortable skating backward yet or at this moment, these are both great skills for you to work on. You can even practice the c-step fairly stationary. The biggest skill that the c-step teaches is how to continuously and smoothly transfer your weight from one foot to the other.
And now: backward cross pulls. This works both your outer and your inner back edges. First you have to create your base pressing to a slight outer back edge, cross one foot over, get onto a new edge (an inner back edge), and then reset your foot to start all over. There are a lot of things to think about in your backward cross pulls. The number one thing is to make sure your core is stabilizing you during every part of that process. Once you how to stabilize yourself with your core, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do on skates.
Where to find these videos:
Drills 4: Drills & Workouts page [Link: Website, YouTube]
Heel-Toe Spin: Skills page (heel-toe section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Heel-Toe Manual: Skills page (heel-toe section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
C-Step: Skills page (edges section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Backward Cross Pulls: Skills page (backward skating section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Week 4:
Advanced Choreography — Love Potion No. 9 by The Searchers
PRACTICE:
Heel-Toe Spin (with your hands in a fun position)
One-Foot Spin
Inner Back Loop
Advanced Choreography:
Now onto our advanced choreography! Like I said earlier in Week 2, the skills in this are pretty advanced. If you're not quite ready for it yet, that is totally okay. I want you to build up to it and work on the skills within the choreography! And there’s always our Beginner/ Intermediate Choreography to learn too!
Choreography is great for practicing because we can trick our body into enjoying these movements by putting them to a beat or to a song. You can always change the song as well! You can learn the choreography and do it to something completely different if you're not a fan of the song or slow it down to a slower beat if you’d prefer that. You can also do it off skates. We start our choreography with a spin and then we go into quick pivots, small, but quick pivots. Quick pivots are a nice challenge to work on going from one foot to the other quickly. We are also going to do a 3-turn into either an inner back loop or a one-foot spin, followed by a dip to exit.
With so much happening in the advanced choreography, figure out what you can do right now and then push yourself to progress a little bit each time until you can fully do the choreography. I highly recommend filming your practice as much as possible. Looking back over a year or two is truly incredible. You will be shocked at what you can do now compared to then. That is one of my favorite things to see - when skaters that I've worked with now for a few years revisit choreography that they originally learned when they first got the membership and are shocked by what they can do now compared to back then. A lot of times we don't even notice it. We don't notice how much we're progressing until we look back at the actual footage from when we started.
Heel-Toe Spin, One-Foot Spin, Inner Back Loop:
For our practice, we are going to work on some rotations. I want you to go back to that heel-toe spin. This time I want you to focus on your arms. There are so many different options when you're spinning and I want you to play with some. I would love for you to carefully lift your arms up above your head. Please remember that your core needs to remain tight in order to stabilize your spin and allow your arms to lift. A lot of times I find that people go a little too far in front or a little too far in back with the arms and that moves our hips along with it. We don't want to do that. We want to make sure that our hips are directly under us, our core is nice and tight, and our arms are directly above our head.
Then I want you to go into our options that are within our advanced choreography: the inner back loop and the one foot spin. Both of these skills use the same edge and they use a lot of the same skills within them. When doing the inner back loop, bring your free leg in and out to create a loop on the floor, drawing a loop on the surface. Or you can do a one-foot spin, bringing your foot to tabletop. We often simplify the name and call this a one-foot spin, but it's technically an inner back upright. You can do a bunch of different body positions or free leg positions in this spin, but placing the freeleg in tabletop position is the most common. You can leave it there for as many rotations as you can do. Put that foot down to exit your turn. In the choreography we do a dip out of it because that is pretty much the way you would come out of the spin and it’s a little extra fun.
I want you to practice all of those. Again, no matter what level you are, break it down. Focus on your edges. Focus on your technique. I know that practicing drills and skills can get a little bit boring at times, but try to focus on these skills a little bit each time you practice. Even if they seem a little bit too difficult for you right now, I promise you that there are things within them that you can focus on. For those of you who are super advanced skaters, same thing. Even if the move is something that you know, I want you to really break it down and start focusing on different things within. The edges, your core, adding different body movements, adding different free leg movements. There is so much room to grow on skates no matter what level you are.
Where to find these videos:
Love Potion No. 9 Choreography (Advanced): Choreography page [Link: Website, YouTube]
Heel-Toe Spin: Skills page (spins section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
One-Foot Spin: Skills page (spins section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Inner Back Loop: Skills page (edges section) [Link: Website, YouTube]
Alright, that’s it for this month! I hope you check it all out. All of the skating skills I talk about are included in the Roll With Me (On-Demand) Membership. We also have the mind | body | soul membership and the podcast exclusives. With the Roll With Me (On-Demand) Membership you get it all!
The Roller Skating Foundations Course is also available and differs from the memberships. I highly recommend using the course as well as the memberships. Some insight on that: the course is fully its own thing. It’s a guided course (all new videos) that starts with the very beginning of tying skates all the way through everything that I think a skater should know. It also includes a workbook! The course is literally everything, your solid foundation, to do whatever you want to do on skates. And then the membership has everything else. SO many drills, skills, and choreography videos and growing all the time. Please check it out and let me know if you have any questions.
At the end of each month, I want you to take a moment to look back and see how far you’ve come. Did you learn something new? Did you progress? Did you surprise yourself? Do you have new goals for next month? Take a moment, breathe, roll your shoulders back, lift your head high, and tell yourself you’re doing a great job. Because you are.
If you would like to submit your progress for our Community Progress Video, submit your vertical video here. Submissions are due on the last day of each month.
Keep in touch about how you’re feeling. Know that I am right here, practicing all of these things alongside you. It doesn’t matter how new or experienced you are in skating, it is very important for all of us to stay consistent with our drills and practice. I am here to help with technique, movement, and most importantly with motivation.
What was your favorite part of this month? What was the hardest for you? What kept you going? 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!
Thank you so much for allowing me to share my love and joy with you. I truly appreciate it. Nothing makes me happier than that!
Thank you for being here. Please let me know if you have any questions about any of this. I am here and happy to help.
