Work Hardest On The Things You Hate: How I Learned To Embrace Leg Day

There is a sad truth in life. Many of us work the least at the things we hate doing. Unfortunately oftentimes those things are the things we are the worst at. I don't think I am alone in being guilty of this. When it comes to roller derby, and much of life for that matter, if I am not very good at something it is tough to enjoy doing it. I absolutely suck at plow stops, especially if I am moving at a pretty fast clip. I am much better at doing tomahawk stops and hockey stops/power slides so I do those all the time trying to perfect them. I use warm up times and water breaks to get lots of reps in on them but I never do plows. Why? Because I hate doing them. Why do I hate doing them? The answer is simple, I am rarely successful at them, I suck at them.

The logic here is terrible. Things I do well, I practice more than things I don't do well. Shouldn't it be the other way around? When I write practices for my team I don't have us work on stuff we are amazing at, we work on stuff we need improvement on. I think we are all guilty of this at some point or another.

I came to this realization myself recently when I found myself looking forward to leg day at the gym. In the past this has been something that got minimal attention from me and often I would skip it if I missed a few days at the gym. Why would I do that? The answer is simple, I was better at lifting for my upper body. I can bench press a solid amount of weight. I can do lots of pull ups. Frankly I just plain felt more successful at the gym doing those things.

For a long time now I have had pretty bad knees. This has made me paranoid about doing lower body lifts as I am always concerned about them. Many years of this paranoia has led me down the path of being the typical gym guy who over works the upper body and rarely hits the legs. (This is why many huge muscly gym guys wear baggy workout pants, they have scrawny chicken legs!) The recent turning point for me was actually kind of silly in the grand scheme of things but it has changed my attitude. Outside of derby I play on two softball teams during the summer. I have been a first baseman for many years and for those that know baseball generally that is where the biggest, slowest guy gets put. (Not to toot my own horn but I am there because I am a damn good first baseman!) This year I was asked by one of my teams to play center field instead. I was happy to but I knew I needed to get myself ready to be at my best. I decided I needed to improve my speed and explosiveness out there so I could cover as much of the field as possible. The only was this could happen was leg day.

From that point forward I made it my goal not to skip leg day no matter how much I didn't want to do it. The real kicker here is suddenly, I started to look forward to it! The more I did things like front squats and dead lifts the better I got at them and the more weight I could lift. Suddenly my weakness started becoming my strength. If I hadn't set a goal for myself I would never have gotten to this point, now I have even more goals set. I recently dead lifted 285 lbs and I really want to hit 315.

This attitude shift can be applied to anything in life really but this is a roller derby blog so I will try to keep my focus there. We all have things we are not good at when it comes to derby and skating. Until we set goals for ourselves and really embrace the things we are not good at we will never truly get better at them. If you are like me and suck at plow stops, tell yourself you are going to be able to stop within five feet from full speed in the next two months. If you want to improve your laps in a five minute skate aim for adding one every month and work at it. If you hate doing off skate, force yourself to do it once a week and try something different each time. You will be amazed how easy it is once you find something you love to do.

Set goals, attack your weaknesses, and become a better player and person. You can do it. don't doubt yourself.