Naomi Grigg’s ‘Introduction to Freestyle’ Workshop

NEXT COURSE TBA Serpentine Road. £60

The Introduction to Freestyle course has reached more parts of the globe than CocaCola. Slight exaggeration, however it has been a massive success of fun and frolics wherever it has visited. 6 hours of intensive work, split over 2 days, it promises to leave you both mentally and physically exhausted, yet craving more. Well, craving a good drink anyway.

The course itself is designed to give you a significant headstart into learning freestyle, along with a clear path forwards in how to improve after the course, however the main benefits of the course reach much farther than learning how to freestyle. The course will develop keyskills which will improve all aspects of your skating, be it skating forwards in a straight line, maneuvrability, balance… the list goes on. and on…

What does it consist of?

The course consists of two 3.5 hour sessions spread over a weekend, allowing for practice inbetween sessions, for recovery of the body, your sanity, and valuble rest time to allow muscle memory to fully imbed itself… each session is split into two 1.5 hour parts, with a 30minute rest at half time.

What will you learn?

The course focuses on freestyle slalom, covering 4 or 5 basic moves, including crazy, chapchap, mabrouk, italian, X, stroll. Then learning to combine these moves and link them into a freestyle run, along with one or two other flash ‘linking’ moves.

Participants also cover classic freestyle moves suited to their level. These include the barrelroll, grapevine and inverted barrelroll.

Full Schedule:

Each of the two 3.5 hour session is split into two sections of 1.5 hours and a 30 minute break, giving four sections and 6 hours teaching time in total. Each section is flexible for the different starting standards and learning speeds that shall be attending.

Sections 1 and 2: Intro and Style Slalom
4 or 5 basic moves (crazy, chap chap, mabrouk, italian, x, stroll ). This list is not exhaustive, so superhumans, or those who have experimented before could learn more than these, and those who are taking it a little slower will just learn 3 or so. This session is about people getting comfortable with an appropriate number of moves for themselves, ready for the follow up section (section 3).

Section 3: Freestyle Slalom
Having learned a number of different style slaloms, it is now time to learn to combine and link them into a freestyle run. The more advanced in this area may learn some additional ‘links’ (fancy things) to add in. Don’t panic about this part - you know more than you think - backwards and forwards crisscross/snake/1foot are also moves to use with your new ones, if you know them.

Section 4: Classic Freestyle
Oldies but goodies. This section is to begin covering most people’s entry into freestyle. It follows the slalom because it requires much less precision and concentration! The course covers the Barrel Roll, grapevine, and inverted barrel roll and spinning on request, however some of you will only cover a couple of these, and certain others won’t even bother with the first two (having already covered them). There is usually two subgroups.