Chris Barrett wrote:
Wes,
Your courses always look like so much fun! Do you use a set of guidelines or just make it up as you go?
Thanks,
Chris.
Chris,
My guideline is simple: in practice try and make it as unmakeable and complicated as possible! Make it tight, jagged, offset, varied and as long as you can fit it in your space. If you're PRACTICING and not hitting any cones, then your wasting your time and just skating. PRACTICE should be about skating beyond your ability and working up to a new skill level. You don't get to new skill levels by just getting faster where you are. You have to REACH and in slalom you do that by setting VERY HARD courses. First, make the course "impossible." Then skate it til it's possible. Run it a few times then make it harder. Improve. Harder. Advance. BAM! You're there.
Then, when you go to a race and the course setter sets some 7-foot hybrid you blaze like a bat out of hell! I use this analogy a lot, but it's applicable and I'll repeat it here. In baseball the batter goes out to the batter's circle and uses a heaviliy-weighted bat to warm up. He swings this weight all around and gets to feeling like the bat is almost normal. Then, when he goes up to the plate and takes the weight off, his bat feels like a feather. The same is true in slalom: practice courses that are heavily weighted and impossible. Then, when you race and the course is lightened up, everything is easier.
For races, I like a course that does three things: allows for very fast skating, feels very rhythmic and most importantly challenges a racer without making it impossible. I firmly believe that SLALOM is a combination of speed and rhythm. There is a difference between "skateboard slalom" and "running an obstacle course on your skateboard." I don't like obstacle courses EXCEPT when I practice. When I race, I like to slalom.
