Skating

Skateboarding

So I for one of my CAS activities I chose to do skating, it is a sport, which I have recently picked up and is quite challanging to get the hang of. However I set myself goals to fulfill, which require practice and I am confident that I will be able to achieve them.

Objectives

My First goal was to be able to kickflip and be able to do this trick at a constant rate. The trick involves turning the board once around in the air and landing again on the board. I have been practicing this for a few months now, however I still have not been able to land it consistently, I am only able to land it every 5-10 times maybe. However I have improved from the every 20-30 times a few weeks ago. The difficulty right now is beeing able to skate, as the weather conditions are turning worse and worse, so it is hard to find a dry day now.
My second objective is to ollie down a set of 4 stairs. The problem with this objective is that it is hard to be able to skate the stairs as there is no light over the stairs, so one is completely in the dark, so it is hard to practice, however I have made progress and have been able to land a few ollies, but I am still to learn this trick consistently.

Learning Outcomes Progress

If I look at the first 2 learning outcomes, I certainly think I have fulfilled them as I have looked at my strengths and weaknesses and I have certainly undertaken new challenges for me. In addition I have learned new skills and improved old ones, which connects to outcome 7.

Reflection on Activity

looking back on my time skating I have seen myself being on a journey, skating takes a lot more blood, sweat and tears than I would have imagined and although I sadly say I have not quite fulfilled my goals, I feel like I have discovered more what skating is actually about, and that my expectations were unrealistic to start with. Me being fairly ambitious I set out to perfect the kickflip and be able to consistantly land it, now how succesful have I been? After practicing this trick for several months I have become fustrated again and again, more and more, some days it gets better some days its worse than when you begun. However I have been able to learn it to a degree of fair consistency and to my satisfaction, this trick takes years and years of effort to perfect, to get the muscle memory to land it every time, even professional skaters sometimes do not land it. It depends on you warming up, how much you practice, the state of your shoes, the state of your griptape, the state of your board, the axes, bearings, weather, there is so many factors that play a role in skating and your ability on that particular day, sometimes there are good days, sometimes there are bad.

My other aim was to jump down a set of 4 stairs, until now I have only managed a 3 stair and it takes a lot of courage and air time feel to really land a good set jump, so I have in some way failed in this aspect of my ambitions, however I feel like it is not really a failure, I noticed that one part of skating is to learn new tricks, show them off, however another big part of skating is creating memories with other people and spending time with good friends, making a bond through hardship of not landing tricks, injuring yourself however getting over it and succeeding. To master anything in skating a lot more time is needed, especially dedication and it is something I will always in one way hold with.