Timed drills to assess skaters

[Lala]

I've heard of some leagues having internal assessments whereby they do a series of drills, I think around 15 or them, which are timed (or measured on some appropriate metric). Different drills are aimed at different skills e.g. speed, agility, endurance, hitting, backwards skating, footwork etc. This allows:

- rankings of all the skaters (makes roster-creation very easy - just the top 14 skaters make it)
- individual skaters to see where their weaknesses are so they can focus on them
- the team to see where their collective weaknesses are so they can tailor practices specifically to the current needs of the team.

This is totally separate from the WFTDA MSRs. However, the one team I know that use these kind of assessments very successfully don't want to share the drills with other leagues.

Coming up with drills to test some aspects of derby (e.g. speed, endurance, backwards skating) seems pretty easy. However, coming up with a quantitative way of measuring agility or hitting or a host of other skills seems much trickier.

Anybody know of any good resources for this? Have drills they would share? Ideas? I will try and come up with some, but I guarantee they won't be perfect first time, and we'll have to refine them substantially. I think my team would benefit greatly from these kinds of tools, but I don't want to have them do stuff that is unrefined and a waste of their time. Any ideas would be gratefully received. Sorry this post is so long!

[Sunflash]

The two quantitative ones that I have done with the team are sprint laps and hot laps.

Sprint laps are a timed lap where a single skater takes off from a dead stop on the whistle and skates a complete lap for time.

Hot laps are started just like a sprint lap but the timer doesn't start until the skater passes the start line and continues until the skater completes the next lap.

Basically the sprint lap measures acceleration speed and the the hot lap measures raw speed from a rolling start.

Not the best help.

Oh and suicides for general start/stop/direction change speed.

[Kennedy]

One common evaluation drill is a timed down and back drill. Skaters line up at one end of the floor. They take off, at 1/4 of the way to the opposing wall, they do a fall (ie single knee, double knee, 4 point), get up take off, at 1/2 way they have to stop (ie: hockey, plow), at 3/4 way they have to do a fall, at the far end they have to do a baseball slide, turn around and come back falling / stopping at the same points they did on the way down. They have to complete X number of laps in so many minutes to qualify the B team, they have to complete Y number of laps to qualify for the A team.

Skaters are judged on the overall number of laps, their form, how their form holds up when fatigued, if they can follow directions, if they can follow directions when fatigued, how long they take to recover after the test, etc.

[peppermint-T]

Marking this so I can find it later

[1M_E]

Sad to say but the assessment of skater ability is very vague to say the least. I help train a few girls and one of the key 'drills' is the iron cross and its many variants. It is a brilliant drill for agility, speed and directional stability and they cannot believe how good this sort of training is for development! (plow stops are for learn to skate classes! )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofIh9S7f3Uk (the one from 33sec on is my favorite)

Assessment of this type of drill is easy to regulate as well, unlike the current testing which is very 'ho-hum' and doesn't really stipulate a minimum pass level, the iron cross drill could mandate a minimum time to do the pattern which involves predetermined skill set.

ie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8IJAIRP2F0

[peppermint-T]

Originally Posted by 1M_E

Sad to say but the assessment of skater ability is very vague to say the least. I help train a few girls and one of the key 'drills' is the iron cross and its many variants. It is a brilliant drill for agility, speed and directional stability and they cannot believe how good this sort of training is for development! (plow stops are for learn to skate classes! )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofIh9S7f3Uk (the one from 33sec on is my favorite)

Assessment of this type of drill is easy to regulate as well, unlike the current testing which is very 'ho-hum' and doesn't really stipulate a minimum pass level, the iron cross drill could mandate a minimum time to do the pattern which involves predetermined skill set.

ie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8IJAIRP2F0

Wow! I can see how this would be very beneficial but I'm sure glad that I haven't had to do this for assessment!

[Sunflash]

Since reading this thread I have added the Iron cross drill to practices when I am running them and also to my assesment process for gear changes. It really has a lot of great elements to it that combine to make a great drill. If you are not using it yet you really should try it.

[1M_E]

Originally Posted by Sunflash

Since reading this thread I have added the Iron cross drill to practices when I am running them and also to my assesment process for gear changes. It really has a lot of great elements to it that combine to make a great drill. If you are not using it yet you really should try it.

Thats Great! I train a small group of girls and using this as a basis you can see the massive improvements they make over all the other girls in the league. Their stability and footwork starts to show in a matter of weeks and its lot long untill the rest are trying to find out the secret
It is also part of a drill set that can be done almost anywere, and even off skates as part of balance training and quick steps.