Skating back to 2013

Just under six years ago I played in my first Roller Derby bout. From there I never looked back. There was so much for me to love about this sport. A combination of power, agility, strength, speed, focus, strategy, teamwork and concentration. A game where you are constantly switching from offense to defense whilst rolling on eight wheels, alongside nine other players on the track. A 64 page rule book and seven officials calling the shots. Throw all that into the mix and it gives you enough things to think about!

Abby Lewtas, Challenge, Roller Derby, Thoughts, ReflectionAbby Lewtas1 May 2017roller derby, fernie, Journey, reflection, sport, thinking, inspireComment

Achieve success through focus.

I find it amazing how much you can focus and concentrate so intensely on one thing only. Everything else can be blocked out no matter how much of a distraction it may normally be. I had blocked out the excitement of Queensland, the sun shining at 28 degrees; and that a crowd had lined the fence and filled two grandstands to watch us. To put all those distractions aside and concentrate was something that at 17 years old, I had trained myself to do. To otherwise be absorbed up into this exciting atmosphere was a distraction that many of my opponents succumb to.

Trust your intuition...a year in my head and not in my skates.

With sport comes the physical training; the greater influence is the mental training. Commitment, resilience, goal setting, visualisation, day in day out. If your going to the top you need to commit to all of that. But with it also comes flow, ease, enjoyment and most of all something that has dropped into my consciousness in the last few years, intuition. The instinctual feeling and knowingness that so often so many of us choose to ignore. In my mind, this is by far of greatest importance than anything else.