I just started a bootcamp that is an hour each day. I do it 3 days a week on days that i dont have practice. It's a mixture of strength training and cardio. Its been good so far. I feel like it has helped me on the track!

I had been skating 2-3 times a week for a year when I realized I would not progress as well or as safely without time in the gym. But I was having trouble getting momentum, and for the first 8 weeks of fresh meatness I was strictly skating, usually just doing some squats on off days but nothing terribly organized. I knew this was bad so in December I started poking around and had planned to join the gym I have access to at work - and discovered they would start a fitness program in January. I thought it might help me establish a good routine.

I applied and was accepted - it has fit very well in my practice schedule and has me at the gym at minimum of two other non-derby days, but usually even more. My team trainer also assigns core work to be done every week too, and that's really helped me just make sense and have goals instead of aimlessly squatting my life away. So far it's been a lot of interval style training in different ways. I started the program just to focus on getting in the gym, but my competitive nature has had me dedicated to the nutrition suggested by my trainer as well. So we're two weeks down, six to go, hopefully with significantly more strength and a little less mass.

I had kind of been stabbing at the dark for a long time trying to find something that worked, it was simply time to try something totally new and maybe a little bit uncomfortable. But the discomfort has eased as we got closer as a group.

I've just started 3 weeks ago and still have a long way to go, but on non-skating days I try to do at least one if not all of the following:
- Squats/wall squats whenever I am waiting for food to cook, queueing for the toilet, etc.
- LOTS of planks/side planks. I'm still trying to get to the point of doing normal planks for longer than a minute and side planks for longer than 15 seconds! Also a few pilates exercises because I prefer them to crunches or sit-ups.
- Also lots of balancing on one leg for as long as I can, slowly bending and straightening the leg I'm standing on. I have quite weak ankles, and I tend to roll them even walking in flats! I really need to get these stronger so I can glide and corner better.

At the moment I'm just trying to get stronger. I'm hoping the endurance will come with that, but getting strong enough to actually do things safely and with better control is more important for me as a beginner, I think.