Speech - Roller Derby

Kia ora

Ko Eden ahau

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

   

Skaty Scary and Tower of Terror are banging through each other's team like charging bulls! Skaty gets through and skates ahead, she has become the lead jammer. Tower has now broken free and they are racing for the points. Skaty Scary has got two points and just before Tower of Terror gets her first point Skaty calls time out! What am I talking about? …Roller Derby! For those of you who don’t do  Roller Derby, it’s not just skating and barging into people, it also has some MAJOR health benefits and today I will tell you some of them.

Roller Derby has great fitness benefits that assists weight loss, improves your cardiovascular plus much more! Did you know that doing just 30 minutes competitively can burn 450 calories or more? Roller Derby isn’t just about winning but it’s skating at a fast pace and it includes a high adrenaline rush, the high intensity burns a lot of calories to help make you fitter and faster. Roller Derby also helps build muscle memory because by doing certain maneuvers like sticky skating you are using muscles that you haven’t used before. It helps build your strength by the constant side-to-side movements and you always have to be in a squatting position while you are skating for better balance when barging into other players.

Roller Derby also helps with things like teamwork and improves your self-confidence. These are very important skills to have in everyday life, and I know you might be wondering, how does barging into people and skating around a track improve your leadership and self-confidence?! Well, it improves self-confidence because usually when you are practicing you are mainly just skating so if you have previously been stressing out or feeling bad about something you instead have to focus on moving your body the right way. It improves your leadership because you work in teams of five and you have to tell them if they would need to move left, right, up or down. Or to tell them to move closer, but also you are listening to other people and letting them lead you.

It also improves your mental health because it lets you release your anger by barging into other people and helps you de-stress to have a healthier mind. You also have to remember how to do certain moves like knee taps and T-stops so there are a lot of things to remember and that can help with a lot of stuff with having a healthier mind. Last of all it also helps to build a healthy heart because scientists have proven that doing 20 to 30 minutes of roller skating can help you improve your fitness and lower the risk of heart disease.

So those are some of the health benefits but not all of them there are still plenty more benefits to Roller Derby and Skating. Although you need to know how to skate to join, if you think this is a good sport for you don’t just think about the roughness but  how much it can help you with your health and I hope that one day you might join me, Sweetie Demon -  on the track to foster having a healthy body and strong mind!