Not long ago, I wrote a post here on PlayCity about bike safety where I took videos of cyclists in New York City and graded them on their safety-consciousness.  I really do believe that video analysis can reveal all sorts of bad habits that we athletes aren't conscious of.  On Christmas day I stopped into the skatepark near my parents' house in New Jersey and had the place all to myself.  It seemed like a perfect chance to do a little bit of video analysis on myself.

The longer I skate, the more I understand the importance of maintaining speed over obstacles-- there's nothing more annoying than coming up short on a trick because you're going too slow.  In the video, you can see that my last two maneuvers each eat away at my speed significantly.  I think that I could alleviate the problem by training to increase my vertical leap, making the muscles in my legs stronger-- if I could jump higher, I could also pump harder over obstacles, holding speed over objects and landing tricks more cleanly on the ground.

In a matter of seconds, I've found a vertical-leap training routine that seems like it will help me.  The how-to reccomends a number of different squat exercises that can be done with zero equipment.  Here's to improvement!

What's your gym class like? When I was in High School, I thought gym class was pretty fun. We played volleyball, dodgeball, a little bit of golf, and did some yoga. All in all, I enjoyed myself, but most of the activities we did were structured, organized affairs. The rules to dodgeball are pretty similar every time you play, the goal of golf is always to get the ball in the same kind of hole, and yoga involved the entire class running the same routine. Today in the New York Times though, there's a story about kids who can take skateboarding for gym class. There's some regimented instruction time, but skateboarding is different from other sports-- there isn't a goal at the end, and there aren't any set routines to follow. You can learn new moves, but at the end of the day it's just you and a skateboard.

The New York Times' Justin Porter wrote a story about the new gym classes over the weekend, interviewing Lori Rose Benson, the Department of Education's director of fitness and health education. She said “I think it’s important to have a wide range of electives,” in order to create “an overall culture of fitness.” A 'culture of fitness' as Benson mentions, is only possible when everyone has access to a wide range of activities and can choose a few that really strike their fancy. Being physically healthy should never be a chore-- it should be a source of comfort and fun, like a tasty healthy meal.

For the Skateboarding class at Manhattan's East Side school, the administrators have enlisted pro skater Billy Rohan to teach kids the basics of skateboarding. If only we could all have a professional coach in our sports of choice.  Check the videos!  I'm pretty jealous of all the kids that get to take class with Mr. R.

"A skateboard is just a toy, like a yo-yo... But nobody asks Lance Armstrong 'Oh wow, you're still playing with a yo-yo?'"

Mark Gonzales (aka 'the Gonz') pioneered street skating decades ago, and the reason that his skateboarding is still so fresh and exciting today is probably because he's so tuned into the skateboard as a toy. When you watch him skate, it doesn't look like he's planned anything out, but rather like he's having all the fun of a toddler on his favorite toy. The act of 'Playing' is funny-- when humans engage in play, their creative sides come out, and the imagination is engaged.  It doesn't have to make sense.

When competition gets involved, we 'play' differently. Although there's still creativity involved, the rules of organized sports are more or less set in stone. My favorite kind of play is the kind thats totally unstructured. So to celebrate Friday, here are some videos of my favorite athlete, the Gonz. The first video part is from 1991's Video Days, and to me it's the definitive example of street skateboarding. The second is a clip from when Gonz visited New York City in 2004 to play around, and the third is his most recent full video part. You can see that Mark isn't a skateboarder the way other professional skateboarders are-- he's a highly unpredictable guy, and skateboarding is just the 'sport' that made him famous.

Some scholars say that 'play' is the root of all human society, that before we had money or even language, people playfully engaged each other without any sense of rules, eventually arriving at a system of shared understanding through creative, unstructured, interactions. It certainly makes me want to go outside and play around with a skateboard.

It's gotten cold in the last few weeks, and summer is just a memory now.  It wasn't long ago that the streets in Brooklyn were lined with kids playing in fire hydrants and skipping rope.  On the brighter side, it looks like Double Dutch jump roping may be finding an official home in the gyms of public schools across NYC this year.  Last June, a dialog began around the implementation of varsity double dutch in schools, and hopefully it'll be off the ground for this school year.

Lots of other athletes use jumpropes to improve agility, cardiovascular function, timing and coordination, but double dutch turns jumping rope into a spontaneous performance like break dancing, capoeria, or crumping.  In the past, the most common school-sanctioned performance-sports were dance teams and cheerleading squads, but I think double dutch leaves a lot more room for personal style to really set athletes apart from each other.

Style is what makes all of us unique.  It's the natural result of our one-of-a-kind bodies adapting themselves to perform physical tasks as efficiently as possible.  The presence of style blurs lines between what could be considered 'artistic' and what might be considered 'sport'.  If double dutch isn't being scored, is it still a 'sport'?  Or is it more like a dance?  I've heard lots of famous skateboarders argue that skating isn't a sport at all.  I personally don't care much one way or the other.  I just think that everyone should get more exercise doing expressive activities like dancing, skating, gymnastics, or double dutching-- sport or not, we'd all be healthier mentally and physically.

One of the fun things about skateboarding is that you don't really need any special facilities to participate. A curb, some stairs, a bump in the street, they can all be entertaining for hours as you explore new approaches and maneuvers. But what makes skating seem great to me just seems obnoxious to property owners, pedestrians, and drivers. Boards shoot out from under our feet and even the most conscientious skater will sometimes accidentally take out a pedestrian's ankles. People who pay for expensive masonry on their buildings don't appreciate seeing ledges covered in wax and ground down by skater after skater. As much as I love skating street, I can understand why the general non-skating public doesn't always appreciate us.

And that, my friends, is why every city or town should build a public skate park! In addition to creating a hub for local skateboarding communities to thrive, public skateparks are a sound investment financially. From Skaters for Public Skateparks' website, "Skateparks require no active programming, on-site staff, and almost no operational maintenance. With increasing expectations to do more stuff with less money, Parks are seeing skateparks as an excellent option. A properly design and constructed concrete skatepark will typically be one of the single most-used park amenities within a district and yet carry some of the lowest maintenance costs. Even the initial costs of acquisition are low when compared to the expense of other active-use areas."

This morning I found an article about three Canadian skaters who started lobbying for a park of their own. Skate parks are something that the general public may not fully understand, so its up to kids like us to get involved and pitch practical ideas to our local governments. In a lot of cases, it works. In most cases, there aren't many skaters in elected positions, so it's important that we get involved and take control of our facilities. In a lot of cases, public skate parks are built without ever consulting an actual skateboarder, resulting in waste-of-funding unskateable parks. So whether your town has never considered building a skatepark or already has one under construction, it's not too late to get involved.